Thanks, AQA, but there are posters here who’ve been slicing and dicing stronger bad arguments than you can come up with, since well before we could surf the blogs.
But the blogs are useful - as sources of facts I wouldn’t have known otherwise. Like, Libya’s been trying to get back in the West’s good graces (thanks to Josh Marshall for the link) since before Clinton left office. Qaddafi didn’t have a road-to-Damascus moment when he saw us invade Iraq; he was just staying the course, as the linked article from the May/June 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs attests.
And facts are wondrously good bullshit repellent.
Maybe we should. But it would be nice if the calculus made some sort of sense.
I can understand not taking on Pakistan or NK, since they already had nuclear arms. But how about Iran? On the verge of having nukes, sponsor of terrorism, repressive Islamic government…and yet, more religiously unified than Iraq, and with a home-grown democratic movement that we could have quickly handed the country over to. IOW, all the bad stuff that we claimed justified our invasion of Iraq, plus the conditions that would have enabled a brief destroy-the-nuke-plants, hold-elections-and-leave occupation, as opposed the intractable mess we’re in now.
What was the ‘nasty problem’? I give up.
Which factor would you like us to stop ‘blindly focusing on’? Choose one, and we’ll take it out of play altogether. And the case for intervention in Iraq will still make less sense than most of the alternatives, including just a good, strong follow-through on the Afghanistan job.
Please, give evidence that he was a madman, as opposed to being ruthless and amoral. This “Saddam…madman” meme of Bush’s seems to be nothing but empty words.
Well, by my count, our current President gets 3 out of 4 on this list (if you replace “invaded Kuwait without provocation” with “invaded Iraq without provocation”)…And while he misses point #3, he is on record as saying multiple times that it would be nice to be dictator (not that he hasn’t practically been the way the Congress and “liberal media” have been such lap dogs).
Dear luci,
Your consternation is commendable; however, (isn’t there always a ‘however’ after that well worn phrase?) allow me the opportunity to pontificate as well.
As I’ve pointed out previously, it was public, if not common knowledge that Pakistan was involved in the proliferation of the most massive of weapons of mass destruction technologies and equipment as early as 1998. Since it was the subject of a House Speech, one can only assume that the issue was around for some time before Congress leapt to action. So at least as far back as the Clinton presidency, we publicly knew what the revered Dr. Kahn, Father of the Islamic Bomb, was doing for kicks and giggles. (I assume that he felt he was evening the score, lessening a power divide.)
I could say I was truly at a loss as to why the GWBTeam hasn’t brought up this wonderful example of how Clinton foreign policy of ‘negotiating’ and using diplomacy with nations that have extensive ties to dangerous international organizations, (some within their own military and intelligence services, e.g. Gen Hamid Gul warned UbL hours before an infamous, impending missile strike). The Clinton team engaged in measures short of military intervention in this country that was known to harbor al Qaida operatives and to be responsible for the proliferations of genuinely massive wmds and look what happened.
Alternately, consider that the relationship with Pakistan is a shining example and counter argument to those who’d make the case that the ‘cowboy’ Bush Admin is jingoistically incapable of managing America’s foreign, diplomatic affairs. Look at how deftly the Bush Admin used the ‘soft’ power of the US to get Musharraf et al, (and possibly other Pakistanis), to ‘be with us’. If that’s not a coup for the quality of Bush foreign policy over Clinton’s I don’t know what is. Who else could’ve gotten, (or even thought to get), a, (very democratic), military dictator, of country with undisputed ties to the Taleban, ‘prominent members’ of al Qaida, a mostly loyal military, and The World’s Greatest Illicit Proliferator of the Deadliest Weapons of Mass Destruction Technologies into an ally in the war on terror.
