By the way don’t have the support of most Muslim countries? Or at least a neutral position by them? Seems to me some here are forgetting that Saddam is considered by many Muslims to be a heretic.
I don’t know why you’re shocked. I suppose you and I might have a different view of what constitutes ‘pre-emptive’. If North Korea started massing (even more) troops at their border, gave us ultimatums and started fueling their missiles (which we have good reason to believe have nuclear warheads), I don’t feel that asking if we should engage in a ‘pre-emptive’ military strike on those fueling missiles is the question. The only question in my mind is whether or not it would take a nuclear device to make sure we get them all.
This presupposes that Saddam was in fact in the position to threaten anyone, which he wasn’t. Bush has claimed Iraq was an immediate threat, with weapons of mass destruction at the ready and a nuclear weapons program. Not one of those claims has been backed up with any proof, which is why this suddenly turned into a war of “liberation.” You need to keep up with the Administration’s story if you want to stay consistent.
The argument that we must enforce what we term “the expressed will of the world” against the expressed will of the world seems ludicrous to me.
This is the kind of blanket statement that feeds into our unquestioning support of this policy. Dehumanizing all Muslims by saying they all hate us is just plain wrong. What’s certain is that this war is drastically exacerbating the situation. Even if you don’t care that they hate us, don’t you think it’s a bad idea to stoke the flames of their hatred? What good does that do?
You may be right, I’m not sure and I don’t think you can be sure exactly what motivated 19 dead men. I don’t think that makes it our fault nor do I believe the first Gulf War was wrong. But equating this war, in which we are invading Iraq without provocation, with one in which Iraq had invaded one of its neighbors and we drove them out, is not a valid tactic in my opinion. Iraq was clearly the aggressor in the Gulf War. We are clearly the aggressor here. I have a problem with the U.S. being an aggressor.
So you’re saying that no proof provided to our allies, no diplomatic effort of any kind, would have moved them? We didn’t have much trouble getting them on board for the first Gulf War or the war in Afghanistan. Why is this so different?
I’d ask you to elaborate further and tell us why a war we could not possibly justify to our allies is a justified war?
The UN security council stood unanimously behind 1441. However, the U.S. blatantly ignored their expressed intent with that resolution that it not authorize or endorse an automatic attack by the U.S. if the U.S. decided Iraq wasn’t complying.
As for the steps that should have been taken, I’m certainly not an expert on politics. I would like to be able to rely on my elected officials and their advisors for that, but I clearly cannot. However, I think the least we could have done was to:
[ul]
[li]Begin the diplomatic process before deciding to attack.[/li][li]Share all of our purported “evidence” with the U.N.[/li][li]Allow our allies to believe for one second that we would obey whatever decision the U.N. made.[/li][li]Made some kind of convincing case for self defense (at the least).[/li][li]Gotten at least one Moslem nation to agree that ousting Saddam was worth the devastation to Iraq, the destabilization of the region, and the inevitable increase in fundamentalist Moslem agitation against the U.S.[/li][/ul]
I never claimed I knew the answer to North Korea. I have no idea what we should do there, nor, do I think, does the administration. Hoping things cool down while not engaging Kim Jong Il is no worse a strategy than anything I can think of. We certainly can’t attack him unless we’re willing to sacrifice several hundred thousand South Koreans in the first few days of artillery bombardment.
Mandelstam, I’ve just read that essay and would like to comment on it…but at the moment I can’t write or spell worth a damn…will try again later after coffee and Advil. 
Scupper,
“This presupposes that Saddam was in fact in the position to threaten anyone, which he wasn’t.”
How do you know he wasn’t? Got any proof of that?
“Bush has claimed Iraq was an immediate threat, with weapons of mass destruction at the ready and a nuclear weapons program. Not one of those claims has been backed up with any proof, which is why this suddenly turned into a war of “liberation.” You need to keep up with the Administration’s story if you want to stay consistent.”
