# If Not Bush, Then Who Is To Blame? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 8, 2004, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211 "2004-10-08T15:46:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/41 "2004-10-10T03:49:16Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > And if that had happened, then what? I’ll tell you - there would have been pressure for the U.S. to stand down, and France and Germany and Russia would then have started to pressure the U.S. into dropping the sanctions, right? Saddam fulfulled his obligation under the sanctions to eliminate his WMD’s and WMD programs, so why _shouldn’t_ the sanctions have been lifted? Given the mood of the world after 9/11, it would have been feasible to get the UN to agree that Saddam was _not_ to produce NBC weapons as part of an agreement to lift the sanctions. Would he have held by that? Who knows, but if he wasn’t, the US and the UN would have a clear cut case for kicking his ass. The argument you make seems to imply that there was no way that Saddam could _ever_ have gotten out from under the sanctions. That makes a sham of the whole sanction process. Were the sanctions merely an excuse for torturing Saddam and the people of Iraq til the end of time? If so, why shouldn’t Saddam have tried to weasel around them? > [@](#): > > The sanctions WERE crumbling. Saddam was getting all kinds of stuff. But nothing like the weaponry he could buy and build if the sanctions were completely lifted and he was free to spend his money on whatever he pleased without the need for subterfuge. And yet Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, and no WMD related programs, except, by hearsay, _possibly_ inside his head. Rather than convict Saddam for his thoughts, wouldn’t justice have been better served by allowing him to demonstrate by his actions that he wanted to again become a regional threat? ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/42 "2004-10-10T03:52:45Z")
> [@](#): > > WMD issues aside, the Iraq war was still the correct strategic choice. The Middle East is a breeding ground for terrorists. The only way to ‘win’ is to wade into the swamp and drain it. The Kerry strategy is basically to get a better screen door. Draining the swamp = what? A complete makeover of the culture of the region? That sounds like a losing proposition to me. > [@](#): > > In my opinion, one of the reasons the global jihadists are doing what they are doing is because they have become convinced that they can win. They believe that the west has become decadent and fractured from within. They believe that they can win because they can break our will to fight. To see if the above is right or not, we have to know what “winning” would mean to them. If winning to them means destroying the power of the West and converting all to Islam, then we are not dealing with rational people and it will be very hard to stop them completely. My own take is that the region is, collectively, mentally ill (this caused by a variety of factors), and the jihadists are essentially rebellious and fatalistic teens, trading in their poverty and hopelessness for action and fireworks. It is a region where a heck of a lot of people think, “Fuck it.” That makes them really dangerous. > [@](#): > > And why do they think that? For good reason. Because for two decades the U.S. has responded to increasingly violent and brazen attacks with constant retreat. I don’t agree. Every one of those people has known that we’re pissed off at Abu Nidal or Al Qaeda or whoever is causing the most damage. We’ve fired cruise missles and raised a fuss now and then. But it’s been tough, militarily and politically, to root the terrorists out of their respective countries and bring them to justice. To succeed in doing so would have entailed invading and occuping the entire region. Not feasible. > [@](#): > > Bin Laden has a favorite saying: “People want to follow the strong horse.” As long as wide swaths of people in the Middle East see Bin Laden as a strong horse, someone who is taking it to the man, he is going to get a flood of recruits. The United States needed to flex a little muscle in the region and start changing minds. [T]hey have to learn that going toe to toe with the U.S. military means a rapid death and little damage to the U.S, military. You have cause and effect backward. MErs are rebellious teens; therefore they idolize bin Laden or whoever else seems strong at the time. Since they are already pissed off and fatalistic, “showing muscle” doesn’t work. Has Israel’s muscle done anything to dissuade the Palestinians from their particular type of political attitude? > [@](#): > > That’s another good reason. A third is that occupying Iraq gives the U.S. leverage over other nations in the region. A good example of this payoff is Syria’s agreement to withdraw from Lebanon. A good reason for that decision is the presence of a couple of armored divisions next door. Two questions. Did the president explicitly sell us on the reasons you are listing here? What you are talking about sounds like an overall program to protect our interests in the Middle East. Second, will occupying Iraq actually accomplish these goals, and is it worth the overall cost in blood and treasure? My answer to both questions is no. > [@](#): > > Then there’s democratic reform. Iraq was a good choice for this experiment. Only history will answer this question, but I doubt it. Even with losts of Western intervention, I don’t see the region as sorting out its issues for another 100 years, if that soon. > [@](#): > > A Democratic Iraq will give hope to the Middle East. It will act as a propaganda tool, encouraging reform in other countries. A prosperous, free Iraq will be a stabilizing influence, an example of how democracy can work in the Middle East. Yeah, and a perpetual motion machine could bring wealth to the masses. You have to weigh the probability of an event occuring against the value of the result. It’s called “mathematical expectation.” > [@](#): > > Then there’s the legal justification. [T]here was a moral and legal case for removing [Sadaam]. Again, is this the reasoning the president sold us before we committed the blood and treasue to the cause? No. > [@](#): > > You can not beat terrorists by playing defense. That forces you to be right 100% of the time, and they only have to get lucky once. I should grimly like to suggest that you can’t “beat” desperate, suicidal people–period. The reason is that the “beating,” or death, of the individual is, by definition, built into their program. I do believe now that the key goal is preventing a suitcase nuke from entering, or being built within, the United States. That is the one thing that _must not_ happen. All the rest–offensive measures–is secondary. > [@](#): > > You need to solve the problem. Bush is trying to solve the problem. Going into Iraq is more like going into North Africa to take out Hitler. Really? I think it’s more like Hitler going into North Africa. No, I’m quite serious. Again and again tyrants have justified such invasions by saying that they needed to “stabilize the region.” Japan invaded both Korea and China for such a reason. > [@](#): > > So who is to blame? Well, certainly the intelligence community failed. Who is to blame for that? The roots of that failure go all the way back to the Church comission hearings and the repeated gutting of the CIA’s capability by a hostile Congress. The CIA was no longer able to recruit people with ‘dirty hands’, which made it impossible to put human assets in terrorist organizations and the Iraq government. The CIA was under constant threats of funding cuts, and took tremendous amounts of criticism from the left in the 1970’s and the 1980’s. Yeah, for illegally toppling democratically-elected governments and things like that. You reap what you sow. Don’t blame the left for the evils the CIA initiated. > [@](#): > > The occupation has been riddled with mistakes, but let’s make something clear - this constant criticism of Bush going into Iraq ‘without a plan’ is just not true. There was a plan. There were many plans. Just not good ones. Bush should look at his wrist. That’s _his_ watch. And when things this bad happen on your watch, you resign and let someone else have a shot at solving things. If similar mistakes had been made in a US corporation, Bush would have been fired a long time ago. He is a complete incompetent. > [@](#): > > I knew the occupation would be a bit of a balls-up - it’s inevitable. But it’s a necessary evil. It’s just one of the hard things you have to muddle through when you are at war, just as the U.S. had to occupy countries in WWII. It was an unnecessary evil in an unnecessary war. Why can’t you compute this fact? BTW, the occupations of Germany and Japan were cakewalks compared to this. > [@](#): > > That’s why it is an opinion. One that I have formed from a couple of decades of being involved in foreign policy debates. That doesn’t leave you with much of an excuse, does it? > [@](#): > > Germany was still a mess five years after the occupation. It was still in rough shape ten years after the occupation. So was Japan. Ragtag armies were not still shooting the shit out of us. Do you think Iraq will be pacified within 5 years? I’ll make that bet with you. > [@](#): > > Echoes of the occupation still reverberate in Germany 50 years later. I don’t think anyone believes that the Middle East will be like Nebraska in a year, five years, ten years. Maybe it will be peaceful, democratic, and prosperous in fifty years, if we do this right. And the US will be bankrupt. