The embedded reporters during the war were unquestioning in their pro-war stance. It was the cleverest stunt the Pentagon ever pulled.
What has happened since then has been that the truth has overwhelmed their capacity for controlling what is said. No amount of spin is going to get you past Abu Ghraib, and there isn’t a PR firm in the world that can fumigate the smell of an Administration that allowed itself to be duped by an agent of one of our most determined enemies.
Images of dead American servicemen, alone, is not the problem for the Bush Administration.
It’s the growing realization by the voting populace that these American servicemen are dying for nothing – no WMDs, no Saddam-Osama ties, no plans to invade the United States, no flower-tossing grateful Iraqis lining the streets, nothing… except some lucrative no-bid contracts for Bush and Cheney’s croneys.
At least with WWII you had the growing Axis powers. With Iraq, you don’t even have that much.
Kicking out the inspectors. Actually preventing them from seeing something. But actually, you are correct that he wouldn’t do that because he didn’t have anything to hide.
When you plan to pull a fast one on the public, don’t give them 2 years of opportunities to work it out.
That is about as accurate and concise a statement as I’ve seen anywhere, as to what many MORish people, including myself, are thinking and feeling about the current Iraq situation. It’s a tarpit that were are stuck in, that we (are now realizing) we didn’t need to be stuck in, and the confident assertions by the Bush Adminstration and it’s worldly, experienced, intellectually hefty advisiors and fellow travelers, as to the logcial imperatives for engaging in this campaign are now being revealed as a lot of ignorant, arrogant, wild ass guessing.
Most people want to support their country and their President in times of genuine need and crisis, and this mess is dis-heartening to say the least. A lot of people feel like they were played.
And just to reiterate the point, let’s remember that Saddam didn’t “kick out” any inspectors. They left because Bush was preparing to drop the bombs in two days.
I dunno about lessons of Iraq occupation, but I can tell you about lessons of Russo-Japanese war of 1905. The story you refer to never “got out”. There might have been some reports before 1917 in some Russian papers, but Communists buried this story for good. I lived in SSSR for 27 years and didn’t hear about it even once. There was plenty of stories about Japanese brutalities, crowned with very popular patriotic song about “good” Russian sailors going down with their sinking ship, but not surrendering to the enemy Japanese (cruiser “Varyag” at Port Arthur**).
Exactly the kind of stories and songs that I’m sure are right now being cooked up by Al Qaida sympathisers throughout the ME: about “evil” Americans and “heroes” of Fallujah, etc. Every shred of negativity will be blown up thousand times, while all the good done will be ignored.
May be you can learn that lesson. May be you can at last understand what we are up against.
** With a refrain:
Farewell, comrades, all stand at your posts, last parade is coming/
Our cruiser “Varyag” is not surrendering to the enemy, nobody is asking for mercy.
“…understand what we’re up against”???
Coming from a Bush supporter (see http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=258191), this phrase is laughable in the extreme. You guys have demonstrated zero understanding of what was required.
What was required, you ask? Simple: go after Osama relentlessly, and destroy him and everyone associated with him. After that, rebuild Afghanistan, and make it clear to Pakistan what the consequences of supporting another Osama would be, because Pakistan was a supporter of the Taliban, and therefore a supporter of Al Qaeda.
Instead, the Incompetent in Chief went after someone who not only had nothing to do with the attack on 9/11, but was in fact a sworn enemy of Osama. This is like going after China for the attack on Pearl Harbor because, after all, they’re Asian too, right?
There is no such thing as a Bush supporter who has the faintest idea of who we’re up against. If you had any idea, you wouldn’t be a Bush supporter.
I am not a Bush supporter. I am supporter of pro-active policy against terrorism, even if it involves Iraq occupation. I am pretty sure that Gore would most likely do everything that Bush has done; I was furious when some conservatives started saying, “Thanks God for Bush!” soon after 9-11. I don’t see Kerry changing Bush policy in any important aspects. So I support them all. However, I understand the argument for restraint, too.
The only times I speak against Bush critics is when their accusations become clearly insane, which is quite often, but that’s hardly my fault. I can’t recall what your opinions are on the issue, so I’ll revert to 'elucidator’s post I responded to, as an example.
The whole idea to put up a Japanese military in 1905 as an example to follow for US military in 2003 is simply crazy. US soldiers in Iraq already have done more good deeds than the whole Japanese military throughout all the wars of Japanese history. Yes, US soldiers killed many in Iraq, including civilians, but we are talking about good conduct of armies in the time of war. However, this is only what’s on the surface.
Behind that is a bigger image of what use are any good deeds of the military when it is fighting against a determined enemy. All the attempts of Japanese soldiers to be humane to their Russian adversaries in 1905 left no trace in Russian psyche. Russians only remembered the worst, re-invented it way out of proportion and glorified those Russian soldiers who died, completely ignoring those who were taken captive and treated humanely by the Japanese. The same is happening right now in many places in the Middle East. All our good deeds are ignored, all our shortcomings are eagerly magnified, while despicable local criminals are glorified as “heroes”. That’s what we are up against. Not “Who”, as you insist, but “What”. This “What” is much bigger than Osama, Saddam or anyone else. It’s like a blind force of irrational hatred that takes control over millions of people minds and dictates them what to think and what not to think, what to know and what to ignore, what to remember and what to forget, how to live and when to die… This is the enemy our soldiers are engaged with right now. Currently, a strategic decision was made to open the front in Iraq. In future, may be another place will become more important. Big real war is going on.