Not so, he was and is, if he’s still alive, a threat to not only Isrealis but to Muslims living in his own country and neighboring countries. I recall the night the president gave Saddam the ultimatum that he clearly stated that Saddam has for twelve years ignored the terms of the cease fire agreement.
“This is the kind of blanket statement that feeds into our unquestioning support of this policy.”
Huh?
" Dehumanizing all Muslims by saying they all hate us is just plain wrong."
I agree with that, they don’t all hate us.
“What’s certain is that this war is drastically exacerbating the situation. Even if you don’t care that they hate us, don’t you think it’s a bad idea to stoke the flames of their hatred? What good does that do?”
What this war is exacerbating is the hatred that militant, terrorist Muslims feel for us. No I don’t care what they think, and I hope it flushes all those murdering roaches out of the woodwork so we can kill every fucking one of them. That’s what good it will do.
" You may be right, I’m not sure and I don’t think you can be sure exactly what motivated 19 dead men."
So you think that only those 19 dead men were involved in the planning and execution of that attack?
“I don’t think that makes it our fault nor do I believe the first Gulf War was wrong. But equating this war, in which we are invading Iraq without provocation, with one in which Iraq had invaded one of its neighbors and we drove them out, is not a valid tactic in my opinion.”
Who equated that, it’s only been the anti-war crowd that has done that. What this is, is a finishing of that war due to Saddams steadfast contempt, and refusal to comply with the terms of the cease fire.
“Iraq was clearly the aggressor in the Gulf War. We are clearly the aggressor here. I have a problem with the U.S. being an aggressor.”
We are not an aggressor. We are an enforcer. Big difference.
“So you’re saying that no proof provided to our allies, no diplomatic effort of any kind, would have moved them? We didn’t have much trouble getting them on board for the first Gulf War or the war in Afghanistan. Why is this so different?”
The proof was already there. It was obvious. Quite frankly I think we should have gone back in there the first time Saddam expelled the UN inspectors.
“I’d ask you to elaborate further and tell us why a war we could not possibly justify to our allies is a justified war?”
Again we have allies, not just Grear Britain either. Furthermore see above for justification. Twelve years was too long to wait in the first place in my opinion. Maybe if Clinton wasn’t so preoccupied with where his next piece of tail was coming from he might have done something constructive in that area and it wouldn’t have had to come to this.
“The UN security council stood unanimously behind 1441. However, the U.S. blatantly ignored their expressed intent with that resolution that it not authorize or endorse an automatic attack by the U.S. if the U.S. decided Iraq wasn’t complying.”
Ah, it was pretty much the US that won the first war there. We shouldn’t have to have any armpit countries consent to do anything there, especially France. I have to wonder how they would have felt if we had just negotiated with Hitler while Germany occupied France. I guess in hindsight maybe we should have.
“As for the steps that should have been taken, I’m certainly not an expert on politics.”
True.
“I would like to be able to rely on my elected officials and their advisors for that, but I clearly cannot.”
I don’t see why not.
"However, I think the least we could have done was to:
Begin the diplomatic process before deciding to attack."
We did that for twelve years. How long is long enough?
“Share all of our purported “evidence” with the U.N.”
Still again, no such evidence was needed by the cease fire agreement.
“Allow our allies to believe for one second that we would obey whatever decision the U.N. made.”
Is that being forthright and honest?
“Made some kind of convincing case for self defense (at the least).”
Again, WTF for?
“Gotten at least one Moslem nation to agree that ousting Saddam was worth the devastation to Iraq, the destabilization of the region, and the inevitable increase in fundamentalist Moslem agitation against the U.S.”
What makes you think we don’t?
The burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused. I haven’t seen any evidence that Iraq had any weapons that substantially violated what they were allowed to have. Do they? Possibly, but why is it so outrageous to ask for proof of that before we start killing people?
I’m sorry, but I just don’t accept Bush’s unsworn words as gospel without a shred of evidence to back them up. Did Saddam cooperate with the cease-fire? No, not fully. Did he ignore the terms of it entirely? Clearly not. Tons and tons of material were destroyed by weapons inspectors in that time and we have yet to provide any hard proof that Iraq maintained a covert program of any kind.
