The past tense of the verb “to lead” is spelled led. I know it sounds the same as lead, meaning the metallic element, but they’re two different words.
Otherwise, your posts are spot-on. I mean, as far as spelling goes.
When it comes to content, they’re a truly impressive expression of the bizarre fantasies of the Project for a New American Century. What amazes me is the way you and the rest of the fellows in your ward keep shifting the details of your elaborate delusional scenarios, in order to wedge in selective aspects of new developments (the parts that aren’t kept out by your reality filter).
This stuff would make a great psychological study – I’d just kind of like to stop using it as a basis for my country’s actual international policies, because it’s really fucking us up in the world for decades to come.
I’m sorry, but this is naive dreaming. This is the kind of thinking that made Wolfowitz et. al. lead us into this war in the first place. What people like this ignore is that multiethnic states where individual actors have strong tribal identities make very bad candidates for Western-style democracies (witness Yugoslavia after the death of Tito). I hate to say it, but some of these countries, which the British colonizers carved up while ignoring traditional tribal boundaries and loyalties, don’t have the right makeup for democracy, at least not right now. And before you accuse me of being a racist asshole, this is a lesson that was taught to me by a Syrian who was explaining (over my protests) why Hafez al Assad had to rule the way he did.
The realists and area experts predicted that without a strong central gov’t, Iraq would descend into chaos. The idealists like Wolfowitz (and you seem to be reading out of his playbook) disagreed. Now the idealists have been discredited, and the war effort has been in large part handed over to the dissidents like Petraeus, which may be why we are at long last having some success. But at what a cost!
I’d like to hear Chouan’s response to the women’s rights issue, which is both very obvious and very significant.
Iraq fell into terrorism, factionalism and chaos once the Hussein dictatorship was destroyed. And even if some of those problems are dying down, I think there is still a serious lack of infrastructure and services. That’s not going to convince a lot of Middle Easterners to overthrow their own governments.
It’s complete crap. How can people traveling to Iraq to join terrorist groups and bomb people be a good thing?
I just want to point out that the Mother’s March Against Cognitive Dissonance is accepting contributions in its continuing stuggle against CD, the number one threat to the Republic.
I don’t even know how to really make sense of the title “Victory on all fronts,” because, as I see it and others have phrased better than I, this “situation” was entirely of our own doing.
What are we talking about - somewhere around $500 billion and nearly 4000 military deaths so far?
-Do you believe there was no alternative to waging war when we did? If you believe war was the best of possible alternatives, please explain why?
-Even if the war stopped today, would you think any results worth the cost?
-Could similar results have been achieved at somewhat lower cost?
-Do you believe there was $500 billion of waste to cut from government spending over the past 5 years to pay for this? Or do these costs simply not matter? If we wanted our government to spend $500 billion, is this the way you would have most preferred it to be spent?
-Do you believe it is a desireable function of our government to overthrow foreign sovereign governments with which we disagree? Do other governments enjoy the same prerogative? What should the standard be for deciding when to do so?
-Was Iraq the greatest threat to the US 5 years ago? Was Hussein the worst ruler in the world 5 years ago? Should we invade and overthrow any other governments?
If you believe, as I do, that the entire exercise was unnecessary, avoidable, and reprehensible, then to say things are getting somewhat better while denying the tremendous cost seems a little silly, if not disingenuous.
There’s a fundamental problem with the Saddam was a monster argument, and I agree that he very likely might have killed more Iraqis (and possibly others) than the US has, and in more torturous ways. Not to mention his sons and what they might have continued doing to young girls and what-not. But that said, none of it was any business of the US government. Just because you barge your way into someone’s home, destroy it, and then clean it up real nice doesn’t mean you’ve done something good.
You are declaring something that needs another 10 or 20 years to even begin to decide. Ask yourself this: If 5 years after we pull out from Iraq, it craps out again, would we go back in? If not, then we shouldn’t be there now.
You have completely ignored the negative effect this ridiculous war has had on the standing of the US with the rest of the world. That includes her friends as well as her enemies. In the case of her friends, we have lost trust. In the case of her enemies we have gained many more than we have been able to kill.
