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

To: Noel de Leon who wrote (184550)	4/4/2006 8:47:41 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

And as far back as 1955 I've argued that US policy to support these governments instead of movements for freedom within these countries was short sighted. Then why are you, and other liberals, seeking to undermine the FIRST MAJOR EFFORTS to reform the political systems within the Middle East??!!!! And why are you proud to be part of that effort, merely because you don't like the guy who's advocating it (Bush)?? Look past the trees and see the forest Noel... Bush will be gone in 2 years and the next several administrations, Republican or Democratic, are going to have to present a grand vision of how to undermine the attractiveness of the Islamo-Fascist ideology. What I know is something that I can't really talk about in detail." Pure Macarthyism. No.. it has something to do with a piece of paper I signed. The full fledged conflict became a "nation building mission" after neither WMDs nor links to al Qaeda were found. It's still about oil or have you forgotten? No plan survives first contact with the enemy. We must adjust to the realities as they exist, not as we'd pretend them to be. We had one expectation of how the fall of Saddam would pan out, and to a certain extent we were right, but we were also wrong. Certain individual made controversial decisions, mostly with good intentions, that have had a lasting impact. One of these decisions was when the Iraqi Army was permitted to "fade away", rather than detaining everyone and taking their weapons from them, with a full debriefing, accountability, and then release with a vow to support the new Iraqi government. We definitely should have detained every Special Republican Guard member, as well as the Iraqi Intelligence Service. It would have sent that signal that Saddam's supporters were actually defeated and that their future re-integration depended solely on their behavior. But we let them go home without ever having a full accountability for who was involved in supporting Saddam. And we've been playing catch up ever since, relying mainly on documents that we discovered via the ISG mission (which had inadequate resources to exploit them properly). There never was a "reformatory effort" in Iraq, just getting rid of Saddam. Then why didn't we just install another dictator to replace him and keep the previous Ba'thist regime intact?? Noel.. you're being intellectually dishonest again and ignoring the facts. And the facts are: Saddam is gone. We are pushing Democratic reform. There have been several elections with major turnouts. There is an insurgency, consisting primarily of Al Qai'da, Shi'a Militias, and Former Ba'thists, all of which do not desire a democratic government in Iraq because it threatens their existence and relevance. Liberals are undermining the effort to create a democracy in Iraq and as a result, they have undermined the US efforts to general wide-spread political and social reform throughout the Mid-East. Liberals hate Bush so much that they can only focus upon destroying his legacy, regardless of undermining the only major attempt by the west to reform the Mid-East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. There are issues and events that FAR OVERSHADOW the legacy of any one man. Hate Bush, if you want. But look past your hatred of the man, and maybe just revisit the efficacy of some of his goals and how they will create that long-overdue change you claimed to have been promoting since 1955. Hawk