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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (176440)	8/13/2006 4:22:43 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793568

There is an impression on the the leftist and so called "moderate" theads on SI that we are all warmongers here, but that is not so. The difference is that we accept war as one of the solutions, while the other threads see war as never a solution, only a bad choice that should only be made when Democrats are in charge. :>) So, now you're claiming the sensible center, are ya? <gggg>

To: LindyBill who wrote (176440)	8/23/2006 11:12:50 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 793568

Going to war is not a totally binary decision. Its not always "Total War" or peace. You can have low level proxy wars, or something like the DMZ in some of the worst post Korean war moments where there was occasional fights without a full scale war. You can, at least if you are facing a much weaker opponent, have something like "no fly zones" and attacks on SAM sites. But your right that much of the time war is or should be a fairly binary decision. Vietnam was a case where we should have made a binary decision to go or not go. Maybe not at the very beginning (pre-LBJ) when it looked like advisers and logistical support might stabilize the South, but LBJ faced a properly binary decision and he kept trying to choose something in the middle. But that isn't the binary issue that Lane 3 is talking about. She was complaining about posing "Iraq has a massive ongoing WMD program so we should invade", and "Iraq has no active WMD program so we should not invade", as the only two pre-war possibilities. It might be argued that "Iraq is developing WMD and we shouldn't invade", was also a possibility. Its not one that I would have supported, but I don't think its necessarily a crazy idea. Apparently you think it would have been crazy or ridiculous, while I just think it would likely have been wrong, and Lane3 is at least uncertain about it being declared automatically wrong, and might go as far as suggesting that it was correct. I don't think it was correct but I'll make an argument for it anyway. Its sort of a Devil's advocate argument, so don't take it as my actual opinion. Also it is of course based only on information from before the war, so it might seem weird now. this is an argument from the perspective of someone who held that position before the invasion. -- Our information on Iraq's WMD program is sketchy but it seems that they aren't having a lot of success. Certainly they could build chemical weapons, and have before but there is not good evidence that they are anywhere near getting a nuke. They would be deterred from using chemical weapons against Israel because of Israel's nukes, and they would be deterred from attacking Kuwait or Saudi by US power. It would be awful nice if we could remove Saddam from power and replace him with someone who is less nasty and aggressive and ideally friendlier to the US, maybe even with a democratically elected government, but invading Iraq would lead us to a messy situation. We probably can roll up their army pretty quickly, but once we occupy Iraq it will be a hard country to deal with. No one there will be able to defeat the US in battle, but setting up a stable friendly democratic government won't be easy and we could be tied down in low to moderate level violence for years. Its unlikely to result in casualties as large as Vietnam (no NVA, and no superpower support of the enemy) but its still a risky and difficult idea. Lane3 and Euterpe - If your reading this can you tell me if this was close to your thinking before the war? Bill - You probably disagree with this argument but can you say its ridiculous?