This diplomatic victory in the WoT brought to you by the same people who brought another very democratically-minded dictator who uses unorthodox techniques to prepare detainees for interrogations. (There’s a possibility of some question as to whether immersion of detainees in boiling water actually constitutes ‘torture’ per se depending upon the intent of the immerser vis a vis the immersee. We’ve actually got Colin actively trying to sort that one out so that we can start sending them money through the regular channels. Can’t wait to start funding another oppressive brutal dictator. I know that Hussein was trouble, but he was just a bad apple. I’m sure Mr. Karimov’ll be a much better friend of the US than that tricksie Hussein. )
The PR value would seem to be amazing.
The triumphs of Bush team’s evangelistic efforts re the WoT are truly inspiring.
I could say all that, but I couldn’t keep a straight face for long.
Though I wouldn’t be surprised if some form of one of these appeared on an op-ed page somewhere in America, (or in a letters to the editor in Canada;)).
See above. Even Congressmen knew by 1998.
Great minds do think alike. IIRC, the learned of Dr. Rice of oil tanker fame, the esteemed General Powell, of Powell Doctrine fame, and the cagey Dick Cheney of Halliburton fame all have said similar things in the run up to the run up to making the case for the invasion of Iraq. Of course, after the run up to making the case for the invasion of Iraq was well under way, several of those statements were rendered ‘inoperative’, as the Pres’s Press Sec used to say in the seventies.
IIRC, Dr. Rice used the phrase ‘national obliteration’ to describe the ethereal, amorphous thing that staid Saddam bin Laden’s hand for so many years.
Just felt obligated to point out how conservative you really are. Look who you’ve just agreed with.
You’re a conservative at heart. Don’t be ashamed. It’s okay to be conservative now. You’re not alone.
Join me here on the Dark Side.
It’s much nicer than the brochures. Besides, we’re actively seeking to permanently dislodge the ‘Prince of Darkness’ from his decades-old haunts in the hallowed halls of US government. The war-profiteering, terrorist-succoring, shitstain, discloser-of-classified-national-security-to-foreign-agents that he is.
I wonder,
How many declared enemies of America, who have the capability of producing weapons of mass murder, and could have, (or have already), passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them does this leave?
What number of these enemies constitutes the risk we can afford to take? Was Hussein the one too many?
Because, we’ve left more dire, more grave and already gathered threats inadequately addressed.
These reasons, in and of themselves, singularly and collectively, even with the two dozen other reasons, including the recently sprouted humanitarian interest in the plight of Iraqis and the ME, (and it’s ‘fruit’, the desire for a far-away-big-government imposed, social engineering project of Biblical scale implemented from the top down by those chosen for their party loyalty rather than by merit), thrown onto the mixture like whipped cream and a cherry are insufficient to explain the drive toward the invasion.
Other factors must come into play.
Some, as Rumsfeld pointed out while in Germany, have to do with the fact that Iraq’s ‘swimming’ in oil.
And there’s the implicit yet unmentionable invocation of the Carter Doctrine. It’s obvious why the GWBTeam’d have qualms about enlisting the name of the president elected after Nixon. I mean, a lot of these guys have had a long hard time establishing some legitimate conservative credentials. The poor buggers are relatively new to conservatism, (hence the appellation, neo-con). Their minds are still somewhat muddied by the vestiges of liberal claptrap. It’s been ‘pretty well confirmed’ that circumstantial evidence directly connnects Vice President Richard Cheney to what’s clearly some version of the Carter Doctrine.
Besides, to bring up Carter would be to bring up through implication that unpleasantness in the seventies.
To many, it seems that there’re still other reasons that’re necessary to adequately explain the source of the impetus to invade Iraq. How many ‘real reasons’ have been sighted so far?
I think that New Iskander has whooshed some people. His comment about Kuwait is obviously a joke. Lighten up people.
Oh, wait, my bad.
AQA makes numerous titillatlingly hidden, yet beautiful points with these words:
If only the GWBTeam had more closely heeded this sagely advice. Fonlies and druthers, eh, AQA?
It is always important consider the foundations of foreign policy from a conservative perspective- the just interests of the US.