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard the term “cost-benefit analysis”? > [@](#): > > Another reason why Iraq was the right target, by the way, was because it was the most stable dictatorship in the region. There is real possibility for reform in Iran, so the correct position to take there was strong diplomacy aimed at fostering a peaceful democratic revolution. But not only was Saddam in a lock-solid position as dictator of Iraq, he had a line of succession already in place. There was no real prospect for change in Iraq for decades. And as long as that maniacal family was in power in that country, it would give an excuse for the dictatorships surrounding that country to maintain their large militaries, build their own WMD, and deflect attention away from their failed policies by scapegoating the U.S and Israel. This is actually not a bad argument. Thinking along such lines _might_ be _part_ of a _complete_ plan for protecting our interests in the ME. But were we sold such reasoning? No. Is the rest of the plan drawn up? No. Has a cost-benefit analysis been performed? No. Is this part of the plan succeeding? No. Will it succeed somewhere down the line at an acceptable cost? Doubtful. > [@](#): > > Look, even outside the war on terror the Middle East is a powderkeg. Over time, it is also unstable. …If the area erupts in flames in fifty years, can you imagine the destruction that could happen? Yes. We need a good plan, don’t we? We don’t have a good plan. > [@](#): > > But again, look at the benefits the war has already brought: Palestinians no longer get paid $25,000 for bombing Jews. There is no longer a no-fly zone. There are no longer large amounts of American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia (one of Bin Laden’s primary complaints). Libya has flipped over all of its WMD, helping the U.S. roll up a network selling nuclear secrets. Syria is pulling out of Lebanon. The Iraqi people no longer live under a dictator - one who was killing on average tens of thousands of people a year. These are decent benefits. Are they worth the past and future costs? > [@](#): > > The U.S. has a large strategic presence right in the home of the terrorists. Terrorists have been flinging themselves at the buzz-saw of the U.S. military and getting chopped to pieces, rather than flinging themselves at American civilians. These are bad reasons. Remember that these are immature people whose raison d’etre at this point is flailing at whoever best serves the psychological purpose. We were obviously a target on 9/11. But we are now an even bigger target, with more people pissed at us that ever before. While _some_ terrorists fling themselves against the buzzsaw, others are planning their next gig. I guess we fundamentally disagree with how to handle the underlying phenomenon of incredibly pissed-off, consumed-with-hatred people. My choice would be to use the full portfolio of the 36 strategies. Afganistan would have been a great first step: showing the muscle you talked about. Certainly, getting bin Laden would have been nice, too. But then we should have continued to outthink and outsmart the terrorists with attacks, feints, diplomacy, spying, perhaps assassinations, etc. The Bush Plan is the pumped-up retard’s plan: lots of big booms (with concomitant big costs) but very little effectiveness. > [@](#): > > Something else to think about - there has been a lot of talk about why Saddam refused inspectors even if he didn’t have WMD. It seems so irrational. Well, the main reason is because he thought he could get away with it. No, I think the reason here is the obvious one, and the one that Bush himself gave: Saddam wanted the inspectors out so that he’d have the option of producing weapons in the future. > [@](#): > > The U.S. had backed down from threats so many times in the past twenty years that it became an article of faith among many that it was a paper tiger. The lesson of Somalia was that all you had to do was drag a couple of dead soldiers through the street, and America would turn tail and run. Bull-oney. You have Haiti, Kosovo, revenge attacks against Libya, etc. etc. as counter examples. You have Gulf War I for kraissakes. You are totally off base on this one. [Incoherent sections snipped.] > [@](#): > > And along with all that, we need to hunt down and kill the current crop of terrorists. Unfortunately, this is ALL John Kerry wants to do - as if killing the ones that we can find now will eliminate the problem. That’s kind of like solving your wasp problem by practicing your accuracy with a fly swatter. It makes more sense to get rid of the nest. Of course, in the process of taking down the nest you sure stir up the wasps, and that’s where we’re at today. The wasps in the middle east are buzzing and angry, but that’s because they are being threatened. So, this current situation is good? Bush can’t talk coherently about Iraq. He’s demonstrated that he is not a thinker. He has no plan, at least not one that he can convincingly articulate. The cost-benefit relationship is entirely unclear. Ultimately, you as well as your master Bush are painting a pie-in-stratosphere vision without the numbers and realistic scenarios to back it up. That’s why Bush is eminently culpable in the current debacle and deserves to be shit-canned out of office. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/43 "2004-10-10T03:59:13Z")
I have to admit that I find **Sam** ’s whole posts here almost too amazing to respond to. I mean, we’ve **actively supported** people who are doing worse things than this…In fact, **we supported Saddam at the time that he was doing way worse things than this**! It sort of reminds me of the Woody Allen movie where he dubbed over some old Japanese action movie and had one guy describing a horrible gang this way: “They rape, they maim, they kill, and they call information for numbers that they could easily look up in the book!” I mean, what next? I have been telling friends that I am holding out for when they tell me that he abuses cute little golden retriever puppies…After all, everyone has to have their breaking point after which they realize that this guy must be stopped. I mean, are we really reduced now to **going to war** because someone is using various means of politics and corruption to try to influence international policy? Besides which, as one of the 5 permanent members of the Security Council, didn’t we have a veto over the lifting of sanctions? I think **Sam** has made a bang-up case for not sending Saddam another dime of U.S. support. I am embarrassed that Rumsfeld ever shook this guy’s hand! But, is this the kind of stuff that we send our troops over to die for?!?! ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/44 "2004-10-10T04:49:34Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Well, the Bush administration did try to lay out a lot of these reasons early on. It was accused of incoherence. Do you remember? One day Bush would talk about humanitarian issues, the next he’d talk about WMD. The response from critics was to say, “Well, which is it? WMD or humanitarian? You guys can’t get your story straight!” So the administration decided to pick their ‘best case’ and go with it. In hindsight, perhaps that was a strategic blunder, but the fact is that everyone DID think Iraq had WMD, including me, a lot of you who oppose the war, John Kerry, the governments of Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Russia, and pretty much anyone else who had an intelligence service. Hell, Saddam’s own generals thought they had it! As the U.S. would capture generals in the war and ask them about WMD, they’d say “Well, my division didn’t have them, but the division over the hill did.” Yeah, what a bunch of sensitive little flowers. :rolleyes: They got accused of a lot worse than that (and still are) without blinking an eye. An in 2002 everyone did think that - but by the time of the invasion it was becoming clear that there were either no WMDs or they were rare enough