The real world doesn’t work like that, BeatenMan. Terrorist groups are relatively fluid, and as al Qaeda adequately demonstrated, a host country is totally secondary. Ignoring diplomacy only turns more of the world against you, and secondarily probably generates more terrorists.
If we have no more terrorist attacks in the USA while Bush is president I will be right.
If we do have another terrorist attack in the USA while Bush is president you will be right.
Time will tell, so you have got 5 1/2 years for another attack to happen.
When I said the UN wasn’t motivated to deal with the problem I wasn’t referring to just WMD. I agree with just about everything you said about weapons. I mention regime change a lot, sometimes I think the WMD issue is so embedded in people’s minds that they see “regime change because of weapons” automatically. They shouldn’t though. There are good reasons for wanting to see a regime change in Zimbabwe without knowing what weapons Mugabe has. Which we do. There are good reasons not to be worried about what kind of WMD Denmark or Australia have. So we don’t. It’s all about who is in charge, and I for one will never argue for “automatic” war, or automatic anything else, for certain infractions.
The burden of proof for the dumping you mentioned should be on the offending country, IMO…or this particular one anyway, since being caught lying to weapons inspectors in the past. But that’s a side issue - I still wouldn’t argue to go to war for that. The non-compliance was one item in a laundry list of good reasons to overthrow the regime, it just happened to be an item of special significance to the UNSC.
You know, most people see this whole thing as an absolutely astounding piece of leadership on the part of Bush and Blair.
Here’s a president who decided to take on Iraq, won over the approval of his own people who were initially against it, got Tony Blair to back him, picked up 40 countries to go with him, won a successful war, diplomatically crushed France, Russia, and China, and essentially got everything he wanted.
You can argue about his motives or whether his beliefs are, but when are you guys going to stop underestimating George Bush? This performance was masterful.
Where were they crushed? Where was the overwhelming vote on the Security Council demanding that they put away their vetoes and come along for the ride? (He could not even get a majority vote to force them to exercise their vetoes.) Where is the world-wide praise for the U.S. actions? Heck, where is the world-wide condemnation of those three nations or even a 50% support vote for the U.S. in the General Assembly?
I do not in any way underestimate Bush’s intelligence or his ability to do what he chooses to do. He is a shrewd and powerful politician. However, nothing he did was a diplomatic success (unless bribing and coercing fewer than one in four countries in the UN to vaguely approve his invasion (without providing material support) is considered a diplomatic coup in some alternative reality).
I suspect that Bush will, indeed, accomplish all the specific acts that he sets out to accomplish. However, when he sets out to crush Iraq, he will not stop terrorism; when he sets out to open the ANWR reserves, he will not make the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil; when he gets a renewed Star Wars program, he will not protect the U.S. from foreign aggression.
He accomplished his current objective basically without any diplomatic efforts (he never persuaded Blair, who was on his side to begin with). Unilateral actions are much easier to accomplish than true coalitions. He has accomplished and will continue to accomplish his short term objectives as long as he is in power. That is, in fact, what scares me the most: I do not believe that any of his objectives will truly accomplish his claimed goals.
Sorry if I’m unclear. Been drinkin’.
Whether or not there is another terrorist attack in the next 1.5 years or 5.5 years in the US is totally secondary. There are plenty of US interests abroad that may be hit (every embassy, every MacDonald’s, etc.), as well as Israel and all of Europe especially the UK which all represent opportune targets.
I believe that Bush and co. did a pretty good job at getting rid of al Qaeda. Their efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention worldwide cooperation to root out terrorist infrastructure throught Europe and even the Arab World (including Syria) was a Very Good Thing. I think we were able to do this because of the world mandate we had after 9/11.
What I worry about is that we are squandering/have squandered that mandate. We are losing focus as Bush fails to present his case against Iraq and other “axis of evil” nations to the world. So we may not get that worldwide cooperation or license to operate in Pakistan (or Saudi or Egypt) anymore. And with that comes trouble.
Remember, it took al Qaeda around 10 years to develop enough to pull of 9/11. We can’t expect that our actions now will show consequences in the short term. Likewise, the adminstration has correctly stated that our efforts against terrorism won’t necessarily have short term benefit either. So terrorism during the 1.5-5.5 years of Bush II is a double-plus ungood measurement.
Terrorism is our agreed enemy. The USA needs other countries to help it. The lack of diplomacy that Bush has shown does nothing to further our fight.