You’re so right about the importance of giving due consideration to these just interests. A casus belli is just not a stick to your ribs sort of casus belli without there being direct, substantial relevance to the just interests of the US. All of Iraq’s potential potential for destructive behavior as well as the manifest potential it actually had for destructive behavior are irrelevant outside of basic considerations of the probability of this destructive potential behavior actually occurring and impacting the just interests of the US. Because, as you implied, it’s counter-productive to attack every country which fulfills these criteria for threat evaluation that’re biased so heavily toward merely a country’s potential potential and actual potential for destructive behavior.
Triage is indisputably called for in these instances. An order of action has to be determined and executed. We absolutely have a dire, national imperative that it is our honor as free people and Americans to fulfill to “determine the best course of action, (for our nation esp. in re war and other truly grave matters), by looking at more than one factor.”
So, I agree with you that since the NIE was that the probability of Iraq initiating and attack on the US, (directly or by proxy), was low that Iraq should’ve been placed accordingly in order of importance.
Oh, wait…never mind.
In what sense do you use the epithet ‘madman’?
As I was telling luci just the other day there’re those more learned than I, including that babe Condi, that Jamaican diplomat guy, and that ex-Halliburton guy who’s now a senior Bush Admin official whose office is in the middle of more than one investigation into serious crimes against the national security of the Untied States, (as well as some investigations of him personally, that’re related to allegations of financial ‘mis-statements’), have long held that Hussein was deterrable. Sometimes, the fact that Hussein didn’t use the unconventional weapons that he actually did have during the first Gulf War has been more than once used as evidence of his deterrability. There’s an oft cited conversation where Mr. Baker informed Mr. Aziz that there would be a ‘resounding silence’ in Iraq if Iraq were to use these unconventional weapons. IIRC, ‘resounding silence’ is sometimes diplomatic speak for what Dr. Rice calls ‘national obliteration.’
So maybe you mean something else by ‘madman’ than non-deterrable?
Or perhaps you have a very compelling case to make in rebuttal to these aforementioned persons?
That “one factor” being that Iraq *did not * have nukes or other WMD’s, while Pakistan and North Korea did and do. That’s the difference between reality and delusion. It’s a pretty critical difference to observe, most would say - but not those with a blind *refusal * to focus.
While not denying your logic, I maintain that gender is completely irrelevant here, but ethnicity is all important. To demonstrate: if 9-11 terrorists were Korean males, we would have invaded a different part of the world by now. A lot of things would be different, with a sole exclusion of some SDMB posters, who would denounce Bush for taking on Koreans, while ignoring the real threat of radical Islamic terrorists. We can always count on those posters to blame Bush for something.
But in reality, they were mostly Saudis. When’s the invasion of Saudi Arabia coming? Oh, that’s right, as long as the “part of the world” is right, the specific country and government are piddling details, aren’t they?
Who would be demonstrating their puppy-dog loyalty to a President of their favored party, the facts be damned
You know goddamned well that is not any of the many bases for condemning Bush.
Just as the rest of us know that the Iraq war had *no damned connection at all * with “Islamic terrorists”.
And on certain others to scrape up a reason to defend him, however contorted. But the bulk of us will maintain our connection to the world as it is, not as we’d only wish it to be.
But thanks for demonstrating what this board is fighting.
God bless 'em.
Someone has to keep an eye on those in power.
They should always be called throroughly into account for these sorts of life and death decisions.
I’m not sure if I should point out that a Doper’s hereditary, cantankerous, anti-gubmint disposition, (zif there were such a Doper), in no way impinges upon the validity of his allegations of gubmint tresspass against the rights of the electorate. Just because those who’ve selflessly dedicated themselves to honest critrique of the job of our public servants have such a huge row to hoe that they must keep at their battle against rational ignorance come rain, wind, storm, dark of night, etc., (zif there were such a Doper), in no way has any real bearing on the valditiy of what they have to say.
Surely, you’re already aware of this, yes?
So, maybe I shouldn’t say it?
If you are aware of this and you’re not trying to discredit the hypothetical charges that’re as of yet, unmade against Bush et al… and you’re not trying to use it discredit the actual allegations levelled at the Admin… what exactly are you trying to get across?
