My friend Barry and I were talking about entering the pacification stage in Iraq, and the question arose, “Does Bush stop here?”
Our answer, no.
–He’s through the all-out combat phase of 2 wars already
–We have a huge military force right in the midst of two of America’s greatest remaining enemies, Syria and Iran.
–He’s got the rationale for preemptive strikes, that our enemies only have the potential to be dangerous to us in the future.
–Syria and Iraq are probably harboring al-queda members, or at least they can’t prove they aren’t.
Then there’s North Korea.
I was gonna settle for betting on two wars. Then Barry suggested that tasty tidbit of a renegade to the south, Cuba. Practically begging to be taken over.
So now I’m figuring on 3 more wars started by Bush in his first term. Because his preemptive policy means there’s always a legitimate target to go after.
I could be completely wrong about this, I don’t have a whole lot of faith in something I decided in a 15 minute phone call, during which time we also decided there were good administrative reasons to consolidate the countries of Iraq and Iran into a single new entity called “Iranq”.
As an aside, I’m curious, assuming the Bush DOES in fact sweep though another country or two, and does so successfully (with no more than a few hundred American dead, and the local government overthrown), would the American public support such a foreign policy?
North Korea seems to be in the cross-hairs next. Bush has it on his “evil” list, and they seem intent on thumbing their noses at him. The Onion claims he’s sizing up Spain and checking out Venezuela. Some cynics claim that Blair told him the Sudetenland is lovely this time of year.
FTR, this post is not entirely serious. Calm down, you Bushies. Easy, now.
Firstly, I’ve gotta question launching yet another potentially inflammatory thread of this nature, with both GD and the Pit practically burning down with pro-anti flaming.
Hey, but I’ll give it a shot anyway.
Last question first. it appears Americans will support such a policy as long as there’s no domestic downside, such as huge military casualties or a collapse of the economy.
I think there’s a better than even chance of additional military action against Syria. Iran probably no, North Korea probably no unless it launches a military provocation of its own. Cuba certainly not.
Two locations you are forgetting, but which have excellent chances for additional US involvement in low-intensity conflict, are the Phillipines and Colombia.
Things to consider: 1) the US has already expended a considerable fraction of its precision weapons inventory and will require some time to rebuild those stocks; 2) while the military is supposedly geared to address two major conflicts at one time, this is not an ideal situation and one would presume this would be done only if deemed absolutely necessary. Chances are the majority of troops now in Iraq would be the same force called upon elsewhere. Considering the nine-month logistical buildup to the start of the Iraq conflict, one presumes that even if the administration wanted to, they could only really fit in one more major action (other than maybe Syria) before the end of GWB’s first term.
BTW, I’m probably talking out my bottom, as I am a military hobbyist rather than an expert.
My guess is that this will be it for his first term. If he gets re-elected, my guess is that he’ll probably start at least two wars in his second term, maybe three. North Korea, then Iran and/or Syria.
I hate to say it, but I think we can expect at least one more terrorist attack directed against American interests in this term, which means at least one more war (not necessarily against the perpetrators). My money is on Syria.
I don’t see it happening, unless there is another successful attack on American soil. Then it will be Syria. Also if there is another terrorist attack on American soil before the next presidential election I think it will hand Bush a second term.
I strongly believe ( not know - believe ) that North Korea is just saber rattling to get a bigger handout. If I am right, they will get it.
Well in all seriousness I have heard(not comfirmed) reports that Syria is welcoming the fleeing party officials. If Syria ends up happening to shelter Hussein and his sons then they make make a quick move right up to the top of the charts.
If Iraq finishes up soon, I expect one more war to give Bush support in the next election. Syria looks good as the next target, but it’s hardly a foregone conclusion. The push for war will be directly proportional to how badly the economy performs.
Another vote for Syria, but with a little help from Israel. I think it is conceivable that there is a push to ‘stabilize’ that part of the world. In fact, I’ve believed for awhile that Isreal’s best move would be for them to strike Syria first, sort of forcing our hand to back our ally.
Iran…I’m not so sure about because they seem to be talking more and the citizens have been getting more democracy and equality between the sexes for years now (as far as I recall, I haven’t actually read much about Iran for awhile now). So I doubt we would have an easy time there, and the gains of war wouldn’t be greater than what we could get diplomatically.
North Korea won’t be a conflict like the ones we have seen. There cannot be a build-up of forces because they would immediately shower Seoul with bombs. Therefore we’d have to do a covert ops raid into their silos and nuclear plants immediately followed by HEAVY air raids. It is a top-down military structure, so we would hit the top guys as heavily as possible as quickly as possible. Again though, I don’t know if we would gain more from war with them vs. paying them off in aid. That’s a tricky one…
There is simply no way Bush would initiate a war in North Korea. He might no be the brightest fellow, but a war in North Korea would be a disaster, no matter the eventual outcome.
As for Syria, well, I doubt they will face military action.
On the other hand, they do have the most advanced chemical weapons capability in the Middle East.
IMO, I don’t think the risk/reward analysis would favor invading Cuba. Keeping Cuban ex-pats in mind, if Bush goes for Cuba, it’ll have to be done very delicately (i.e., attempt to dramatically reduce the odds of collateral damage). Otherwise, it stands a good chance of hurting Jeb. Since that’s such a difficult balance, I think he’ll stay away from Cuba.
North Korea probably isn’t high on the list because that conflict will likely be a big, complicated deal. Add the proximity of so many other industrial areas that we’d have to protect, and I think we might be stretched a little thin. Also, I don’t think they’ve done adequate polling on the public’s reaction to that war.
IMO (again), he has to time the invasion of one of the other countries so that we get the first big successes during the weekend before election day. If the troops go in too early, the electorate might be going through the “morning after” and swing the other way. However, if they time it so that we go through initial success, then the first morning after, then the second big success, then Bush gets the good election day boost and the news will have been in “Target: (InsertYourName)” mode for several weeks. Whether that’s what they want probably depends on what kind of national dialogue they want on peoples’ minds.
My WAG: by late summer, the US will still have a large presence in Iraq and will have had several months to buttress the PR case against Syria, so it represents the Axis-of-Evil-Of-Minimal-Effort.