Interesting that this has gone to another “Let’s bash Bush” thread.
No-one has mentioned Saddam’s diplomacy - he got France, Germany, and Russia on his side, simply by bribing them (those trade contracts). His diplomats have successfully fostered disention.
Both the French and the Germans thought there would be no down-side to opposing the US. Already we are seeing boycotts of French goods and reduced tourism; America is looking to move military bases out of Germany. Who knows, they may find new homes in Iraq?
As for the world’s sympathy, it seems to me that that rapidly turned into, “How much can we squeeze from the US?” Turkey being the most glaring example.
This is actually a great victory for Bush and diplomacy. People have forgotten that diplomacy means nothing if you cannot back up what you say. I’ll also cite von Clausvitz, who said that war is an extension of diplomacy. There’s an old adage Si pacem vis, pare bellum (If you want peace, prepare for war) which is oh so true.
Just as after Britain regained the Falklands, the world listened to Britain, and begat the fall of the Soviet Union; so now will nations take more notice of the US. In recent years the US has shown considerable weakness by not responding seriously enough to events like the first bombing of the WTC, the events in Somalia, the attack on the USS Cole, etc. That will now change, and America will be the better for it.
qts
I didn’t see Iraqi officials in Mexico, Angola, and Cameroon, yet they wouldn’t support the US in the UNSC.
There was no clear mandate for the US to respond to the attack on the Cole, Khobar Towers, and the bombing of the two African embassies beyond how it did. Do you think Clinton was going to go into Afghanistan and topple the Taliban because of those events? I’m not arguing that it wouldn’t have been a wise thing, I just remember a lot of anti-nation building and anti-peacekeeping rhetoric from the Republicans before 9/11. We used our military to respond to genocide (as opposed to the killing of 20 servicepeople or 200 Africans) and Clinton was criticized for it. Clinton took out a chemical weapons plant in Sudan, whose plans were supplied by the Iraqis, and was widely criticized.
While I agree that you have to back up diplomacy with the threat of war, war is only a lever. It needs to be used correctly in order to be effective. Beating up on Iraq is not convincing anyone that the US is stronger. Toppling Saddam is not a giant victory for the anti-terrorism forces because he had little to do with terrorism (outside of supporting Palestinian suicide bombers).
We have an enemy here. That enemy is supranational terrorism. Iraq is only serving as a diversion. It would have been better if Bush could have convincingly sold us (or most other countries in the world) on why it isn’t. But he didn’t.
Your claim about Saddam’s bribery doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. We offered Turkey $6 billion up front and they wouldn’t come on board. Iraqi trade couldn’t have possibly been that profitable. France and Germany’s trade with the US is thousands of times larger than trade with Iraq. The reason France and Germany were against this war (and notably not against American action in Afghanistan) is because they have a clear picture of our common enemy, and that enemy has very little connection to Iraq.
Iraqi officials wre already there, plus they were at the UN.
No clear mandate?!? That people perceive a need for a mandate has been part of the problem. We’re not dealing with people who in our world-view are reasonable.
Toppling Saddam has shown that we are prepared to act.
Iraq is not a diversion. Maybe you missed the arrest of the mastermind of the hijacking of the Achille Lauro? Maybe you missed the discovery of the terrorist training school? Maybe you missed the discovery of the cache of suicide belts?
Saddam’s bribery easily stands up: France was bought for $60Bn That’s 10x what the US offerred Turkey. Turkey wanted more than we were offering and eventually time ran out for negotioations, so they got nothing.
And in other news, the BBC ticker is noting that Poland is buying US fighter jets, not European or Russian…
Nobody thought that Iraq wasn’t breaking treaty agreements on CBN Weapons. The reason I thought they weren’t being shown, that we had to put up with such piss-poor evidence being put before the Security Council, was because the real evidence was in the DoD Invoicing System and that would be politically unsound to release.
I thought Saddam had Chemical weapons, but, like the French, I did not think that this war was a reasonable method to go about the disarmament process.
Now that we’re in there and we can’t find them, where are they?
And also, please try and remember that the power vaccuum in Iraq has not yet been filled with loveable folks who have been accepted with open arms. There are anti-US demos, looting is still going on, it can be more or less accepted that the Coalition has not yet succeeded in doing anything other than removing the old regime… even though we do not know where that regime is.
