I would pick neither, because when you start deciding who should stay or who should go among foreign leaders you begin playing a very dicey game – I’d guess the majority of the world would like to see Bush and his dangerous policies removed, but that is a job for US voters only (although any more crazy wars and that may change!). IMO the best way to resolve the Kosovo problem was to introduce a measure of force in the affected region (not light up the entire Serbian night sky) in order to put an end to the ethnic cleansing (short term solution) and follow that up with foreign-sponsored UN-backed mediation, integration exercises or division of territory, and so forth (longer term solutions).
As we see these days, bombing Serbia accomplished nothing. On the other hand removing Milosevic was hardly a solution. Milosevic isn’t around now, hasn’t been for years, and there are still problems in Kosovo! That tells me removing Milosevic would at best have brought about a brief lull in the cleansing, or possibly a worsening of the situation in the ensuing chaos. Milosevic isn’t the sole cause of the problem after all, there are ethnic tensions all over the former Yugoslavia following Tito’s death and Albanians taking over fringes of the former Yugoslavia states simply aren’t going to help.
So as far as I can see both approaches (bombing into submission and removal of the head of state) were completely inappropriate solutions to the problem. However, between the two, I suspect that bombing Serbia was the politically safer option of the two – NATO thus reduced the problem to a one-sided war as opposed to meddling in the politics of a former Soviet satellite with very strong ties to China.
The problem is that that was precisely what they got wrong. They offered totally inadequate justification for their actions to begin with; then they couldn’t even get their story straight – one day this was about defending against another 9/11, at one stage it was about proper disclosure then it switched rapidly to removing Saddam whether Saddam offered disclosure or not, then it was about secret weapons programs, then breach of UN resolutions, then someone hit on the idea of human rights as a central focus once everything else had fallen through… previously human rights had been the side dish served up by Bush and Blair to complement the other efforts, but they found themselves resorting to it in the end when support for their other claims proved non-existent, and thus they prepared a whole meal out of a few leaves of lettuce. Which seemed to suit the propagandaphagi just fine, unfortunately.
It really was a half-assed affair. Not on the military side, since no one can fault the overwhelming might of the US military, rather on the items that require a bit more constructive thought and long-term planning. Not to mention a semblance of honesty.
No, paying attention to swift military success is a good thing, I don’t imagine you can have too much of that. However military success is not all, it has been remarked often that the battle for the hearts of Iraqis was at least as important if not more than the battle for Iraq itself. This was something that wouldn’t be planned by the military anyway, at the most US forces would have helped in the implementation of these plans, but not much more than that. Meaningful plans didn’t even exist – that is the problem.
Well, I am no military expert but I certainly never thought Saddam’s forces would pose any significant risk. We were already pretty sure he didn’t have meaningful chemical or biological weapons, and we further knew that over a decade of sanctions had reduced his military machine (already severely taxed during the Gulf War) to hulks of rusting, sand-blasted metal. Saddam was simply not a threat in any discernible way. I do remember some Arab nationalists foaming at the mouth at the thought of how the US would be thrashed in Iraq etc., but I don’t remember any credible source actually predicting these kinds of problems. The closest I can come to it is some media outlining possible outcomes scenario by scenario, from best to worst, but what actual credible predictions of doom do you recall?
I don’t believe that is the case at all – either that or you talk to too many nay-sayers. The military setbacks that a few people fantasized about didn’t happen because they couldn’t happen, even had US forces been substantially smaller. The US simply didn’t plan for the aftermath at all, which is pretty standard for Bush et al. They went into Iraq expecting to be automatically welcomed as saviours, and were surprised when they ran into resentment. I’ll tell you one thing they did well: the propaganda component of the attack was good, dropping hundreds of thousands of leaflets in Arabic explaining that they didn’t want to hurt Iraqis etc., that was definitely a sound move. Beyond that, there were no immediate post-Saddam plans for anything other than securing the oilfields. That proved to be a sizeable problem and contributed significant setbacks.
On the last item, it is too early to tell, we may need to check back in a year or few. On everything else, yes, securing the oilfields was a good move. But only securing the oilfields while all over Iraq chaos reigned suggested to me and a few billion others that the interests of the US in Iraq centred around oil and little else. It suggested little regard for the human condition, for cultural and religious heritage, national identity, etc. It really wouldn’t have been a problem if, once Baghdad fell, the streets and the hospitals (never mind the museums, holy sites, etc.) had been secured along with the oil fields, but Rumsfeld really missed a good opportunity to show he cares.
I can grant you the first, although as I said the Kosovo affair could have been much worse than it actually was – in particular there was comparatively little fallout, suggesting the problem was in the end well-managed. The second point, concerning Iraq, will require more support. We’ve seen an impressive display of a strong and technologically advanced military, but other than that traces of professionalism have been few and far between, as discussed.
As are most results. But think about it: while Saddam was in power, Al Qaida couldn’t set foot in the country, much less use it as a haven – now you have what appear to be Al Qaida and various other fundamentalist fighters flocking to Iraq, and US forces don’t have a hope in hell of controlling the country’s huge borders. So with the removal of Saddam, the darker elements come creeping in to set up shop. On the whole, I’d take Saddam for a few more years along with a reasonable, international resolution to the problem as opposed to a hasty, strictly speaking unnecessary attack.
In the Soviet Union political changes and fragmentation without sufficient market reforms caused a drastic collapse, with the economy leading the way downwards, which is why organized crime grew rampant. In a state of chaos warlords and mafia bosses will always emerge and thrive on the lawlessness (just look at Afghanistan!).
It’s possible, though Saddam in old age still had an iron fist and his sons would similarly have brooked little crap, brutal as they were. So the above remains a what-if for now. Yes, democracy is better than dictatorships, no arguments there.
Don’t you think it’s important to have a good reason before engaging in highly suspicious, dangerous, potentially objectionable, and extremely expensive behaviour that infringes on another state and is guaranteed to bring about a rise in animosity towards you? The whole issue is that the president and his fellows lied repeatedly to have their way in Iraq, and still today for no good stated reason! Would China and Russia be justified in attacking the US on the grounds that Bush and his Neocons simply needed to be removed? The argument can be made that both the US and the world would be a better place without those guys; what gives the US the right to engage in such a course of action, and not Russia and China?
In a democracy, more honesty ought to be forthcoming than that with which the US population and the world in general have been presented on the Iraq affair.
) but I am unconvinced that the majority of Albanians were pushing for such a solution before figures like Milosevic and Tudjman started showing them way and befoere Milosevisc and cronies began applying the iron boot. Or in other words, I think the actual separtists were enormously energized by their foes.
