It's not about the WMD's

[RKC]

Nobody really cares about the WMD info. Just a few reporters trying to make a career move/book deal if it turns out Bush lied - like reporters did with Clinton and Nixon and on back through our country's history. Not political primarily - just ambition to be the next Woodward & Bernstein.

Bush isn't evil. And I don't think Bush lied at all. It was clear what was happening. I mean, come on, if you picked up a paper everyday during the run up to the war, it was clear that facts didn't lead Bush to the war; instead a war that Bush wanted led him to certain facts.

That's not even a criticism really - most of the liberals I know saw the tendencies of Bush, and still supported the war, if grudgingly. They knew it was a risk. They knew it wasn't morally clear like Afghanistan. They knew it was a power play worthy of Bismark or some other 19th Century titan.

But they were willing to play along, thinking that Bush's gung-ho, Texas death-penalty strengths would help us do this right - that we would spare no expense, that we would spare no lives that needed to be sacrificed, that as the son of a President and grandson of a Senator, surrounded by Cold Warriors, he would get the job done. Most liberals could endure the moral qualms they had because they saw that the war might be a shortcut to Mid-East peace and thus an end to organized Islamic Terrorism (as opposed to the occasional kook).

The anger you see now is because many feel betrayed since the only thing people felt they could count on was Bush being a cowboy - something valuable during wartime. But Bush was Bush only in print - he didn't send in overhwhelming force. Instead he kept alive Rumsfeld's (justified in peacetime) attempt to modernize and challenge the military to do more with less. He ignored the history of his own family - his father and grandfather - and went in without the kind and number of allies his dad had in 1990. He ignored the aftermath of the war, and made poor assumptions about the reaction of the Iraqi people and the numbers of troops necessary to secure the peace. He ignored American History that his father and grandfather were personally familiar with - the peace of Japan, when MacArthur (pretty far to the right) and Truman (pretty far to the left) used Hirohito and much of the country's leadership to secure the peace. He ignored common sense, as spoken by Ralph Peters (pretty far to the right) and retained the the artificially created Iraqi borders rather than splitting the country along racial/religious lines. In short, he ignored the advice of a good number of smart people, and is now suffering for his hubris.

People are mad because of what might have been: Bush might have achieved his goals, set up a democracy in Iraq, started the Mid East along another path, and silenced his Democratic (and now, fiscally conservative Republican) critics all at the same time. The worst that could have happened would have been Iraqi Civil War over the new borders - something that would have preoccupied their roadside bombers for a few years - and thus been in the grand Bismark-ian tradition of power politics and no worse an outcome morally than a pre-emptive war.

Critics are angry now, and justifiably so, because of the disaster that didn't have to be. Not the war itself, but the conduct of the war.

The war may still come out OK. People are mad because by taking advice, it likely would have come out OK sooner.

[CJFusco]

It's not about WMDs, it's about business. The U.S. has been increasingly adamant about establishing a controlling presence in the Middle East for some time now. The Saudi sphere of influence was already there, so the U.S. took the opportunities it was handed as justification for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. If the tide turns and the U.S. troops begin to see more success in Iraq (unlikely), expect Iran to be the next target.

In order to see this clearly, one has to take a step back from the daily information we are being fed from both sides and just look at the trends of history. Every great even remotely Capitalistic civilization has followed the same path, from Rome to Great Britain, and the U.S. is no different. This trend is called Imperialism. The WMDs and Oil and Spheres of Influence are only part of it; what it really comes down to is expansion of control. Unluckily for us, Imperialism is the LAST stage of Capitalism. And it's easy to see why - the U.S. is already spreading itself too thin, and is already losing control of their conquests.

[gaijindabe]

Arthur: Well I AM king...

Dennis: Oh, King, eh? Oh, very nice... And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers! By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society! If there's ever gonna be any progress in our society...

Woman: Denny, there's some lovely filth down here!
[Noticing Arthur] Oh! How d'you do?

Arthur: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Whose castle is that?

Woman: King of the who?

Arthur: The Britons.

Woman: Who are the Britons?

[Jamie79SC]

RKC,

Wow. Right on. Let me buy you a beer next time you're in the Seattle area, (or I'm in Chi-town).

[Rodeo]

RKC, good post! I don't agree with all you say, but I think you hit the nail on the head. If this administration had done any pre-war planning, if it prosecuted this war in even a modestly competent manner, all the WMD stuff would be forgotten.

Katrina was the was up call for many. It demonstrated in the most vivid way that this administration was not only incompetent, it was uninterested in the actual business of government. It was all hat and no cowboy. When America started looking at Iraq through the Katrina prism, that’s when things started going downhill.