The blanket statement “The Muslim world all hate us anyway … BFD” is the kind of “with us or against us” simplification that the Administration uses to justify what they do.
Okay.
You’re wrong. I’ve heard and read many “man on the street” interviews with Egyptian and Jordanian citizens that boiled down to “Why are you doing this? You are making us hate you. We hate you now.”
Not at all, but if you know the names of any of the co-conspirators, you might want to give John Ashcroft a call.
Again, where is the evidence behind the rhetoric? Is this as black-and-white a picture as Bush likes to paint it, where we find one batch of empty, forgotten chemical artillery shells marked for destruction but forgotten by the weapons inspectors, and decide that thousands of Iraqis deserve to die for it?
According to the administration, yes. According to common sense, no. If we are enforcing the will of the UN, why are we doing it over the UN members’ objections? If we’re enacting a penalty against Iraq for violating the WOMAD restrictions, why can’t we provide any proof that they have?
What proof, specifically, made it obvious to you? Forged documents claiming Saddam was trying to buy uranium? Statistics and data pulled directly from a 10 year old report written by a grad student? Pictures of trucks that might have something to do with weapon production? Transcripts of conversations between Iraqi officers that vaguely hint they might be afraid of weapons inspectors finding something? Something they forgot and don’t want to get killed for?
I’m sorry, but it takes a hell of a lot more evidence than that to make me comfortable with dropping bombs on markets.
(Yes, I know those were accidental, but everyone knew we couldn’t hit 100% military targets when we started this, and we still bear the responsibility of it.)
Maybe if the Republicans hadn’t occupied half of Clinton’s presidency with idiotic mud-slinging we wouldn’t be in this mess. Maybes don’t make it so. If Iraq was such a dire threat, why didn’t GWB do anything about it in his first eight months in office? Or for eight months after that? The fact is, containment of Saddam was a precedent established by the previous administration, a policy Clinton continued.
The only reason it has “come to this” is because the administration used 9/11 as an icebreaker to get the American public to okay any attacks on anyone they want. The French, Russians, Germans, et al can see that, even if most of us are too blind to.
I guess you don’t know much about the history of WWII. Germany invaded France in 1938. We entered the war in 1941. We never negotiated anything with Hitler, we simply declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy after Pearl Harbor.
Um, maybe because they’ve completely botched it?
I think you misunderstand my point. I mean the diplomatic process of getting our allies on board with an invasion of Iraq.
That’s a bizarre statement. No evidence of Iraq’s non-compliance was needed to justify our invasion? That’s both wrong and contrary to the administration’s attempts. In any event, they claimed to have evidence, but when asked to produce it, could not do so. I am uncomfortable with any policy that uses deceit to justify itself.
What? My point is that we told everyone “we will attack even if the UN says not to, so nyah!” Not exactly diplomatic.
How about to justify a war? To justify American soldiers dying? To justify Iraqi children dying?
Name one.
Whoops, my bad. 1940.
Ok, I read the article, it’s concerned primarily with this ‘radical agenda’ of the hawks, and immediately all sorts of practical and useful information appears in my head to argue against it…it’s probably a waste of time though to do so. I don’t want to appear to defend hawks nor give any credence to the idea that the Americans want to ‘remake’ the Middle East. We like oil. Cheap oil. So does everyone else. We get oil cheaper than most as it is, and don’t need to knock over a whole region to do it. Being very interested in not letting corrupt cartel-regimes wield such a potent economic weapon makes all kinds of sense in today’s world - just add it to the list of reasons to be happy when Saddam is gone - but also leaves one open to charges of simply wanting to line our pockets more at the expense of every other thing, including lives. I find that charge to be equally arrogant, simplistic, and misinformed. Our concern about our oil interests can mesh just fine with others’ desire to sell it to us (and not only us) and is shared across US party lines, I sincerely hope.