not to be a threat. We know these guys don’t learn from experience, but we don’t have to be that feeble. > [@](#): > > So everyone thought there was WMD, and WMD made a good casus belli, so the administration went with that. But at no time was that presented as the only justification for war. If you listened, you would have heard all the arguments I made above. If you had read what I wrote, I said it was way down the list. I believe Wolfowitz admitted they pushed WMDs as the main justification. But just as tax cuts were the cure for the surplus and the recession (exactly the same tax cuts) invading Iraq was the response both if he had WMDs and if he didn’t. You think we wouldn’t have invaded if he had resigned? > [@](#): > > And here’s one last thing - My belief is that the war was an inevitability, and I said so at the time. Or rather, there was only one way to avoid that war, and that was for Saddam to capitulate so thoroughly that his regime would be for all intents and purposes ended or at least severely emasculated. Here’s the chain of events: After 9/11, Saddam thumbs his nose at the U.S. The U.S tells Saddam to play ball or else. Saddam says get bent. So the U.S. began mobilizing forces in the middle east. This mobilization had widespread support, including strong support from John Kerry. Remember, he says he didn’t authorize war, but the threat of war to force Saddam into compliance. > > So here you have 75,000 American troops on Iraq’s border. What now? How do you possibly get out of that situation without war, without making the middle east far more dangerous? The U.S. had already spent billions on the buildup. If, after all that, the military simply stood down and went home, it would be almost impossible to build the political will to go through it all again, at least for a number of years. \We have to go to war - I paid a month’s rent on the battlefield.\ Building up the troops around Iraq was a good idea. An excellent one, in fact, one that Clinton should have done (but the Pubbies would have yelled Wag the Dog, no doubt.) It did not take a lot of will. I don’t remember any protests about the buildup, I don’t remember seeing angry letters to the editor. An ongoing inspection regime was clearly needed, and there would be SC backing for action if the inspectors were expelled. Remember, the way things played out we would have been in good shape if we had over 50% of the SC, since it appeared France would have abstained, not vetoed the resolution. Sure there would be risks, but far fewer than what actually happened. > [@](#): > > So it’s going to be a long, long time. During that time, do you leave 75,000 men sleeping in tents in the desert? Or do you ship them home? And if you ship them home, what do you do if Saddam starts playing games again? I was hoping you weren’t going to say that being in the desert was worse than being attacked. Silly me. The inspectors hadn’t found anything last time, remember, because there was nothing to find. Was that really such an awful result? And remember, this time, they did find a stray rocket or two which got destroyed. > [@](#): > > This is the logic of the road to war. Once the buildup started, the trigger really was pulled. There would either be war, or Saddam would essentially do what Khadafi did - opening all his borders, offices, records, and allowing American inspectors and soldiers free reign of the country. And Saddam couldn’t do that, because he had a lot of mass graves to hide, as well as a large bribery program ongoing. Saddam’s crimes were not in dispute. I don’t think inspectors would be likely to find records of bribery. It would be a very good thing to have an accepted policy that says when intervention because of human rights violations is justified. Bush has probably made that impossible now. Which is a shame, and is going to lead to many more deaths around the world in the future. You have answered my question, I think. It appears that you think lying was justified because not having an invasion would be disastrous, and that the American people could not be counted on to swallow the neocon line. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/45 "2004-10-10T05:05:44Z")
A few things I can’t resist saying. Saddam no longer gives money to the widows of Palestinian bombers. We’ve seen how much that has reduced the problem. That’s a feeble excuse for the war. The reason Germany was in poor shape five years after the end of WW II was that we bombed their economy to hell. When did rationing end in England, the winner? My father was on occupation duty in southern Germany, Hitler country, right after the war ended. The GIs there had free movement around the country. So, no Sam, Germany in 1946 was not quite like Iraq in 2004. There is one more difference. We’re not really fighting the Baathists. It’s more like if we had decided to occupy France and the underground turned on us. In Germany and Japan we had the advantage that the popular government was shown to be losers, and we benefited from the shock. Not torturing random Germans probably helped a bit also. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/46 "2004-10-10T06:19:29Z")
Sam… have the debates really made you this desperate? Desperate enough to be the lone ranger for the Bush clan, to feel you need to move this rock up the hill all on your own? I enjoy your prose. It’s well written. Impressive, really. Kudos. But, honestly – why do you feel the urgent need to carry water for these bozos? Serious question. I think that for many of us it’s that simple: They had their war and they screwed it up. And we’re going to vote in four weeks and decide just how much they fucked up. See you November 3d. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/47 "2004-10-10T06:38:08Z")
**Aeschines** said: > [@](#): > > Sam Stone > > > [@](#): > > > > WMD issues aside, the Iraq war was still the correct strategic choice. The Middle East is a breeding ground for terrorists. The only way to ‘win’ is to wade into the swamp and drain it. The Kerry strategy is basically to get a better screen door. > > Draining the swamp = what? A complete makeover of the culture of the region? That sounds like a losing proposition to me. No, the people of the middle east have to do that for themselves. Iraq is simply (hopefully) an example that it can be done. Remember this is a region in which people have said that Democracy cannot happen - that the people are not suited for it, and that they need strong men to guide them. Iraq will make a valid counter-example. But ultimately, the change has to come from within the middle east. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > In my opinion, one of the reasons the global jihadists are doing what they are doing is because they have become convinced that they can win. They believe that the west has become decadent and fractured from within. They believe that they can win because they can break our will to fight. > > To see if the above is right or not, we have to know what “winning” would mean to them. If winning to them means destroying the power of the West and converting all to Islam, then we are not dealing with rational people and it will be very hard to stop them completely. My own take is that the region is, collectively, mentally ill (this caused by a variety of factors), and the jihadists are essentially rebellious and fatalistic teens, trading in their poverty and hopelessness for action and fireworks. It is a region where a heck of a lot of people think, “Fuck it.” That makes them really dangerous. If you’re right, this is going to get very bloody. If the people of the middle east cannot be reasoned with, if they keep spittingg out jihadists by the thousands, if they are ‘mentally ill’, then there is going to be a major military conflagration there within the next twenty years. I think it’s worth trying to help them out of their dilemma first. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > And why do they think that? For good reason. Because for two decades the U.S. has responded to increasingly violent and brazen attacks with constant retreat. > > I don’t agree. Every one of those people has known that we’re pissed off at Abu Nidal or Al Qaeda or whoever is causing the most damage. We’ve fired cruise missles and raised a fuss now and then. But it’s been tough, militarily and politically, to root the terrorists out of their respective countries and bring them to justice. To succeed in doing so would have entailed invading and occuping the entire region. Not feasible. Abu Nidal was released by the French, and was living in Baghdad. Al Qaida attacked the U.S. numerous times, including almost bringing down the world trade centers in 1993. There was virtually NO retaliation. What was the retaliation for the Khobar towers bombing? For the U.S.S. Cole? For the attempted assassination of Bush I? Look, this isn’t just a problem with Democrats in the past. When the Beirut barracks were bombed, Reagan’s response was to withdraw from Lebanon. The Gulf War is a bit of an exception, except that at the end of it Saddam was still in power, still building palaces, putting pictures of George Bush in tile on the floor so he could walk on it. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Bin Laden has a favorite saying: “People want to follow the strong horse.” As long as wide swaths of people in the Middle East see Bin Laden as a strong horse, someone who is taking it to the man, he is going to get a flood of recruits. The United States needed to flex a little muscle in the region and start changing minds. [T]hey have to learn that going toe to toe with the U.S. military means a rapid death and little damage to the U.S, military. > > You have cause and effect backward. MErs are rebellious teens; therefore they idolize bin Laden or whoever else seems strong at the time. Since they are already pissed off and fatalistic, “showing muscle” doesn’t work. Has Israel’s muscle done anything to dissuade the Palestinians from their particular type of political attitude? That may characterize the hard-core jihadists that already exist. I’m talking about stopping more people from moving in that direction. Bin Laden is a romantic figure, in part because he has managed to inflict damage on the U.S. and play to the prejudices and fantasies of people who want to believe in him. He needs to be seen by others in the region as a dangerous person who is just helping to bring the hammer down on everyone. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > That’s another good reason. A third is that occupying Iraq gives the U.S. leverage over other nations in the region. A good example of this payoff is Syria’s agreement to withdraw from Lebanon. A good reason for that decision is the presence of a couple of armored divisions next door. > > Two questions. Did the president explicitly sell us on the reasons you are listing here? What you are talking about sounds like an overall program to protect our interests in the Middle East. Second, will occupying Iraq actually accomplish these goals, and is it worth the overall cost in blood and treasure? My answer to both questions is no. Again, there are things a President can’t say, and one of them is that he’s going to invade a country in order to put pressure on its neighbors. But he certainly went through the litany of other justifications, it’s just that no one bothered listening to him. They just accused him of ‘incoherence’. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Then there’s democratic reform. Iraq was a good choice for this experiment. > > Only history will answer this question, but I doubt it. Even with losts of Western intervention, I don’t see the region as sorting out its issues for another 100 years, if that soon. It’s the best chance for a democracy, but that doesn’t mean one will happen. But if it doesn’t, then we’ll know that we at least tried. Because if those countries can’t be reformed, then there’s going to be a lot of bloodshed in that region in the future. Because there will be more attacks, and one day there will be one big enough, like a biological or nuclear attack, that all the gloves come off and we don’t even try to do things with minimum casualties. We’ll just flatten them. I think before it gets to that point we at least have to try our best to convince them to change. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > A Democratic Iraq will give hope to the Middle East. It will act as a propaganda tool, encouraging reform in other countries. A prosperous, free Iraq will be a stabilizing influence, an example of how democracy can work in the Middle East. > > Yeah, and a perpetual motion machine could bring wealth to the masses. You have to weigh the probability of an event occuring against the value of the result. It’s called “mathematical expectation.” There’s nothing you can tell me about mathematical expectation. You aren’t arguing here - you’re just making a flat-out assertion that a Democracy in Iraq is not going to happen. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Then there’s the legal justification. [T]here was a moral and legal case for removing [Sadaam]. > > Again, is this the reasoning the president sold us before we committed the blood and treasue to the cause? No. Yes. He spoke on many occasions about the brutality of the Iraqi regime. He spoke about the threat to Iraq’s neighbors, and to the brutality of Saddam on the Shia and Kurds, and how Saddam’s own people had to be protected by the U.S. air force lest he commit genocide on them. You just werent’ listening. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > You can not beat terrorists by playing defense. That forces you to be right 100% of the time, and they only have to get lucky once. > > I should grimly like to suggest that you can’t “beat” desperate, suicidal people–period. The reason is that the “beating,” or death, of the individual is, by definition, built into their program. I do believe now that the key goal is preventing a suitcase nuke from entering, or being built within, the United States. That is the one thing that must not happen. All the rest–offensive measures–is secondary. So how many of them do we have to kill? When does it stop? > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > You need to solve the problem. Bush is trying to solve the problem. Going into Iraq is more like going into North Africa to take out Hitler. > > Really? I think it’s more like Hitler going into North Africa. No, I’m quite serious. Again and again tyrants have justified such invasions by saying that they needed to “stabilize the region.” Japan invaded both Korea and China for such a reason. Hitler didn’t want to ‘stabilize’ anything. He wanted Lebensraum. The mere thought of equating the motivation of the Reich with that of the U.S. is ludicrous. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > So who is to blame? Well, certainly the intelligence community failed. Who is to blame for that? The roots of that failure go all the way back to the Church comission hearings and the repeated gutting of the CIA’s capability by a hostile Congress. The CIA was no longer able to recruit people with ‘dirty hands’, which made it impossible to put human assets in terrorist organizations and the Iraq government. The CIA was under constant threats of funding cuts, and took tremendous amounts of criticism from the left in the 1970’s and the 1980’s. > > Yeah, for illegally toppling democratically-elected governments and things like that. You reap what you sow. Don’t blame the left for the evils the CIA initiated. Hey, I didn’t say that the Democrats were _wrong_. I’m simply stating the facts. There was significant hostility towards the Intelligence Community from the left, and it had a profound effect on that agency. It because risk-averse, timid, and stripped of its most powerful asset - human intelligence. The left didn’t like the support for thugs in Central America, so they took away the CIA’s ability to recruit people who had ‘dirty hands’. But it’s hard to infiltrate terrorist organizations in the first place, and even harder when you’re not allowed to recruit anyone who has committed a crime. Tends to rule out a lot of terrorists. This is what happened. The last time the CIA was wrong about Iraq, it went the other way. The U.S. thought Iraq was a long way away from a nuclear bomb, and when the inspectors went in after the Gulf War, they were shocked at how advanced the Israqi nuclear program was. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > The occupation has been riddled with mistakes, but let’s make something clear - this constant criticism of Bush going into Iraq ‘without a plan’ is just not true. There was a plan. There were many plans. > > Just not good ones. How can you say that? Famine was avoided. The oil fields were protected. The Turks were kept out. The dams were secured. The oil ministry was protected (this was necessary because of the records kept there - like documents regarding the oil-for-food debacle). > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > I knew the occupation would be a bit of a balls-up - it’s inevitable. But it’s a necessary evil. It’s just one of the hard things you have to muddle through when you are at war, just as the U.S. had to occupy countries in WWII. > > It was an unnecessary evil in an unnecessary war. Why can’t you compute this fact? BTW, the occupations of Germany and Japan were cakewalks compared to this. This whole argument is about whether or not it was an unnecessary evil. You don’t get to just assert that as fact. I happen to think it was. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > That’s why it is an opinion. One that I have formed from a couple of decades of being involved in foreign policy debates. > > That doesn’t leave you with much of an excuse, does it? You know, having to resort to cheap shots just makes you hard to take seriously. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Germany was still a mess five years after the occupation. It was still in rough shape ten years after the occupation. So was Japan. > > Ragtag armies were not still shooting the shit out of us. Do you think Iraq will be pacified within 5 years? I’ll make that bet with you. I don’t think it will be ‘pacified’, because that’s not what the coalition’s job is. The coalition’s job is to make sure it’s _stable_ with a reasonable govenment firmly in place. Iraq can fight its own insurrection once it has the ability to defend itself. By re-defining ‘success’ as Iraq being totally pacified, you make the war sound impossible to win. But ‘success’ is a lot more achievable than that. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Echoes of the occupation still reverberate in Germany 50 years later. I don’t think anyone believes that the Middle East will be like Nebraska in a year, five years, ten years. Maybe it will be peaceful, democratic, and prosperous in fifty years, if we do this right. > > And the US will be bankrupt. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard the term “cost-benefit analysis”? Stop trying to be patronizing. Iraq isn’t going to bankrupt the United States. If Iraq costs 75 billion a year it costs about as much as the Department of Education. One quarter the cost of the farm subsidy. Half the annual cost of Bush’s tax cut. In 1945, U.S. military spending hit 37.9% of GDP. During the Korean war is was somewhere around 20% of GDP. Right now, defense spending is about 3.5% of GDP. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Another reason why Iraq was the right target, by the way, was because it was the most stable dictatorship in the region. There is real possibility for reform in Iran, so the correct position to take there was strong diplomacy aimed at fostering a peaceful democratic revolution. But not only was Saddam in a lock-solid position as dictator of Iraq, he had a line of succession already in place. There was no real prospect for change in Iraq for decades. And as long as that maniacal family was in power in that country, it would give an excuse for the dictatorships surrounding that country to maintain their large militaries, build their own WMD, and deflect attention away from their failed policies by scapegoating the U.S and Israel. > > This is actually not a bad argument. Thinking along such lines might be part of a complete plan for protecting our interests in the ME. But were we sold such reasoning? No. Is the rest of the plan drawn up? No. Has a cost-benefit analysis been performed? No. Is this part of the plan succeeding? No. Will it succeed somewhere down the line at an acceptable cost? Doubtful. This is exactly the kind of policy the president can’t ‘sell’ to the world. It’s still correct. As for whether there are followup plans, how do you know? How do you know a cost-benefit analysis was not drawn up? > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Look, even outside the war on terror the Middle East is a powderkeg. Over time, it is also unstable. …If the area erupts in flames in fifty years, can you imagine the destruction that could happen? > > Yes. We need a good plan, don’t we? We don’t have a good plan. Fantastic. Let’s hear yours. Seriously. I’m ready to be convinced. I think this administration has screwed up a number of things, and if you can show me a better plan, I’m listening. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > The U.S. has a large strategic presence right in the home of the terrorists. Terrorists have been flinging themselves at the buzz-saw of the U.S. military and getting chopped to pieces, rather than flinging themselves at American civilians. > > These are bad reasons. Remember that these are immature people whose raison d’etre at this point is flailing at whoever best serves the psychological purpose. We were obviously a target on 9/11. But we are now an even bigger target, with more people pissed at us that ever before. While some terrorists fling themselves against the buzzsaw, others are planning their next gig. I guess we fundamentally disagree with how to handle the underlying phenomenon of incredibly pissed-off, consumed-with-hatred people. My choice would be to use the full portfolio of the 36 strategies. Afganistan would have been a great first step: showing the muscle you talked about. Certainly, getting bin Laden would have been nice, too. But then we should have continued to outthink and outsmart the terrorists with attacks, feints, diplomacy, spying, perhaps assassinations, etc. The Bush Plan is the pumped-up retard’s plan: lots of big booms (with concomitant big costs) but very little effectiveness. You sure do have a low opinion of the people of the middle east. They’re just a bunch of vicious children, huh? Hey, I’m all for doing lots of spying and assassinations and diplomacy and all the rest. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to give me details. Anyone can say that they’d do better and avoid alll the mistakes in the rear view mirror, but at some point they actually have to tell you how. And not just by saying they’ll ‘bring in allies’. or ‘do it smarter’. What’s the plan? What happens next January? What are your first moves? To what end? I think I know Bush’s plan. I agree with some of it, other parts I’m skeptical about. But overall it seems relatively sound, with room for improvement. I have not the foggiest notion what John Kerry would do. Some days he talks like a hawk, saying he’s going to kick Iran’s ass. The next he’s saying that the money spent in Iraq would be better spent on domestic programs, and that the war on terror is largely a police and intelligence matter. He thinks Saddam was a threat on even days and no threat at all on odd. It’s incoherent. So explain it for me. In detail. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Something else to think about - there has been a lot of talk about why Saddam refused inspectors even if he didn’t have WMD. It seems so irrational. Well, the main reason is because he thought he could get away with it. > > No, I think the reason here is the obvious one, and the one that Bush himself gave: Saddam wanted the inspectors out so that he’d have the option of producing weapons in the future. And you’re okay with that? As long as the inspectors didn’t find explicit stockpiles of weapons, Saddam was free to go? > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > The U.S. had backed down from threats so many times in the past twenty years that it became an article of faith among many that it was a paper tiger. The lesson of Somalia was that all you had to do was drag a couple of dead soldiers through the street, and America would turn tail and run. > > Bull-oney. You have Haiti, Kosovo, revenge attacks against Libya, etc. etc. as counter examples. You have Gulf War I for kraissakes. You are totally off base on this one. There are just as many counterexamples and they are more recent. Like the total non-reaction to the attempt at bringing down the WTC in 1993, the failure to do anything about Khobar Towers and the U.S.S. Cole. One of Bin Laden’s deputies has said that Bin Laden was planning more attacks on the west coast, but was startled by the speed of the U.S. response. He expected the usual long debate, waffling, and then a couple of missiles fired at a chemical plant somewhere. He had every reason to believe that would be the case. > [@](#): > > Bush can’t talk coherently about Iraq. He’s demonstrated that he is not a thinker. He has no plan, at least not one that he can convincingly articulate. The cost-benefit relationship is entirely unclear. He is not a particularly effective speaker when it comes to detail. He doesn’t know how to communicate it very well. That is a shortcoming. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/48 "2004-10-10T06:46:11Z")
> [@](#): > > Sam… have the debates really made you this desperate? Desperate enough to be the lone ranger for the Bush clan, to feel you need to move this rock up the hill all on your own? I enjoy your prose. It’s well written. Impressive, really. Kudos. But, honestly – why do you feel the urgent need to carry water for these bozos? Serious question. Why can’t you just understand that I happen to agree with the policy? I could give a rat’s ass about Bush. If Kerry could articulate a better plan and make me believe he’d be serious about it, I’d switch in a second. There are a lot of things I don’t agree with Bush on. I think his medical ethics are suspect, and capable of doing real harm to our ability to improve our lives through medicine. His relious beliefs make me leery. I do not like his profiglate spending. If the Democrats had fielded someone like Sam Nunn this year, he’d win. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/49 "2004-10-10T08:45:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Remember this is a region in which people have said that Democracy cannot happen - that the people are not suited for it, and that they need strong men to guide them. Iraq will make a valid counter-example. But ultimately, the change has to come from within the middle east. I grant you that, if the Iraq democracy works, it will be a wonderful thing, at least for the Iraqis. As to whether this will help “cure” the region, I highly doubt it. Turkey is right there and has a fairly decent and stable government, the existence of which has not automatically cured the region of its political, cultural, and economic ills. I don’t see why adding one more country will do the trick. Further, whether Iraq goes straight alone or with the whole region, it is still unclear what investment is required of the US and whether it will have been worth it. > [@](#): > > If you’re right, this is going to get very bloody. If the people of the middle east cannot be reasoned with, if they keep spittingg out jihadists by the thousands, if they are ‘mentally ill’, then there is going to be a major military conflagration there within the next twenty years. I think it’s worth trying to help them out of their dilemma first. The question is whether the current plan, if there is a plan, will result in a better scenario. To me the project thus far seems incompetently conceived and performed with merely a lone buttock. I guess we just disagree. You see plenty good happening, while I see nada good happening. Hmm. > [@](#): > > Abu Nidal was released by the French, and was living in Baghdad. Ah, so typical of the French. Yes, they are ridiculous in this manner and quite adept at slitting their own cultural throats, as their immigration policy demonstrates (be “nice” to people from the ME by letting them immigrate but then treat them like garbage and keep them in ghettos so that they get _really_ pissed. Brilliant.) > [@](#): > > Al Qaida attacked the U.S. numerous times, including almost bringing down the world trade centers in 1993. There was virtually NO retaliation. The weirdest thing about that is, after 9/11, no one seemed to recall the precedent. HelLO, they tried this before! What’s the big surprise? Return head to sand and/or colon. Regarding retaliation, however, then, as now, it’s not so simple. Afganistan was a great move, an obvious move, nicely executed (at least at first). You had a direct connection to the perpetrators, a rotten regime that could be (predictably) defeated, and an opportunity to show the military might of the USA (“muscle”). But such opportunities for proportional retaliation do not always present themselves, and when they do they do not always lead to the desired result. Israel has been shaking Palestine around like a rag doll for decades now, but things just keep staying in the same shit shape. > [@](#): > > What was the retaliation for the Khobar towers bombing? For the U.S.S. Cole? For the attempted assassination of Bush I? Look, this isn’t just a problem with Democrats in the past. When the Beirut barracks were bombed, Reagan’s response was to withdraw from Lebanon. Clinton lobbed some missles at a training camp in Afganistan. There have been other minor relatiations. I admit that it wasn’t enough. But here is the sad fact Sam: No one has yet devised the definitive strategy for dealing with this scum. I will agree that Iraq, in the twisted mind of Bush, is a kind of attempt to do so, a crude pouring of physical energy in that general direction. But the only difference between Bush and his predecessors is that they spent less blood and treasure failing than he has (speaking of the Iraq portion of the strategy specifically: it’s a failure thus far. Further, some of the defensive measures the Bush admin. has taken are good, though still inadequate). > [@](#): > > The Gulf War is a bit of an exception, except that at the end of it Saddam was still in power, still building palaces, putting pictures of George Bush in tile on the floor so he could walk on it. GHWB had the perspicacity to avoid the current mess. He also cared about international opinion and America’s general standing in the world, which his does not (who operates under the fantastic justification that he’s making “tough decisions” instead of stupid ones). > [@](#): > > That may characterize the hard-core jihadists that already exist. I’m talking about stopping more people from moving in that direction. Bin Laden is a romantic figure, in part because he has managed to inflict damage on the U.S. and play to the prejudices and fantasies of people who want to believe in him. He needs to be seen by others in the region as a dangerous person who is just helping to bring the hammer down on everyone. We are not succeeding in this regard. Again, what you are describing is general cultural change. Bin Laden is not the only hero the region has known. For the longest time they have idolized similarly bloodthirsty and immoral persons. > [@](#): > > Again, there are things a President can’t say, and one of them is that he’s going to invade a country in order to put pressure on its neighbors. But he certainly went through the litany of other justifications, it’s just that no one bothered listening to him. They just accused him of ‘incoherence’. I don’t agree that he was accused of incoherence at the time. He spoke clearly and explicitly about the WMD threat. That was the main selling point. As president of the US, Bush did not have the right to go to war so as to fulfill his own private and secret strategy (using Iraq as a base to keep other nations in the region in line and your other speculations). He sold WMDs as the main issue based on crap intelligence. He was wrong, he has botched the war, and now we have a quagmire. It happened on his watch and, more importantly, was caused directly by deficiencies in his leadership. Whether or not any good will now come of the adventure is hardly relevent. Bush’s failures heretofore completely disqualify him as a candidate for Commander in Chief. > [@](#): > > It’s the best chance for a democracy, but that doesn’t mean one will happen. But if it doesn’t, then we’ll know that we at least tried. No, I am not satisfied with this reasoning. I don’t want to try inasmuch as I don’t think it’s possible. Nor has Bush provided anything in the way of convincing reasons that A) things will work out well and B) that it was worth the cost in blood and treasure. > [@](#): > > Because if those countries can’t be reformed, then there’s going to be a lot of bloodshed in that region in the future. Because there will be more attacks, and one day there will be one big enough, like a biological or nuclear attack, that all the gloves come off and we don’t even try to do things with minimum casualties. We’ll just flatten them. I think before it gets to that point we at least have to try our best to convince them to change. I don’t agree with the logic here. Even if you achieved great success with democracy in the region, you could still have significant terrorist activities in one or more countries. If they do a suitcase nuke, who are you going to bomb? The democracy you helped create in the first place? And retaliating with nukes would just piss people off even more, so that people in the surrounding countries would do anything for revenge. In fact, that’s what we’re seeing right now: people from Iraq and Syria and Iran and elsewhere getting more jazzed on jihad, going into Iraq to blow shit up. It’s a real mess. My strategy on this: Poor as much resources and manpower and brainpower into making goddam sure that no nuke or anything similarly destructive _ever_ goes off in the US. Then, deal with entities in the ME with as much acumen as you can while avoiding as much as possible thowing fuel on the fire there. You could even call that “my plan.” > [@](#): > > Yes. He spoke on many occasions about the brutality of the Iraqi regime. He spoke about the threat to Iraq’s neighbors, and to the brutality of Saddam on the Shia and Kurds, and how Saddam’s own people had to be protected by the U.S. air force lest he commit genocide on them. You just werent’ listening. These are all no-brainers. And there is also a no-brainer reply: The US does not have the monetary and political resources to physically remove every shitty regime from power. N. Korea was approximately 50 million times more dangerous than Iraq but we chose