The Iraq War was fought to find and destroy WMDs. That was the only front. By the definition of those who mongered it, it was a failure from the git-go.
Ignorance, fear, stupidity,revenge and an utter lack of an understanding of world history led Mr Bush to invade Iraq and persuade the Congress to go along.
I believe we should (quietly) arrest, confine and/or kill terrorists when and where we find them. I’m OK with punishing the Taliban. But Iraq?! I don’t even know where to start. If the world muddles through this mess, it’s no thanks to Mr Bush and no thanks to my country.
When I see you and your fellow advocates filing for Visas to go live in Iraq, I’ll believe the BS of how we’ve made it a better country. Of course Hussein was an evil ass. In no way does that justify this war.
On an entirely unrelated note, I’ve heard that al-Qaeda is building up a dangerous presence in multiplayer online RPGs. Seriously, they’ve got training camps in there and everything. Some authorities have already concluded that Saddam’s WMDs were smuggled out of Iraq into the enchanted land of Norrath in Everquest. Furthermore, there are definite verified rumors that Iran’s secret nuclear enrichment program is hidden somewhere in the World of Warcraft.
Now that we’ve achieved victory in Iraq, we should pull out the troops and do something about these very imminent dangers to America. Or are we to wait until after the terrorists have assembled their dragon armies? And what about all the helpless peasants suffering under the iron boot of feudal tyranny? Let us not be distracted by defeatist liberal whining about how these countries aren’t “real.” Can’t you see the victory in Iraq? Of course you can! And the threat from the terrorist orc legions is just as authentic. 9/11! Patriotic Americans, write your congressmen now and demand that the troops be redeployed immediately: first home, and then to the game console!
It’s interesting that conservatives only consider the underlying causes of terrorism when they’re trying to justify starting a war. Anyone else who does that is accused of appeasement, of hating Ameica, of wanting the terrorists to win.
The main issues that motivate the terrorists are Western intervention in the Islamic world and Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinians.
Does anyone know how many Iraqis were killed by Saddam’s regime between 9/11 and the US invasion? You’d think he’d have laid low a bit, especially given the sabre rattling that begain around 9/12.
Well, maybe. It kinda looks like the Palestinian issue is a bit of a false front for many of these groups, its kinda like being in favor of puppies and Mother’s Day, very few in the Islamic world are unsympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians.
And certainly the political interference of the Western world is an important issue, but I tend to think that cultural interference may be more important, though more difficult to actually pinpoint. There is a Calvinist killjoy streak in just about every major religious grouping, but seems very prominent in Islam. Their turds aren’t tapered, but clipped, because their Nixons are so tight, they slam shut, they make American tighty righties seem like Wavy Gravy. Like the Puritans, they are haunted by the fear that somewhere, someone is having a good time without actually praying for forgiveness.
If you define “success” as spending $500 billion to cause the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (by accounting methods that the U.S. has believed in other cases) and the displacement of a couple of million as well as the deaths of ~4000 of our own soldiers and the maiming of 10s of thousands more, to convert a country ruled by a tyrrant but one who was no serious threat to us to one that is a failed state in a virtual state of civil war and a haven and training ground for terrorists, to provide the sort of animosity in the Islamic world that is a recruitment banazza for al qaeda and other terrorist groups, to distract us from the difficult process of ensuring stability in post-war Afghanistan thus allowing the terrorists and tribal warlords to regain some of the ground that they had lost there, to help further entrench the hardliners in Iran, to evaporate all the goodwill that most civilized nations felt toward the U.S. in the wake of 9/11 and turn it into distrust and animosity, and to totally undercut the U.S.'s moral authority in the eyes of most of the rest of the world turning us into a rogue state that creates pretexts to flout international law and invade a sovereign state, then without a doubt, the Iraq debacle has been a resounding success.
Great post, but in fairness we have also seriously degraded Iraq’s ability to make WMDs. Let’s be willing to post the positives along with the criticisms.