The War on Muslims is fiction. The plan offered for the Israel/Palestine solution acknowledged by both Sharon and Arafat, the efforts made to avoid civilian casualties in Iraq, the level of concern here for the well-being of Muslims here in America, etc, etc…non-fiction. There is a huge gulf of misunderstanding out there today, and it doesn’t begin and end here, sorry. Look elsewhere.
This thread’s got the smell of puke.
Iraq is sitting on an estimated 112 billion barrels of crude, a pool of oil second in size only to Saudi Arabia’s 264 billion barrels.
President Bush is the former head of a Texas oil company, his father is on the board of one, and his entire family fortune is linked with oil interests.
Vice President Dick Cheney is the former CEO of oil services giant Halliburton. He racked up a nice $36 million paycheck while overseeing Haliburton’s first “rebuilding” of Iraq, in 1998-99. Haliburton is already back in Iraq, because one of its subsidiaries (Brown & Root) is the primary civilian construction contractor for the U.S. military. Basically, they’re going to rebuild Iraq again.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is a former director of Chevron, hired for her expertise on former Soviet intrests (such as Afghanistan). She presided over a not particularly successful attempt by US oil agencies to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Seems the Taliban wasn’t very cooperative after we cruise-missiled them. The pipeline project has since resumed. Haliburton is building the oil wells in Turkmenistan that will fill the pipeline.
Hamid Karzai, the “interim” ruler of Afghanistan, was a consultant for UNOCAL oil on the pipeline project.
President Bush has appointed a former aide to the American oil company UNOCAL, Zalmay Khalilzad, as special envoy to Afghanistan. He reports to Condoleeza Rice at the NSC.
The Iraqi National Congress, an exiled opposition group that the US will likely push to have a role in any new government, has said it would review all oil contracts negotiated by Saddam Hussein, including those already in place between Iraq and Russia, China, and France.
I’ll hazard that, if this was happening in any other country, we’d all be screaming “It’s the oil!”
I don’t mean to say that its only oil we’re after. The fact that the administration is dripping with oil and their friends, former employers, campaign contributors, and family fortunes stand to gain from increased US access to the Middle East, is probably justifiable in their odd logic, as some sort of reward for advancing the interests of the nation. That’s about as charitable as I can be.
Which is more likely:
All of these connections to the oil industry, interests in the region, and history are simple coincidence.
or
There is a considerable amount of evidence that oil is, in fact, a major factor motivating the administration.
It’s not black-and-white, and I don’t think any one motivation forms the entire root of our conflict in the Middle East, but it would seem that oil has a very powerful influence with the administration and that Afghanistan and Iraq will very likely help line some pockets in that industry.
So, if I’m arrogant, I’m sorry. If I’m simplistic, I’d say you were more so. If I’m misinformed, perhaps you’d like to put some facts down to enlighten me.
well now you’re not being simplistic at all. So let’s go right ahead and say that corporate interests have a very powerful influence with this administration, and the oil industry especially benefits from these recent actions. No argument.
But was oil somehow less of a factor in Saddam’s stranglehold on his country, was it any less of a motivator for Russia to maintain the status quo, or French opposition, or the British being our allies now and in 1990 particularly with the threat to Saudi Arabia…will the industry in general be less of a concern to the next administration. Is it way more of a more pressing concern than the terrorism/weapons issue in general. No to all, I don’t think so. So we’re still lacking some ingredient to this that proves current US interests in the region are far worse than anyone else’s. This is where I think the arrogance comes into play, unless someone can offer a reason.
“Because historically you’ve been assholes” would suffice I guess, if that were the case…but something does form the basis of this “US interests = bad interests” view and I would like to have a better idea of what it is.
Just to add to Scupper’s thorough list, there’s also the Bush Administration’s 2001 Energy Policy report, which predicted that – assuming current rates of oil consumption remain constant – the United States will have to import two-thirds of its oil within the next 30 years. Furthermore, to avoid placing the U.S. in the very awkward situation of having to purchase oil from nations hostile to the U.S. (and thus holding the “nation hostage”), the report recommends “securing” a source of foreign oil, ideally from the Middle East.