Iraq. Iran was approximately 679 times more dangerous than Iraq, but we chose Iraq. Mugabe was shyte but we didn’t run him out of Africa. Etc. etc. > [@](#): > > So how many of them do we have to kill? When does it stop? Precisely what I’m asking. > [@](#): > > Hitler didn’t want to ‘stabilize’ anything. He wanted Lebensraum. The mere thought of equating the motivation of the Reich with that of the U.S. is ludicrous. Although the Hitler of later years seems totally self-destructive, the pre-Barbarosa Hitler does seem to have been engaging in the kind of rational, pre-emptive behavior that the US is engaging in vis-a-vis the ME. Preserving national interests, etc. > [@](#): > > Hey, I didn’t say that the Democrats were _wrong_. I’m simply stating the facts. There was significant hostility towards the Intelligence Community from the left, and it had a profound effect on that agency. It because risk-averse, timid, and stripped of its most powerful asset - human intelligence. The left didn’t like the support for thugs in Central America, so they took away the CIA’s ability to recruit people who had ‘dirty hands’. But it’s hard to infiltrate terrorist organizations in the first place, and even harder when you’re not allowed to recruit anyone who has committed a crime. Tends to rule out a lot of terrorists. You may well be correct. As to what form intelligence should have taken and should take now, I can’t claim any sort of insight. > [@](#): > > How can you say that [there was no good plan]? Famine was avoided. The oil fields were protected. The Turks were kept out. The dams were secured. The oil ministry was protected (this was necessary because of the records kept there - like documents regarding the oil-for-food debacle). IANA military strategist, so all I can say is that the current conditions on the ground–unanticipated by Bush–are a sufficient condition for labeling the plan a non-success. Certainly the US military planned and performed certain aspects of the mission perfectly. > [@](#): > > This whole argument is about whether or not it was an unnecessary evil. You don’t get to just assert that as fact. I happen to think it was. At least the “necessary” part. Not to get into semantics, but this phrase tends to imply something that is more or less obviously unavoidable. That just isn’t the case here. Many people were opposed to the war from the start, and in no wise did it appear to them as “necessary.” > [@](#): > > You know, having to resort to cheap shots just makes you hard to take seriously. It was a jooooooke. > [@](#): > > I don’t think it will be ‘pacified’, because that’s not what the coalition’s job is. The coalition’s job is to make sure it’s _stable_ with a reasonable govenment firmly in place. Iraq can fight its own insurrection once it has the ability to defend itself. By re-defining ‘success’ as Iraq being totally pacified, you make the war sound impossible to win. But ‘success’ is a lot more achievable than that. Iraq _was_ stable under Saddam–as you well explained (lines of succession, etc.). I guess that regime wasn’t “reasonable,” however. Fair enough. Should Iraq turn _un_reasonable in the future then will it be a “necessary evil” for us to invade again? And then again? There is little that is appealing or heartening about this reasoning. > [@](#): > > Stop trying to be patronizing. I am patronizing _without_ having to try. > [@](#): > > Iraq isn’t going to bankrupt the United States. If Iraq costs 75 billion a year it costs about as much as the Department of Education. One quarter the cost of the farm subsidy. Half the annual cost of Bush’s tax cut. In 1945, U.S. military spending hit 37.9% of GDP. During the Korean war is was somewhere around 20% of GDP. Right now, defense spending is about 3.5% of GDP. A good argument with numbers to boot. The question is whether that 75 billion (per year now, right?) is worth it in its own right and whether it could best be spent on other military endeavors. Also, under what scenarios could the war escalate and cost drastically more? I would also be curious to see similar figures for the Viet Nam conflict. > [@](#): > > This is exactly the kind of policy the president can’t ‘sell’ to the world. It’s still correct. I’m sorry, but in our country the president has to get permission from the people to do what he wishes. > [@](#): > > As for whether there are followup plans, how do you know? How do you know a cost-benefit analysis was not drawn up? Of course I am not privy to classified information. But can Bush’s demeanor and rhetoric give any confidence that such intelligent planning is taking place? > [@](#): > > You sure do have a low opinion of the people of the middle east. They’re just a bunch of vicious children, huh? You bet. Politically, intellectually, morally, and economically the region is the shithouse of the world. The countries can’t blame poverty, as they’ve had the oil money. They can cry “colonization” and “Western meddling” to a limited extent but since WWII it would seem they only have themselves to blame for their wretched state. For the record, I don’t generally have a bone to pick with individual people from the region. I’ve met many that are great people. But taken in the aggregate–yeah, bad news. I don’t think they’re going to develop democracy for a long time and think their collective hangups are going to take a few centuries more to solve. > [@](#): > > Hey, I’m all for doing lots of spying and assassinations and diplomacy and all the rest. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to give me details. Anyone can say that they’d do better and avoid alll the mistakes in the rear view mirror, but at some point they actually have to tell you how. And not just by saying they’ll ‘bring in allies’. or ‘do it smarter’. What’s the plan? What happens next January? What are your first moves? To what end? You’re right: I only have the simple little plan I outlined above. But lets get something else clear. Kerry is in a rough spot. Politically he is required to pretend to have this nice neat plan for success in the ME. He is certainly not allowed to say, “Bush fucked things up so bad here that there is no easy way to fix things. But he has done such a rotten job and has played so hard an fast with the truth that you’ve got no choice to vote him out of office.” But that’s the truth! That’s the hell of it. People keep saying, “What’s Kerry’s plan? Huh? Huh!” Here’s the scoop: He doesn’t have one. Nor is his having one a necessary condition for being elected, nor is that in any way a reasonable requirement. Bush’s incompetence alone disqualifies him. As does his recklessness. Who the hell can tell what this fool will do next? He’s a loose cannon. Kerry will inherit the mess, do about as well or poorly as any reasonable person can, and will probably get voted out himself in four years when, surprise suprise, Iraq is still fubar and the economy is not shining like a supernova. But at least he will have done what a decent politician can do and not the proactively stupid and destructive things Bush would have done. That’s the difference. It’s not a barrel of fun and hope, but there it is. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/50 "2004-10-10T11:43:00Z")
**Sam** , I’ve been puzzling about what you’re calling “the larger strategic principles” in this situation. It seems to me that your argument ultimately rests on a collection of metaphors that at first glance sound tough and forceful, but on examination aren’t much different from the vague and fuzzy exhortations of a “leadership training” seminar. “Drain the swamp.” “Be the strong horse.” “Flex a little muscle.” “Start changing minds.” “Get rid of the wasp nest.” Let’s move from this sort of macho rhetoric to a more dull and literal description of the terrorism problem. To wit: There is a very small number of people in the world (perhaps thousands or tens of thousands—a few percent of the number of Axis troops in Poland alone in 1939) who are “terrorists”, i.e., actively engaged in trying to harm the US. (I’m not counting other types of terrorists fighting their own turf wars in, say, Ireland or Sri Lanka or Assam, because I don’t think you’re including them in your Middle Eastern WOT strategies.) These people are widely dispersed throughout much of the world, so that any sizeable population is going to have far more non-terrorists than terrorists in it. It is therefore not possible to use war as a weapon against terrorism without killing or harming a much larger proportion of non-terrorists. Even when soldiers are as conscientious as possible about not shooting or blowing up civilians, wars destroy infrastructure and disrupt societies and foster chaos and crime. The burden of that suffering falls chiefly on \*\*non-\*\*terrorists. This is bound to piss off lots