So, are there chemical weapons still in Iraq? If so, how do we prevent them falling into the hands of any one of these splinter factions who may be less restrained than Saddam was? What happens if someone gets hold of a can of mustard gas and busts it open in a suicide attack in the crowd when some new governor of a town is getting waved in?
At the very least, this would help to track down where they’ve gone, if they’ve been moved.
More likely, you have missed the fact that Abbas (like Abu Nidal before him) appears to have “retired” from terrorist activity over ten years ago with no evidence that he has been involved in any recent terrorist acts.
It also appears that you have ignored the fact that the “training school” was located in the Kurdish region where neither Iraq nor the Ba’ath party had any control. The region has been the location of simmering feuds among local Iraqis–Kurds against non-Kurds and rivalries among Kurdish group–with the UN monitors keeping the Iraqi army out of the region, allowing independent groups, including al Qaeda, to operate, camouflaged by the rest of the turmoil. There has not yet been any evidence supplied that the terrorist camps are connected to the Ba’ath party.
You have also ignored the fact that the suicide belts appear to have been intended for the defense of Iraq, not for export to other countries. I am certainly glad they were found before they could be used, but they hardly provide evidence of Iraqi support for terror outside Iraq.
Based on the factual evidence that has been presented by the administration, the war on Iraq does appear to be a sideshow in the war on terror. (If we receive less support from other nations who fear to share intelligence with the U.S. on the grounds that the U.S. will use it against them, then we will have seriously harmed the war on terrorism.)
And while it is nice that Poland wants to buy some U.S. hardware, fear of U.S. actions has pushed China and Russia closer to a partnership that they have not maintained for nearly forty years. We are needlessly creating a world in which we will find ourselves increasingly isolated.
I don’t understand the mandate idea at all, it’s an invention for some purpose or other and it borders on being offensive. (I can’t decide.) Our defense does not - cannot - depend on world opinion or UNSC approval. It never has.
McDuff - the sanctions were put in place to punish the regime. The regime is gone. Not lifting sanctions is now a political football, a slap at the Americans and the Brits and the hook to have the UN as the central authority in Iraq. France in particular saw positive steps being made in disarmament before, and I think we’ve multiplied those results by at least 10? So we’re moving in the right direction, right? I suppose you should caution the UNSC about the need for diplomacy and giving the US and the UK ultimatums, and by the way…what is the entire world community position on sanctions? Doesn’t the UNSC even care what the rest of the world thinks? No, they just want to have things their own way and to hell with everyone else. ( )
Abu Abbas is like a Minister of West Bank terrorism, he’s current all right. I’ll see what I can find on the web, if anything…
Our defense? There has been no evidence provided that Hussein was any sort of a threat to the U.S.
The reason for the desire for a mandate is that we portrayed him as a threat to his neighbors in the Middle East (even though he was contained). Both U.S. policy prior to Bush and the U.N. charter (laid out mostly by Americans) claims that one must not invade a country except in self defense. No pre-emptive attacks based on wild speculation are permitted under either code of conduct. A mandate from the United Nations would have indicated that the U.S. had persuaded a majority of nations in the world that it was appropriate to put aside that clear code, in this one instance, to prevent Iraq from acting in a way that it had in the past (but which it does not appear to have been capable of, now). Lacking the mandate, we have simply justified a pre-emptive attack by anyone else on the U.S. Since it is now clear that we are willing to attack other nations, even when we are not defending ouselves, any nation may consider itself threatened by the U.S.
qts:
I just can’t buy into a worldwide bribery by Iraqi officials versus ineptitude by US ones. I would like a cite for the $60 billion buy-off of France: it is not that I don’t believe it, it is that I would find it interesting reading. We offered Turkey $6 billion up front, we offered them $20 billion in the long run.
McDuff has probably got it right. We sold Iraq a few thousand barrels of nerve gas and the only evidence we have of that would make us look real bad. Now we can’t find them, which means they either got rid of them or hid them real well. Both are really bad for us.
Unfortunately, this is not a case for war. This is a case for stringent inspections – if we present no evidence that they still have them and are planning to use them, we have no cause. The only time we attempted this, Powell stood up in front of the UN with a load of questionable evidence, including many crude forgeries. Abu Abbas and an alleged terrorist training school are not cases for war. Abu Abbas allegedly renounced terrorism years ago (although this by no means absolves him, it just takes away the idea that this in an imminent threat).