The report was written by Dick Cheney, and is often referred to as “the Cheney report.” Needless to say, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Iraq is the perfect solution to the issues raised in the report.
Oh, and other Administration officials with oil-industry ties include Commerce Secretary Don Evans(former chairman of Tom Brown Inc., a $1.2bn oil and gas company; sat on the board of TMBR/Sharp Drilling, an oil and gas drilling operation) and Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton (represented Delta Petroleum as lawyer; ran the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates, co-funded by BP Amoco).
I think that was Mr Menendes’ philosophy as well.
The wooly mammoth relaxed, and considered the situation. The black ooze of the tarpit bubbled around his ankles, inching slowly, slowly towards his knees. He was pleased with his decision. He had considered wading into the tar pit, but worried he might not get deep enough before he was stuck. After careful planning, he took a bold gamble. He went back about half a mile, got a running start and leapt nimbly into the tar, landing squarely on all four feet.
The situation was excellent. He was content.
It has nothing to do with “US interests = bad interests.” It has to do with the dodge and hustle, coupled with the cynical exploitation of 9/11, that the administration has lamely tried to use to justify this war that I find unacceptable. It’s the ham-handed, arrogant dismissal of our allies and the UN in general. And it’s the Machiavellian, behind-the-scenes control the oil industry exterts in our current government that people keep insisting is some liberal fantasy when it is almost comically obvious. Those things, not “US Interests = Bad,” motivate me. I don’t pretend to speak for anyone else.
I’m appalled that American and British soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, and Iraqi civilians are all dying because lies and appeals to blind, unquestioning patriotism have worked.
As a cannibal I vote Bush is food.
He is very lean, but a bit greasy.
He’s doing a damn fine job, so yeah, I’ll vote for him in 2004.
Which will be the first time I’ll ever vote. 
I assume you’re speaking about Bush but I think there’s been a collective dismissal now, surely…not an arrogant dismissal but one of incomprehension, resentment, outrage. The UN effort was strong and engaged, Bush and Blair took stands while Chirac and Schroeder took polls, and the world points to the latter as the clear statesmen. Very impressive…did more for the cause of the isolationists than the Kyoto fury ever could.
I disagree with the rest of the rhetoric as well, and there’s not much else to say.
How can it possibly be considered engaged? Bush made it clear that he didn’t need the UN’s approval and would do what he wanted regardless, as though he expected the UN to roll over for him just as quickly as Congress did. He promised proof and provided forged documents (not forged by the U.S., I hope and tend to believe), dubious satellite photos of trucks, ten-year-old data presented as current, and transcripts of some radio conversations in which Iraqi officers fretted about there being anything left for the inspectors to find. Some of it was suspicious, but none of it could be honestly called “proof.”
The Administration’s response to UN skepticism?
“We have solid proof but we can’t show it to you for security reasons.”
That just doesn’t wash. What if it was Russia trying to convince us to attack Mongolia or Belorus? Would evidence like that really convince anyone?
It’s funny how when a poll of people’s desire to go to war is unimportant in other countries, but one in the US can show that all is right with the government’s actions. I can’t remember a day in the last several months in which I didn’t hear “x% of Americans feel the war is justified.”
And the whole world is wrong, right? What happened to Democracy? Isn’t it supposed to be representative? What do you expect world leaders to do but represent their constituencies?
Aren’t isolationists against nation-building and the U.S. performing policing duties around the globe? I fail to see how this helps them.
It does help the people who hate foreigners, and like to see other people hate them as well, I suppose.
Well, I’m sorry you feel that way. I was hoping someone would find some actual facts to call my viewpoint into question, because, frankly, I wish there was something else to believe. Since all I got back was empty rhetoric, I guess I’ll just keep reading the news and hoping.