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

To: Neocon who wrote (147623)	10/11/2004 4:10:03 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

If you are going to cherry pick a quote from Ignatieff then you have to also include such morsels as: "Ordinary American ignorance was compounded by the administration's arrogance. Gen. George C. Marshall began planning the postwar occupation of Germany two years before D-Day. This administration was fumbling for a plan two months before the invasion. Who can read Bob Woodward's ''Plan of Attack'' and not find his jaw dropping at the fact that from the very beginning, in late 2001, none of the civilian leadership, not Rice, not Powell, not Tenet, not the president, asked where the plan for the occupation phase was? Who can't feel that U.S. captains, majors and lieutenants were betrayed by the Beltway wars between State and Defense? Who can't feel rage that victorious armies stood by and watched for a month while Iraq was looted bare" -- Michael Ignatieff, "Mirage in the Dessert" I don't always disagree with Ignatieff -- in fact I wholeheartedly agree with "the error of France isn't to seek to have an independent policy; its error is to pretend to defend the multilateral framework and yet not take action." -- a problem not restricted to France. Sadly the Bush administration decided to present a dishonest case for war, which has had the unintended consequence of undermining US credibility at a juncture in history where credibility is needed the most. Some don't think it matters to work to uphold credibility and stature in the world: I disagree. The real war on terror has a hundreds of simultaneous fronts - no one nation, not even one as powerful as the modern US, can fight everywhere at the same time.

To: Neocon who wrote (147623)	10/11/2004 4:16:39 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Ignatieff, a very independent thinker whom I think is unfairly labled as a man of the Left in the article you have linked, is always provocative. Here's a long article he wrote some time ago, from which I copied the following: middleeastinfo.org Human rights could well be improved in Iraqi as a result of the intervention. But the Bush administration did not invade Iraq just to establish human rights. Nor, ultimately, was this intervention about establishing a democracy or saving lives as such. And here we come to the heart of the matter -- to where the Bush administration's interventions fit into America's long history of intervention. All such interventions have occurred because a president has believed going in that it would increase both his and his country's power and influence. To use Joseph S. Nye Jr.'s definition, ''power is the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants.'' Presidents intervene because successful interventions enhance America's ability to obtain the outcomes it wants. The Iraq intervention was the work of conservative radicals, who believed that the status quo in the Middle East was untenable -- for strategic reasons, security reasons and economic reasons. They wanted intervention to bring about a revolution in American power in the entire region. What made a president take the gamble was Sept. 11 and the realization, with 15 of the hijackers originating in Saudi Arabia, that American interests based since 1945 on a presumed Saudi pillar were actually built on sand. The new pillar was to be a democratic Iraq, at peace with Israel, Turkey and Iran, harboring no terrorists, pumping oil for the world economy at the right price and abjuring any nasty designs on its neighbors. As Paul Wolfowitz has all but admitted, the ''bureaucratic'' reason for war -- weapons of mass destruction -- was not the main one. The real reason was to rebuild the pillars of American influence in the Middle East. Americans may have figured this out for themselves, but it was certainly not what they were told. Nor were they told that building this new pillar might take years and years. What they were told -- misleadingly and simplistically -- was that force was justified to fight ''terrorism'' and to destroy arsenals of mass destruction targeted at America and at Israel. In fact, while Hussein did want to acquire such weapons, the fact that none have been found probably indicates that he had achieved nothing more than an active research program. I think Ignatieff just about has it right--the Iraqi war's ultimate purpose was to rebuild the pillars of American influence in the Middle East. Ignatieff unfortunately does not advance any good reasons for why these columns needed rebuilding. In my mind, they are a combination of several things, chief among which was the inability of American forces to remain in Saudi Arabia to protect its oil. In an era of increasing Muslim radicalism, it was the equivalent of having a Muslim force in place to protect the Vatican, something that for religious reasons simply could not in the long term be tolerated. Our (and the rest of the world's) access to Iraqi oil is also secured. Though the American military presence in Iraq protects oil ME oil and promotes human rights, it cannot be validly claimed that human rights were our first concern. Ignatieff naturally recognizes this, a point which does not take away from the fact that human rights are in fact promoted by the war. None of the Bush opponents seem to be willing to admit this elementary point. It is all very ironic, we invade an country to protect the West's economies, and a great many of the West's nations loudly complain, castigate us as fascists, etc., though the economic benefit to us and to them of securing oil cannot be minimized. We are once again supporting the French and Germans, and their leaders know it, though for doemstic political purposes they must give unshirted hell. So what else is new? This is a game--rescue the Euros--we've played for a long time, we appreciate the rules. Domestically, the Administration's opponents fail utterly to recognize the very pragmatic whys and wherefores of the invasion. Instead, they drive their Suburbans and Expeditions to a mall to shop for cheap goods largely based on petroleum, all while failing to note, as Ignatieff recognizes, that we have done a great service to a large slice of humanity that until Saddam fell had very little notion of what human rights actually are. What we hear instead is the simplistic "Bush lied, kids died" from the lips of over-indulged folks who in my estimation have no earthly idea of what the stakes are. Doing good while doing bad, the nastiest and least appreciated business in the world.