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

To: carranza2 who wrote (148953)	10/25/2004 1:08:49 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<I long for the day when foreign policy can be conducted on the basis of morality instead of on the calculations I listed above. > Morality aside, the invasion of Iraq appears to have been made on a set of miscalculations by some (as you outlined them), and noncalculations (misguided beliefs) by others.

To: carranza2 who wrote (148953)	10/25/2004 9:34:55 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

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; That's BS. The US had well proven in Gulf War I that was well able to defeat Saddam's "million man army". In Iraq War II - what was proved? Taking on a state (not terroists) that had its defences utterly destroyed, no functional air force, and no control over its own sovereign air space -- proves exactly what? Proves what that wasn't already well known? Do you really think that any one in the region had any misconceptions about the enormity of American military power that could be deployed against a state? Gulf War I over a decade prior put that all to rest, forever. 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; Sure, makes sense. The House of Saud, a "friendly government" in Wolfowitz's own words, is threatened internally by increasing radicalism. So, the US invade Iraq in order to create a new parking lot to move the troops to. Clearly that is going to appease radical elements in Saudi Arabia. [sarcasm detector registers overload] Deploying even more troops to the region is not going to reduce radical terrorism in the area, only create new and highly visible justifications for terrorist recruiters. Evidence of this abounds. 3.- We therefore needed a base in the ME from which to operate. Since your first two arguments don't make sense, you can't use the word "therefore". So lets rephrase your statement in this way: We WANTED a base in the Middle East, with puppet government we truly can control, in order to operate with impunity in the region. Perception being everything, this is how many in the region - well, across the entire world really - view the Iraq occupation. Given the people responsible for creating this policy, this view is probably frighteningly accurate. Only a simpleton would assume that relocating tens of thousands of American troops from Saudi Arabia to Iraq would somehow make tensions in the area more palatable. If not a simpleton, then someone blinded by ideology and goals that the outcome doesn't really matter. From a strategic standpoint, Iraq is ideally located. It has borders with every important player in the region, Syria, SA, Kuwait, and Iran. Yes, it is - and this is a simple fact of geography, the only thing you got correct in your analysis. 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; LOL and you can think of no other way than to invade Iraq? How about a truly ambitious program to reduce dependence on foreign oil, period? On oil, period? No, that would never fly to the oil lobby (I used to work for big oil...). 5.- We needed [and the Western Europeans, too] a more secure source of oil than the Saudis provide; The Western Europeans use a lot less Middle East oil than we do. Saudi oil is far more secure than Iraq. Iraq can't even supply itself with gasoline! The Western Europeans didn't ask for US assistance in securing oil either. Don't ascribe this to them. We'll leave Britain to a seperate discussion. 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. There were no morally gray reasons for the invasion, only arrogant justifications.