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

To: Elsewhere who wrote (148949)	10/25/2004 12:48:40 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Ok - but Saddam was one of the Arab leaders with the least connections to the Jihadists. Afghanistan was the base of The Base. The Iraq war has been a distraction and has created a new breeding ground for Jihadists. Any forthright response to the Jihadists was bound to stir up a hornet's nest, at least temporarily. Iraq was necessary, in my view, for the following reasons: 1.- It was utterly necessary to somehow reverse the perceptions of weakness created by the Laundry List of Shame; 2.- The Saudis after 9/11 could no longer be considered reliable allies because they want to accommodate both AQ and the US, something which cannot be done. Plus they asked us to leave SA as it became obvious that we were going to use our military facilities there as a base for ongoing operations; 3.- We therefore needed a base in the ME from which to operate. From a strategic standpoint, Iraq is ideally located. It has borders with every important player in the region, Syria, SA, Kuwait, and Iran. 4.- We needed to make the Saudis nervous. I can't think of a better way to do so than by having troops on a contigous country; 5.- We needed [and the Western Europeans, too] a more secure source of oil than the Saudis provide; 6.- And last, Saddam needed to go. He provided the justification for the moralists who cannot accept the more morally gray reasons for the invasion. I long for the day when foreign policy can be conducted on the basis of morality instead of on the calculations I listed above. Unfortunately, this day is a long time coming. Until then, we have to be clear-headed. And please don't think that I reflexively support what Bush has done, though I think that in principle his ideas are good, though veiled, as he plays a very deep game. If Kerry is elected and somehow gets our forces out of the ME, we will have to add another item to the Laundry List.