But you don’t care. The only thing you care about is You don’t like Bush. That is the only thing that matters to you. Which one of us is blind?
“…But you don’t care. The only thing you care about is You don’t like Bush. That is the only thing that matters to you. Which one of us is blind?”
Offhand, I’d suggest it is the one of us who claims the capacity to peer into the minds of his rhetorical opponents, and inventory the contents thereof.
Lemme get this straight. You think that had Gore been elected president, he would have invaded Iraq? I’ll give you Afghanistan – that one was a no-brainer. But … Iraq? Where would Bush have gotten the cabal of obsessed neocon advisers to point him that way?
Considering what happened in Nanking a couple of decades later, I agree that using the Japanese military as a positive example is fraught with peril. Clearly, something happened between 1905 and the 1930s that turned the Japanese army into a collection of sociopaths.
I agree with you that the Arab media is painting the U.S. as a boogeyman. I’m not sure I see anything in it beyond the short-term political convenience of a bunch of dictatorial types who are even now seeing this policy turn around to bite them in the ass. What is this “What” you are on about? Islamic jihad? Pan-Arab nationalism? Fundamentalism?
Bush is a fool, his advisors credulous ideologues with little respect for democracy. It’s quite reasonable to want to boot them out.
Should read: “where would Gore” :smack:
As a general rule, to form an idea what a person would do given sufficient power we need to look at this person previous actions. Gore was a party to enforcing sanctions on Saddam. Gore was a party to formulating Saddam’s removal as a goal of US gov’t, Gore was a party to another blatant invasion into sovereign country of Serbia. While in power did Gore spoke about giving any break to Saddam even once? Did he express any reservations about pre-emptive use of US military even once, while he was a power player? I’ll go by that.
Whatever Gore says nowadays doesn’t matter. Gen. Clark also sounds very multilateral nowadays, but back when he was in command during Kosovo, he had to be restrained by his subordinates from ordering a military action against Russian paratroop contingent.
The “Cabal” was always there, I believe.
Strictly as a rhetorical device, mind you, strictly as a rhetorical device.
However, I must say that sometimes reading through endless posts by resident lefties here falling over each other trying to uncover the latest Iraq fiasco, whether real or imagined, is getting rather tedious.
Well, friend, if you have something to observe about Bush’s efforts that is both positive and factual, please don’t hesitate. We’d really love to have some, ya know.
Well, we have Sam Stone defending Bush by arguing that Gore would never have had the balls to take as decisive action in Afghanistan, let alone Iraq. And, now we have you defending Bush by arguing that Gore probably would have invaded Iraq too. Somewhere in between might lie the truth. Where that truth lies is pretty much idol speculation.
But just because I happened to run into it and because there seems to be so much re-writing of history recently in regards to the idea that the Administration was purely the victim of faulty intelligence that any other Administration might have fallen prey to, here are a few articles from the New York Times, all before the war began (or in one case, a few days after) that show how the Administration was cherry-picking and exaggerating the intelligence much to the dismay of some in the intelligence community:
(This is some of the reporting that the New York Times seems to be proud of when they gave their recent mea culpa yesterday in regards to their reporting in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, which fits into the general theme of the thread as it tells you what the New York Times has learned from the Iraq fiasco.)
I shouldn’t change the subject, I guess, but …
I don’t think WWII was won by a military victory. Military victory merely determines who will design the aftermath. What finally “won” WWII and seems to have ended the European penchant for wars among themselves were things like the Marshall Plan. Making everyone as equal partners as is possible in the trading of goods and services is probably more effective in keeping the peace than any large army.
Let’s revisit how Clinton-Gore team went about Kosovo.
Remember how antagonistic Russians and Chinese were? There was no chance they would allow any UN resolution, so Bill and Al didn’t even try to go there.
Remember how Russian envoy was flying to DC to prevent NATO military action when he learned that the bombing of Kosovo has begun? How he turned his plane in mid-air and went back and how the whole world kinda held it’s breath for few days after that? Bill and Al basically forced Russians either to put up or shut up. They did shut up, but what if they wouldn’t?
Remember the bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade? Another brief period of exciting uncertainty as to the planet future after that?
Doing things like this either takes very big balls, or very few brains.
New Iskander: your claim of not being a Bush supporter is the purest BS I’ve ever seen on these boards. On the other hand, I suppose it can be considered a good thing when someone who would rather lose his left arm than vote for Kerry is ashamed to admit to it in public.
As for the rest, well, I stand by everything I said, including the above.
And, for good measure, what David Simmons said, who is a genuine vet of WWII. Far as I can tell, he’d make a superb Secretary of State to someone.
Also, as far as me being a reflexive Bush-basher, forget it. 'Twasn’t always so. I believed at the time, in 2001, that his initial tax cut was perfectly timed, as far as giving a goose to the economy. You can research my username if you wish, because somewhere back there I’m sure I must have said something along those lines, as I even argued with my mom and dad about this, and I’ve never to their faces questioned a Democratic belief. So this was something I felt pretty strongly about.
His continuing insistence on ever more and ever greater tax cuts has turned me completely on this issue. As did his invasion of Iraq in re the The War Against Terror. The man is one of those clueless social misfits who simply doesn’t know when enough is enough, and who is gullible enough to be taken in by an agent of a sworn enemy of the US.
Holy crap, I love you.
Er, sorry. Back to the little war thread.