Are you merely singlingly me out just because I’m different? Just because I’ve a hereditary, cantankerous, anti-gubmint disposition? Cause, I don’t need that noise. I’m aware of my condition. Like epilepsy’s rumored to’ve been in days gone by, it’s a sacred disease. I do my best to take my brain medicine as prescribed to ameliorate my condition. The medicine alleviates some of the cantakerousness, at least. Of course, the anti-gubmint disposition persists unabated.
But when you think about it, Bush is currently being ‘denounced’, in parts, " for taking on [Iraq], while ignoring the real threat of radical Islamic terrorists."
So, your hypothetical literarily is oddly synchronistic.
Possibly ironic even.
In the beginning of this thread some posters seriously questioned why didn’t Bush Attack N. Korea, and one poster even said that it is simply because Bush is a bully and afraid of a real fight. I tried to direct my irony at those posters.
Yet more irony of the dramatic sort. It’s as thick like fog that’s as thick as pea soup that you can cut with a knife. A dull knife even as it’s very soft and squishy like baby mozarella.
You are only pointing out that ethnicity was a factor in Bush’s decision to invade Iraq; you have not even begun to make a case that it should have been a factor.
I say it should not have been. Ethnicity is irrelevant. What matters is who attacked us and who supported them.
If the 9/11 hijackers had been from Korea, why do you think he would have invaded Korea? They were Saudis in reality, and he didn’t invade Saudi Arabia.
No, if the hijackers had come from North Korea, he might have invaded South Korea. Or Japan. Or… well, I don’t have a map handy, but one of those other Asian countries. You would be here defending his decision, because “we were attacked by Asians.” Some of us would be wondering why he didn’t invade North Korea; others would be wondering why, as long as he was going to invade a country that didn’t attack us, he didn’t choose one that was actually a threat to us.
I hadn’t intended to make an all-out defense of the war in Iraq; I’d just intended to point out that the few reasons I quoted were less than convincing. But since there has been so much interest, I’ll do my best to be complete, but brief.
All wars are optional. The US was not required to go to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, or Japan and Germany in WWII, or the Confederacy in the Civil War. The question should be what is the best use of our resources. In this war, we had a number of options, including:
Option A) spend American lives and billions of dollars maintaining the No Fly zones and keeping Saddam in power for the foreseeable future (and thus condemning thousands of Kurdish and other Iraqis to death within Iraq);
Option B) spend hundreds of American lives and billions of dollars now to end Saddam’s reign, but potentially cut off the endless well of payments, and probably save more Iraqi lives than are ended.
We may even end up losing fewer lives and spending less money in the long run by having dealt with the problem in the present, rather than letting it continue indefinitely.
I have no idea how to respond to this other than to give a hearty, “Wha?”
I appreciate your collegiality (as well as the spelling lesson), but you needn’t spare the bullwhip-cracking wit for me. It’s one of the things that I love about your posts.
But before I respond, let me say that I understand that people can look at the same set of facts and arrive at different conclusions, especially in deciding an issue as monumentally important as whether we should go to war. So I’m not saying that there is only one conclusion to arrive at from the stated facts; I’m merely saying that my conclusion is that invading Iraq was justified.
But it appears that we disagree on some pretty fundamental facts. First, Iraq supported terrorism. Iraq paid up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinean suicide bombers. They housed and allowed both terrorists and terrorist training camps to exist in Iraq (and may even have participated in the training of terrorists).
You’re right that Bush hasn’t compared and contrasted war with Iraq and war with (for example) North Korea. But I can’t imagine why he should. It would be ridiculous for a President to hold a press conference to tell the nation why we’re NOT going to war against North Korea. Especially when 1) he’s trying to convince the country that we SHOULD go to war with another country; and 2) he’s trying to engage in negotiations with those countries to get them to stop pursuing their own WMD programs and aid to terrorists. Part of those negotiations would likely be to use the unstated threat that of military force, if necessary. If Bush went on TV and told the world why we’re not going to war with North Korea, he basically forecloses the option of using war or the threat of war against NK.