Because people finally realized that our president was clueless.

[RKC]

Jamie79SC - A beer sounds good!

Rodeo - I sometimes wonder at my own thinking when I open a newspaper and see where we are, so it's OK not to agree with everything I say.....

But even though I don't think Saddam was a threat, and don't think pre-emptive war is morally correct, I still keep thinking that this war, properly prosecuted, may have been a shortcut to a more moral world, just like GW and his associates said it would be. I'm not a Republican, and not a religious nut, but I think that in the great sweep of history, there was an opportunity that was real here. Unfortunately, it now probably squandered, and making things worse.

About Katrina - 1/2 of America got just what it asked for - not in a Pat Robertson/God punishing New Orleans sort of way. But in the fact that the Republicans have been saying we should all take care of ourselves, or give power back to the states for years.

Our nation voted those ideas in, and now sees that in some instances, a central government is important. Why people couldn't see this before, I don't know - Heck, if the Republicans were really correct, then why should anyone in Iowa be foreced to pay for the US Navy?.......

[Rodeo]

Originally posted by RKC
Jamie79SC - A beer sounds good!

Rodeo - I sometimes wonder at my own thinking when I open a newspaper and see where we are, so it's OK not to agree with everything I say.....

But even though I don't think Saddam was a threat, and don't think pre-emptive war is morally correct, I still keep thinking that this war, properly prosecuted, may have been a shortcut to a more moral world, just like GW and his associates said it would be. I'm not a Republican, and not a religious nut, but I think that in the great sweep of history, there was an opportunity that was real here. Unfortunately, it now probably squandered, and making things worse.

About Katrina - 1/2 of America got just what it asked for - not in a Pat Robertson/God punishing New Orleans sort of way. But in the fact that the Republicans have been saying we should all take care of ourselves, or give power back to the states for years.

Our nation voted those ideas in, and now sees that in some instances, a central government is important. Why people couldn't see this before, I don't know - Heck, if the Republicans were really correct, then why should anyone in Iowa be foreced to pay for the US Navy?.......

A fellow moderate! Welcome to a very small club here on OT!

And you drive my favorite car too (89 coupe here). But for for the Targa, I'd kiss you!

(only kidding about the kiss -- not that there's anything ... well you know)

[RKC]

Rodeo - Maybe we're so comfortable with our manhood because we own the best 911's (87-89).

Hah, hah! Moderate no more.......

[stevepaa]

The first post is very interesting. Well done.

Originally posted by Rodeo [/i]
If this administration had done any pre-war planning, if it prosecuted this war in even a modestly competent manner, all the WMD stuff would be forgotten.


Not entirely. I don't agree with pre-emptive war as a policy. WMD was used to support that policy, and now we have gone down a path which is hard to retrace.

[CamB]

Good stuff RKC - original thought! Sadly lacking (incl from me) around here.

Originally posted by stevepaa
Not entirely. I don't agree with pre-emptive war as a policy. WMD was used to support that policy, and now we have gone down a path which is hard to retrace.

I'm in this camp. As a member of the rest-of-the-world, the concept of pre-emptive war really chaps my hide.

Pre-emptive attacks are not tolerated on an interpersonal level, so it shouldn't be tolerated on an international level.

[Rodeo]

I agree in part with both of the above posts. A discussion of justifiable reasons for starting war would require a different topic, but suffice it to say that a policy of "preemption" can mean very different things depending on where the lines of "national interest" are drawn.

Saddam’s Iraq was stable, and we now know non-threatening at least in the middle term. But it was a brutal Middle East dictatorship, a cancer in the middle of a very sick region. While I agree that President Bush should have complied with the Joint Resolution and used force only as a last resort and with an international coalition, if Iraq were a united, democratic, progressive Arabic country right now, with a bright future and a population freed from tyranny, criticism of the Bush administration for not finding WDMs (or fudging the case) would be virtually non-existent.

Maybe it was never possible to achieve that outcome, maybe it was. The sad thing is we will likely never know.

[CJFusco]

There are far more "brutal" dictatorships in this world than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Why aren't we attacking them?

In all honesty, I believe that Bush has always been acting in what he believes is the U.S.'s best interests; unfortunately, the administration found it necessary to lie about their real motivations - business.

[rsNINESOOPER]

Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh, Educated folks having a polite discussion about politics! who would have thought! Its nice to see this is possible.

Thanks for starting such a thread-

[fintstone]

It is only polite because no one who disagrees has posted.

