Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: one_less who wrote (147394)	10/8/2004 1:25:27 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Respond to of 281500

We are not at war with Iraq. We went to war against the Regime of Saddam and we defeated him. Since then the mission has evolved to be something more. They did not go to war with Saddam, they went to war with the Middle East. You go to war with a regime when there is a reason for it that impacts your country - Iraq did not. However, with Wolfowitz / Pearle / Cheney / Rumsfeld et al crafting this new Bush doctorine - forced democracy in the M.E. - you do whatever your miltary says they can do. They said they could depose Hussein (who did not believe this was easily possible after Gulf War I?) and they did. Their big mistake is believing that any outside force, especially one culturally at odds with the indigenous peoples being "liberated", could force democracy on a single country let alone a region. Their goal isn't changing Iraq. Its changing the whole damn place. If you believe this is the right strategy and that it will work, you vote for Bush. If you do not, then you can not vote for Bush. In the meantime have people like Wolfowitz admitting, in a public interview, that Iraq is a convenient place to move US troops and solve a political problem for the Saudis. From the DOD itself: defenselink.mil Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair: There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed--but it's huge--is that by complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. [MW: and now its a problem for an occupied territory] It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things. Now that last statement of Wolfowitz is perhaps the most troubling at all, in that he completely misses the point that invading Iraq has created the single largest recruiting drive for Islamic terrorism that the world has ever seen in modern history. This is a clear example of why Bush, and his complete adminsitration, need to be removed.