Nor do I think Bush has used any such simplistic logic. In fact, if he was employing such binary logic, then he would have destroyed numerous other “cows” by now, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t we be at war with Iran and Syria right now? And doesn’t the fact that we’re not at war with those countries imply that there are other factors being considered here?
The case for war against Iraq includes many, many factors. And the reason that war with Iraq was appropriate (in my opinion) is that all these factors are present. No one factor controls over the others. I’d rather not list all the factors, but these are some just off the top of my head:
Iraq was a brutal totalitarian regime; Iraq suppressed, tortured, and murdered its own people; Iraq was a threat to its neighbors; Iraq was a loud enemy of the US; Iraq doggedly pursued WMD; (if I remember correctly, as stated by John Kerry) Iraq showed an inability to be deterred, even when its actions harmed Iraq; we were engaged in an apparently perpetual mission to patrol the No Fly zones; Iraq had attacked Americans in the No Fly zones and elsewhere; Iraq was a threat to our allies in the region; we had the power and capability to take Hussein out without suffering severe losses; Hussein would harm the US if he could; attacking Iraq would attract the terrorists in the Middle East to our soldiers in Iraq, enabling us to fight the war on terror in someone else’s backyard; Iraq was a destablizing influence in the Middle East; the global economy and Iraqi people were suffering as a result of the embargo on Iraqi oil; Iraq (probably) had ties to terrorism; Iraq flouted the UN conventions that made our world safer; Iraq refused to cooperate with programs that were intended to discover whether Iraq had WMD or WMD development programs; a democracy in the Middle East is a good idea; we wanted to move our bases out of Saudi Arabia, and this gave us a new potential ally in the region; Iraq did not appear to yet have nuclear capabilities.
There are probably more, but these are hopefully enough to show that there were a number of reasons for the war in Iraq.
RTFirefly, thanks for the link. It’s an interesting read. But I don’t see how it diminishes the case that we should not have gone to war against Libya.
You make an interesting point here. I doubt I would have objected if we’d gone to war against Iran rather than Iraq, and a number of conservative pundits are calling on the Bush Admin to provide more assistance to the burgeoning democratic movement in Iran.
But the status of intelligence on Iran and Iraq today is different than what we knew prior to going to war with Iraq. At the time, there seemed to be a general consensus that Iraq was the greatest threat to our interests. In retrospect, maybe Bush would change his mind, but for the above-stated reasons, and based on the intelligence at the time, I think Bush would stick by his decision.
The factor that I was talking about was the pursuit of WMD. But what I would prefer is that we leave all the factors on the table, rather than focusing on or excluding one. My thesis is that war should be declared based on all the factors present in a situation, and not by looking exclusively at one.
I don’t mean that he was incapable of telling right from wrong (the American legal definition), but I do mean that he has dangerous mental abnormalities. It is my (non-psychologist’s) opinion that if a person puts other people in shredders, orders that women and children be raped, tortures and kills political opponents to maintain his own power, builds palaces while his people starve and go without medicine, and kills thousands of ethnic minorities, then that person is likely suffering from some sort of deviant personality disorder(s).
In short, I think Hussein was apparently rational in some areas, and a total freaking loon in others. This is entirely common in cases of a mentally ill individual, who (for example) might believe that he is Napoleon, but will still go inside when it’s raining.
Absolutely true. Though I would not suggest that we should invade Pakistan and North Korea after they’ve obtained nukes.
Its like playing chess with a guy who has 27 pawns and pushes them all. You have pretty much advanced every concievable rationale that the Bushiviks ever offered. There’s a lot of them but they range from the unlikely to the incredible. What, this is a parade, it’s Lame-Ass Pride Week? Now, since you were aware of them its safe to assume you are also aware of the countervailing facts and arguments.
Yet you post them as if reciting a litany of universally accepted truths. Water boils at 212, feed a cold, starve a fever, GeeDubya is a statesman and a Leader of Men.