[jkarolyi]

> It is only polite because no one who disagrees has posted.

Not true, fintstone. Stevepaa, CamB, Rodeo, and CJ lean left and disagreed, yet all here seem to be discussing this calmly and politely. How refreshing.

And yes, RKC, excellent post. What disappoints me is not Bush's intentions or this war, but his administration's lack of planning and execution of the war.

Getting rid of Hussein was essential in starting peace in the middle east. Too bad Bush and co. screwed up the execution.

[fintstone]

No one disagreed.

[Rodeo]

First, Flint, just please go away. Plenty of other threads available to you to post the 1,000 variations of the same thing you repeat every day. Libs are bad. We got it. Now please go away.

To continue the discussion, yes there are other dictatorships in the world, but right now the Middle East is the tipping point for the most important security issue in the world: Muslim extremism.

Had this war been prosecuted with any competence, it could have served as a catalyst for broader change in the region. I really believe that. By saying this, I'm not addressing the justification for the invasion; I think that’s an important topic for another day. But it is what it is. We invaded, and we had an opportunity to free a people, show America’s good nature to a hostile region, and plant the seeds, as the administration likes to say.

By failing from day one to provide the security necessary, the job was bungled. What infrastructure was not damaged in the war was completely gutted in a matter of weeks following the war. Then we disbanded the Army and barred anyone with a connection to the Bathist Party from a position in the government. That move has been likened to prohibiting all whites from ANY social, government, or business involvement in S. Africa the day after apartheid fell. Utter chaos. And a ready-made insurgency, from tens of thousands of people suddenly with no future and nothing to do.

Then pictures of American G.I.’s holding Iraqis on dog leashes, and mounting hostility as we went from liberators to occupiers. The woman that bombed that wedding in Jordan was supposedly radicalized because of her family’s involvement with American G.I.s (don’t know the exact story). But it all goes back to a lack of security, which has kept us there in major force much longer than necessary, which in turn has created new resistance every day that it goes on. You can’t be a foreign army trying to keep peace in a hostile nation in the face of a well-organized insurgency and not make more enemies every day than you do friends. I guarantee you that some kid today will have a brother or sister or mother or cousin become “collateral damage,” and that kid will become a new enemy of the United States.

Our Secretary of Defense actually thought this would be a 3-6 month operation. That’s a fact, and it’s really the only one necessary to demonstrate how utterly, completely inept the planning for this “regime change” was.

We had an opportunity to make this a major victory for freedom and tolerance. Now, it appears that a draw is the absolute best we could hope for. Even that would be something of a miracle at this point.

[RKC]

It is only polite because no one who disagrees has posted.

Or, perhaps, since both Ralph Peters and Ralph Nader might find some common ground here, it is not possible to completely disagree. And perhaps that means America could solve this problem quicker by following our example.....

[techweenie]

Okay, I disagree. RKCs post was well-stated and maybe a valid opinion for many.

But the original reasons stated from December 2002 through March 2003 was a "theat to America" that was "immediate," "imminent," "growing," etc. The phrase 'mushroom cloud' was invoked by Cheney and Rice, as I recall.

Not to mention that at the time, 9/11 and Iraq were mentioned together in nearly every administration pronouncement -- so much so that the fools who listened only to Faux, etc. were convinced Saddam had something to do with the attacks.

I believe, despite the desperate attempts at revisionism by the administration and its thoughtless followers, that any casual serch of contemporaneous dialog and opinion polls will show that the majority of Americans wanted Saddam removed because of a "WMD threat."

[RKC]

Techweenie:

That still sounds considerate and thoughtful, I'm afraid. Perhaps we're not doing this right....LOL.

I think you're right about the original justifications for war, I just don't think it matters to Americans - we're a country with little thought for the past, so we just want to know how to make things go as well as possible from this point forward.

That lack of history causes us repeated problems, obviously, but it is a fair price to pay for avoiding the anger over Ancient events we see in other regions.

I mean, imagine the English being angry about the Norman Invasion?!? Or imagine shooting every Englishman you see in America because they burned down the White House in 1812!?! We think it's crazy to be mad about the Crusades. We think it's crazy that Arabs and Israelis cannot get along. Others do not. Just think about how out of sync the Amish are. Yet they live here in peace. They couldn't do that in the Middle East.

Americans have more dreams for the future than memories of the past.

Most people don't think Lincoln fought the Civil War to defeat slavery. But his aims changed as circumstances changed.

We went into Iraq for one reason. Perhaps we need another now that the original reason vanished (or never materialized.)