of non-terrorists against the people who inflicted a war on them. Your hypothesis seems to be that non-terrorists will consequently blame the terrorists for provoking that war. You’re expecting non-terrorists to say “The Americans are bombing us—well, we know that they’d never do that without a good reason, so it must be because terrorists are doing bad things, so let’s go make sure that there aren’t any terrorists around here and that nobody’s giving terrorists any support.” That sounds to me ridiculously naive. It seems much more realistic that the non-terrorists will say (and in fact, a lot of them **are** saying) “The Americans are bombing us—it must be because they hate Muslims, or they hate Arabs, or they want our oil. They are clearly a threat to us, so we must do everything we can to fight back against them in order to save ourselves.” In other words, starting wars against populations that are primarily \*\*non-\*\*terrorist is at least equally likely to create **more** terrorists as to reduce terrorism. Even Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that in his [DoD memo](http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/executive/rumsfeld-memo.htm): > [@](#): > > Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us? […] The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists’ costs of millions. […] Is our current situation such that “the harder we work, the behinder we get”? **Sam:** _Again, there are things a President can’t say, and one of them is that he’s going to invade a country in order to put pressure on its neighbors._ And the reason he can’t say that is that he’s not allowed to **do** that. **Sam** , we really can’t just do anything we damn please to the rest of the world in pursuit of our own strategic ends. Acting as though international law and national sovereignty don’t apply when we choose to ignore them is **not** a good way to encourage democracy in the rest of the world. You are using highly colored fifty-years-hence scenarios to try to argue that we can’t afford to abide by the laws that bind us. I don’t think that’s the way to persuade anybody that we’re the good guys. ---
**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/51 "2004-10-10T16:29:08Z")
I don’t care who is to “blame.” I’m looking forward. Regardless of whether or not the invasion was warranted/advisable, it happened. Even if I thought Bush was evil and incompetent, I’d still vote for him if he was the best available option (which I think is the case here and now). During a war, I want an aggressive, hawkish president. I want the job finished and I want someone who is significantly committed to the cause to finish it without equivocating/withdrawing like in Vietnam. Coalition building at this point will be useless. Allies have little to gain and a lot to lose by joining now. What kind of “support” does Kerry possibly think he can get from France and Germany? ---
**Author:** ![AZCowboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/97f17d/32.png) [@AZCowboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AZCowboy)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/52 "2004-10-10T16:57:57Z")
> [@KidCharlemagne](#): > > I want the job finished and I want someone who is significantly committed to the cause to finish it without equivocating/withdrawing like in Vietnam. Stunning. And very telling. “Those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it” ---
**Author:** ![Avenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@Avenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avenger)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/53 "2004-10-10T16:58:19Z")
> [@](#): > > Even if I thought Bush was evil and incompetent, I’d still vote for him if he was the best available option (which I think is the case here and now). During a war, I want an aggressive, hawkish president Is this the most depressing section of any post ever? ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/54 "2004-10-10T17:03:22Z")
Sounds like, “Anyone But Kerry”. Sound familiar? ---
**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/55 "2004-10-10T17:04:29Z")
> [@AZCowboy](#): > > Stunning. And very telling. > > “Those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it” I agree. What was the cost in lives/money of our reptutation as a paper tiger? ---
**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/56 "2004-10-10T17:06:14Z")
> [@Avenger](#): > > Is this the most depressing section of any post ever? ☹ Yes, having to deal with the less of two evils rather than the greater of two goods is depressing. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/57 "2004-10-10T17:41:00Z")
**KC:** _What was the cost in lives/money of our reptutation as a paper tiger?_ Less than the cost of staying on in Vietnam, I’d bet. And I disagree that the US has been perceived as a “paper tiger” up to the invasion of Iraq. I think it’s more accurate to say that we’ve looked like a “blind tiger”, an aggressive beast who can be counted on to swipe at **somebody** when we get hurt but can’t really tell whether we’re hitting the right people. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/58 "2004-10-10T19:13:48Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Sounds like, “Anyone But Kerry”. Sound familiar? Yeah…But the difference is that we have 4 years of experience to base it on! When you probe the “ABK” people, most of them are basing it on RNC talking points. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/59 "2004-10-10T19:39:55Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > If you’re right, this is going to get very bloody. If the people of the middle east cannot be reasoned with, if they keep spittingg out jihadists by the thousands, if they are ‘mentally ill’, then there is going to be a major military conflagration there within the next twenty years. I think it’s worth trying to help them out of their dilemma first. Well, we had a great opportunity in Saudi Arabia. It is a repressive regime that we are on good terms with. Why weren’t we doing more to encourage democracy there? Why do we need to invade countries to try to get democracy going? You may not be bothered by the fact that the U.S. is supposedly fighting for democracy in Iraq while propping up the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia, but you better believe that the people you are trying to convince of your good intentions will be. And, that in the end, is what is going to matter. > [@](#): > > It’s the best chance for a democracy, but that doesn’t mean one will happen. But if it doesn’t, then we’ll know that we at least tried. Yes…But the point is that some of us predicted these problems. I am sorry, **Sam** , but when you are a bull in a china shop like we are, trying isn’t good enough. People aren’t going to be impressed by the fact that we tried, because they know that what we were doing was not being done for noble reasons; they know that it was being done largely for the wrong reasons. And, like I’ve said before, it is a hard enough task…perhaps not possible…to go about spreading democracy in this way **even if that is your sole goal**. However, if you are really motivated by lots of other complicated goals (as our policy in regards to Saudi Arabia certainly makes clear), then it is only an ancillary goal…or at best one of many goals. And, then I would submit that I favorable outcome on this score is virtually impossible. It truly amazes me that the same person who, in the economic realm, argues so articulately for why the government can’t solve all problems and how the government sometimes actually causes more problem when it solves seems so completely blind to this logic when we switch to U.S. foreign policy. Now, I understand why **SimonX** argues so strongly that neo-cons are not true conservatives in any sense of the word. ---
**Author:** ![AZCowboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/97f17d/32.png) [@AZCowboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AZCowboy)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211/60 "2004-10-10T19:40:33Z")
> [@KidCharlemagne](#): > > I agree. What was the cost in lives/money of our reptutation as a paper tiger? Paper tiger? Is that the same paper tiger that Reagan led through the end of the cold war? Or the same paper tiger than Bush I led in GWI? To the substance of your question, I dunno. But I suspect it is significantly less than the cost in lives/money by trying to install our vision of democracy throughout the world - at the point of a gun. How many American lives is a democratic, Shia controlled, Iraq worth anyway? How many more American lives would you have spared to install a democratic government in Vietnam? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-bush-then-who-is-to-blame/268211.md?page=4)