arlos wrote:And I cannot countenance naked aggression and imperialism, which is what I regard the war in Iraq to be. The entire list of horrible offenses could be translated whole to other dictators over the course of time, yet I don't see us fighting in, say, North Korea right now, do you?
Iraq was seen as weak and easily conquered, a source of oil that could be tied tightly to the US, etc. The complete utter lack of post-war planning and how far they missed the mark in their expectations of results is terrifying. I remember Wolfowitz going before Congress and saying that the war wouldn't cost the US taxpayer one dollar. How about the promises that we'd be greeted with cheers and flowers, and everything would be wine & roses?
You could tell that what the administration's priorities were immediately after the war. Did any US troops move to secure the museums? The power infrastructure? The water infrastructure? Hell, ANY socially important infrastructure to the average citizen? Nope. Guess where they DID go secure though... That's right, anything to do with oil. The looting and rampant destruction of infrastructure immediately following the end of phase 1 made us look like idiots, and quite thoroughly showed the average citizen that we weren't interested in their day-to-day welfare, nor that we were capable of keeping order.
Besides which, I consider Iraq to be a complete distraction from the real war on terror, and indeed, to create far more anti-US sentiment and more recruiting draw for terrorists than would have been the case if we'd never gone. Look at what's happening now in Afghanistan, which we WERE right to go to: Taliban is slowly taking back the country piece by piece, it now produces 80% of the world's opium and heroin, we never got any of the senior Taliban leadership, nor Osama, etc. How much better would we have succeeded in there if we'd sent 50,000 troops instead of the initial 10,000 or the current 20ish thousand? The fact that they knew they were going to invade Iraq in advance prevented the administration from agreeing to send a REAL force into Afghanistan from the beginning.
As for Saddam, yes, he was a psycho, but what he wasn't is COMPLETELY stupid. Even if he DID end up developing a WMD, the odds of him using it on the US or Israel is effectively zero, as he would know damn well either one of us would turn the country into radioactive glass in retaliation, even were it a terrorist doing it, as we'd immediately assume he'd given it to them. This war was sold at least partially based on the stricture that Saddam was an imminent threat. He was nothing of the kind.
Yes, war is sometimes necessary. Afghanistan is and was necessary. Iraq was NOT. It badly damaged our standing around the world, and has done nothing but serve as a giant recruiting poster for Osama and his ilk. One of the worst blunders of foreign policy ever.
-Arlos
Those are good points. In fact I would go as far as to add that Iraq (even under Saddam) was a bit more "liberal" than what Al Quada would like - which in turn means that essentially Al Q would have posed a threat to his power. Keep in mind that the terrorists don't care WHO they kill - muslim or otherwise - especially muslims that don't conform to their idealism (e.g. women completely covered, etc).
I suggest to you that Saddam considered Al Quada more of a threat than a friend to his power structure.
However, the point here is not whether Saddam should have been removed from power. In MY opinion, yes, he should have. He was / is a bloody dictator. Therein lies the point. It's not whether Saddam should have been removed - but - WHO should have done the removiing.
I'd venture to say that our foreign relationships would be a LOT stronger if we stopped sticking our nose in where it doesn't belong (despite what Mindia thinks - we DO it a lot). We play games with the governments of other countries. Funding warlords then sending in troops when said warlord goes Enter the Dragon once in power. We topple governments then FORCE democracy on people who never asked our help, people who may very well NOT want to be democratic. Go ask the Russians how they feel about democracy - all you have to do is go the mile long bread lines that have resulted from essentially our actions. And, we then stand back and wonder why they hate us. Gee I don't know...
