Well, I guess that is true, if you want a lot of death and destruction, you can get an abundance of it if you pay for it - see Iraq.
I wonder if Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, (who has led calls for a full accounting of the costs of the mission) is just as concerned about the money “spent” in Iraq:
If Bush had sold the Iraq War as a humanitarian effort to support a rebellion and Bush felt that he had to rush us into it because Saddam Hussein was about to use his superior military force to kill every last rebel. I’d have been OK with spending a few hundred million dollars on tomohawk missiles and bomber flights to take out Saddam’s military.
If he decided to lend the rebel forces the money to buy tanks and guns from us to help them win the war, I would have been OK with that too. If they wanted to borrow money to hire those independent contractors that we ended up paying for, I would have been OK with THAT too. But I don’t want anyone dying for our country unless our country really needs them to die for us.
I bet we would have done better in Iraq if we had limited ourselves to bombing and selling arms to Iraqi rebels.
When there WERE organized Iraqi rebels, as there were in the south at the end of the Gulf War, Poppy Warsawed them instead of arming them.
I’m thinking in the event that our Libyan intervention does turn out to be a clear success, the Republicans will try to fold it in with Afghanistan and Iraq as one big event rather than say that Bush lost his two wars and Obama won his.
“It’s clear that we were right all along in saying that our policies in the Middle East would eventually be vindicated by success. It’s just too bad that the Bush administration didn’t get the credit it deserved for laying the groundwork for the victory the Obama administration walked into.”
Not only will they say that Bush is responsible for the birth of democracy in the Middle East, but they’ll find a way to insinuate that those who opposed the wars were racists who didn’t believe Arabs could be civilized. I would be surprised if this hasn’t been said somewhere already.
I still find it interesting that despite their blood lust that Dems have been suffering under the pussy label since the start of the cold war. Modern day cruise missile liberalism aside, what if Obama or the next Dem POTUS just straight up invaded and conquered a country? Would the Pubs all the sudden turn into 19th century style isolationists? Would the Dems call the Pubs anti-American for opposing it? The rhetoric would have to change, but it wouldn’t flip around instantly either, could it?