You’re not half dumb enough to think that those statements are, by any stretch of a twisted imagination, incontrovertible.
[queer eye]…and those tacky, tacky links! Sweetie, nobody, not even the die-hard Bush Babies, post links to the Weekly Standard Its like wearing Ann Coulter’s cast off shoes or linking to the Washington Times, its just soooo last year…[/queer eye]
And National Review Online? Get real! Thats the same outfit that published the crapola about John Kerry being a paid agent of the KGB. (He wasn’t. Don’t start with me…)
Look, you want some serious arguing, you come to the right place. But dont serve us this tired horsetrickle, its like trying to play tennis with a nerf ball.
Don’t even bother, batting the big brown eyes at me, I’m a hard-boiled Doper, and I ain’t that stupid. Flattery will get you nowhere unless you lay it on really, really thick.
Now when the U.S. forces near Baghdad captured Zarqawi this time back in 2003, did he still have just the one leg?
Incidentally, did you remeber that he was in a part of Iraq that was outside of Hussein’s control-he was in a US no fly zone. And you remeber that he’d partnered with a group who fought against Hussein. When one has terrorists inside your borders hypothetically taking flying lessons in Florida or some such, it is technically correct to say that one has ‘allowed’ them to be there, but allow has a connotation of volition that’s not warranted by anything thus far presented in re the dusty old Hussein-Zarqawi-bin Laden chain of linkage.
Re Salman Pak, the highly regarded Mr. Epstein aside The U.S. military has found no evidence of such a facility.
Well, we all know that not all Iraqi defectors are reliable sources of information now don’t we? I mean, after all a number of whom were supplied by a previously discredited intellligence collection program run by a known Iranian intelligence operative.
Second, if you’ll notice, cia.gov has no mention of Salman Pak as a terrorist training center.
That is so last year. Almost to the day. Is this a “smoking gun”?
And the Bush Admin and the Intelligence Community just haven’t read last year’s edition of the Tennessean? Cause if they did, man, would they ever be all over this.
I’ve no urge to gut these sites unasked. If you’d like, you may, at a suitable time and place, present whatever elements of these cases that you feel are worthy and I’ll be glad to seperate the canards from the cream. If the above are representative, I’ve seen this all before and it’s mostly been debunked repeatedly.
Rumsfeld answered this very question once in Germany. He referenced the economic power of oil as one of the crucial factors in the decisions to treat Iraq differently than NK.
They’ve been catalogued at 27 in number. In case you’re curious.
So when you call him a madman, you make no reference to his relative deterrability? It’s just sort of an epithetical synonym for psychopath?
Right. Well then, I trust you will no longer be linking to ‘TPM’? Nothing but broadly acceptable cites (CNN, BBC, NYT, FNC, etc) from the likes of you from now on, huh? Or could it be that you are just being disingenuous?
I don’t have the time to respond to most of your posts before leaving on a trip. But, I’d just love to see the math on this, given how much we have spent since the invasion and will likely continue to spend and how many lives we have lost in the last year. If it is plausible that we might end of losing fewer lives and spending less money, then you ought to be able to demonstrate this with reasonable assumptions. Otherwise, your just pissing into the wind.
Quite a change from your indignation over our “blindly focusing” on the facts rather than imaginings. But it does show that progress against ignorance can be made.
Now, if we could get some focus from you, hopefully not blind, on just who really attacked us and who really didn’t, perhaps we could make even more progress.
Incidentally, can you really say that the world is a safer place now that other members of the “Axis of Evil” see that the way to avoid being attacked is to get nukes of their own?
I can’t let this just pass, either:
Correct to a point. Surrender and subjugation to Japan and Germany were options - the only other ones, but you take them seriously. The Taliban were the hosts and sponsors of the organization that really did attack us on 9/11, and really did kill 3000 of us - are you seriously suggesting that letting that pass was an option?
Then it’s about damn time we started, instead of aggravating other problems instead, as you advocate. A country’s being in “the same part of the world” is an argument that, despite your assertions, combines belligerence and ignorance in a uniquely contemptible manner.