Why has Bush switched from hunting Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, to threatening military action against Iraq and Saddam Hussein?
Did I miss something? It seems like Bush is trying to soften up public opinion through the media with talk of “weapons of mass destruction” and attrocities against Iraqi people. Surely this kind of thing has been going on for years. Why does this pose more of a threat to Western interests now, more than say, one or two years ago?
If military action is taken against Iraq, then many innocent lives will be lost. If more sanctions are imposed then the poorest people will be the ones who will starve, not the top people in goverment.
Is there any evidence of Iraq having nuclear capability or attaining it soon? Unlikely, I would think. How much of a threat to western interests does Saddam Hussein really pose?
I agree that Bin Laden and his terrorist buddies should be hunted down, and I think good progress has been made along this path already. Having said that, Bin Laden is still at large and I haven’t read anything about him fleeing to Iraq in the last few months. So, at what point did public enemy number one change from Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein?
I don’t claim any specialist knowledge about Iraq or Al Qaeda, so please don’t flame me too much. I am asking these questions in the interest of fighting ignorance, and I just looking for some reasoned arguments and responses.
What has changed is that now there is a much greater level of public support for the idea than there was.
It is simply Afghanistan writ large … should Clinton have sent the Marines into Sudan to take out Al Qaeda, instead of just attacking with cruise missiles after the bombings of the American embassies? Many, if not most, will say yes. Could he have done so? No - it required a spectacular attack on American soil to galvanize public opinion and make the notion politically palatable.
Quite a bit. The regime is expansionist in a region vital to American interests. It is always in the interests of major powers to maintain a balance of power in important regions - compare with the Napoleonic Wars, the World Wars and, more controversially, the Crimean War and Vietnam.
Saddam Hussein doesn’t pose any more of a threat now than he did ten years ago. But the hunt for Osama isn’t going very well, so Bush needs something else to distract everyone from the lousy economy and the corrupt CEO’s.
I mean, Jeez, am I the only person who noticed how Iraq suddenly went from being a minor nuisance to a HUGE :eek: MAJOR :eek: CRISIS :eek: right after the corporate scandles broke?
(And this is definitely a Great Debates thread. I’m sure it’ll be moved shortly.)
No, you’re not the only one by a long way. Many people I have spoken to have noticted this also.
What I really don’t get is how these weapons inspectors are supposed to search an entire country for these elusive “weapons of mass destruction”? Are we expected to believe that Saddam Hussein can’t find any hiding places, assuming that he had bombs or warheads that he wanted to hide?
This dossier that the UN has flown back to New York is something like 12,000 pages. 12,000 pages of what, exactly? Isn’t this just the Iraqi regime buying time because they know full well that sooner or later Bush will strike, with or without support from the UN?
OK, so maintaining the balance of power for the greater good justifies a military strike, on a nation who’s people have already endured suffering under an un-elected dictator?
How about the balance of power between Palastine and Israel? There’s an unstable region if every I saw one. Hardly a week passes without a Palastinian kid being shot dead for breaking a curfew, or a Palastinian suicide bomber spilling innocent Israeli blood.
I’m not trying to side-track the issue, I’m questioning the motivation behind the decisions made by Bush and his advisors - decisions that may have far reaching consequences.
Any interval of undisturbed time allows thr proprietor of WMD research to get just that much further along. Is your argument that, since Clinton threw in the towel on it, Bush should as well?
We’re doing the niceties.
samarm, I’m inclined to believe that no nation on Earth has made a greater effort than that of the U.S. to explore ways that the denizens of the Middle East can learn to live together. The major problem with our efforts has been that we’ve been letting the donkey lead the cart, i.e., the most diverse nation in the world has been trying to formulate an action plan that caters to these Mid-East troglodytes plans for segregation.
woops, im not in general anymore, sorry bout that, to make up for it
saddam would never dare attack the US because he has a country to (somewhat) look after. If the attack us, we attack him. However, with bin laden, if he attacks us, who do we attack this time? we have no afghanistan to go after, as long as he escapes, it was a free attack. that is why bin laden is more dangerous
America is a large and powerful nation. If it is decided that two people are uber-dangerous, then so be it. Get 'em both. (And their respective groups/nations)
Note also that I don’t buy, and will never buy, this “nation who’s people have already endured suffering under an un-elected dictator” stuff. There are an awful lot of people in Iraq who support the regime whole-heartedly (and a lot who passively accept the situation)… if there weren’t, Saddam wouldn’t last two minutes.
It’s a bit like some of the post-WW2 revisionism regarding Germany. No one will deny that there was some resistance to the Nazis - but to hear some people talk, you’d think that Hitler single-handedly dominated a nation of deaf, dumb and blind Sunday-School teachers.
No, it’s just that you weren’t paying attention before. Iraq has been in the U.S.'s sights since 1998 when the Clinton administration adopted ‘regime change’ as the official U.S. policy against Iraq, due to the growing threat Saddam was becoming. Bush mentioned Iraq as a problem before his election, and began talking about Iraq constantly soon after 9/11. Iraq was labelled part of the ‘axis of evil’ almost a year ago.
And it’s a false dichotomy to say that the U.S. has chosen to move the fight to Iraq and away from al-Qaida. The fact is, the two are not incompatible. The U.S. is perfectly capable of maintaining a maximum-effort front against al-Quaida and Iraq at the same time.
Sam, do we really have to trot out this tired old chestnut every time the subject of Iraq is raised?
The US Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, which called for regime change through funding Iraqi dissidents. And, yes, Clinton signed it. Funding dissadent Iraqis was and isn’t controvertial, why wouldn’t Slick Willy sign up for it?
On the other hand, the Bush administration has called for invading the Iraq and toppling the government via armed force by U.S. troops.
Ignoring the rightness or wrongness of any of the above, it’s quite dishonest, IMHO, to argue that they are even remotely the same policy.
And really, Sam, how on earth can anyone say that there is no new or stronger message being spewed by this administration since about August 2002 or so regarding Iraq? Please, let’s be a little honest here.
Sam
IMO, things DID change dramatically after the Axis of Evil speech. There was no such rhetoric, and in particular, the new rhetoric was aimed not at disarming Saddam but at invading the country in order to remove him from power. It is clear to me that this move (while its merits and demerits open to debate) has a strong political motivation. One could argue that this move is the right move both politically and for the nation, but, please let’s not pretend this was on the Bush agenda all along.
Yes, the administration stepped up its rhetoric around the State of the Union. But frankly, the reason it wasn’t that big a debate a year ago is because it takes two to debate, and the Democrats repeatedly refused to engage in it. They wanted to talk about the economy.
As the election approached, and it became clear that the Democrats needed to address the issue and get it behind them before the election, they started talking about it. And that’s when all the coverage started. It was a change by Democrats, not Bush, that caused the Iraq issue to heat up in the months before the election.