We spent $80 billion on this war. We gave a whole host of reasons to go in there, and none of them have stood up to international scrutiny. Other nations have a right to be skeptical of US actions. Aggression needs justification and Bush has not been able to justify it to anyone apart from his faithful.
I will skip the tiresome argument that waging war based on a desire for “regime change” is illegal. However, the concept of regime change as a just cause for going to war is based on the presumption that “our way of life is better than their way of life”. Unfortunately there are a lot of leaders around the world who believe that their way of life is better than ours. Following your argument, NK will be fully within its right, legally, to induce regime change in Seoul to save the population from the “horrors of capitalism”, or for Arab nation to induce regime change in Europe to save Europeans from “social instability” and “moral degeneration”.
Of course the US will never allow such events to unfold. In the scenario that Pakistan attacks India with the US rushing to India’s aid, the US would be denounced as hypocrites in many parts of the world in failing to follow the very same “rules” which they have imposed on others. Of course, this is all a game since the real issue is geopolitics, but it’s an easy card to play because the US gave them that card.
Basically, one cannot use regime change as a just cause for war unless there is an international majority/agreement made beforehand on what kind of regimes should be considered “bad”. If nations were to unilaterally decide on their own what is just regime change, and go to war because of it, our modern world would be a bloody mess. It’s a good thing we aren’t born with a regime change gene in addition to our violence/retribution gene, IMHO.
The big problem for the current administration is that an international consensus about what is just regime change can only be made by going through the UN, the very same body that they repudiate based on the principle that all governing should be done locally. And that is the core of the problem for the neo-conservatives. They want to shape the world, but they do not want the international agreements that are necessary to achieve or maintain the changes they push for.
Regarding the burden of proof: Following your argument, then if you were convicted of murder after denying your involvement, the burden of proof will automatically shift to you if a second body turned up, - no matter the lack of evidence actually connecting you to the second murder. I think not. But if you had made the argument that since Iraq had an obligation to get rid of their WMDs as part of the truce agreement of 1991, they also had an obligation to document any destruction taking place - and that failing to do so would constitute negligence - yes, then I would agree with you. But there is a problem.
As I said before, my fabricated example was a simplified one. Let me give you a real one from this very conflict, based on documents that were presented by the CIA to the US Congress. Iraq say that they once had 4000 tons of WMD Y produced at Site Z, and that they have destroyed it all. The inspectors are able to verify that 4000 tons of this substance was in fact destroyed. But someone at the CIA turns to his calculator, and based on the size of Site Z, an estimated number of people working their, an estimated number of working hours per employee and an estimated production capacity per man hour, he claim that the Iraqis in fact produced 6000 tons of WMD Y, not 4000 tons. Add to this that Site Y later became dismantled/destroyd in a US bomb raid/fell into a hole in the ground, along with all available production reports. How can determine who is right? And who should hold the burden of proof?
If you can solve this one, I will humbly subdue and kiss your left pinkie toe.
Thanks sailor, it’s nice to finally find a board where members don’t hit each other on the head with constant you-nuked-Japan versus you-let-Hitler-grow flame wars.
I have already discovered I cannot edit my post immediately after posting. Huh, guess I have to learn to read before I hit the submit button. Responsibilities, responsibilities
It was presented as a hypothetical, Sam. I didn’t mean for it to sound as a statement of fact. (note the “probably”). In reality, it is probably far less obvious. Well connected defense industries sold Iraq all kinds of technology that could be used to make chemical weapons and in retrospect some of them probably look pretty incriminating. Or something along those lines.
To the people who see no problems with US action in the thread, a question. Syria provided good intelligence about Mohammed Haydar Zammar after 9/11. He was the guy who supposedly recruited Mohammed Atta and chums to actually carry out the events.
After this past month, do you see Syria as more or less likely to share that intelligence with the US?
Do you see that it is good to maximize the sharing of intelligence and to promote an environment where Syria would feel rewarded for apprehending these kinds of people? (even though it is a shit country and if it were to drop off the face of the planet tomorrow I sure wouldn’t shed a tear).
If this is true then why hasn’t the Israeli Army arrested him already? He’s been in Israel and crossed IDF controlled checkpoints into the West Bank over the last four or five years. Why was the need felt to wait until Baghdad was burning to arrest him? You could have had him five years ago.
Welcome.
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