James Lileks has a piece today on the war and its critics that is worth reading (scroll down a bit, although the first few paragraphs about his daughter culminate in a nice insight into diplomacy).
James can certainly speak for himself, but his point is that there is a war on, and wars are all about who wins, which means that anyone who cares about the war has to pick a side sooner or later. He hopes that we win (as do I). While it is certainly possible to criticize a war effort in order to help it succeed (and indeed, such criticism is very helpful to ensuring success), it is clear, and has been for awhile, that some critics of the war do not particularly care if we win or lose. Some are quite open about their desire for us to lose, others seem simply not to care that the result of their preferred policies is the advancement of terrorism.
Quick sample, but you really should read the whole thing:
I can’t help but come back to the central theme these edits imply: we should have left Iraq alone. We should have left this charnel house stand. We should have bought a wad of nice French cotton to shove in our ears so the buzz of the flies over the graves didn’t distract us from the important business of deciding whether Syria or China should have the rotating observer-status seat in the Oil-for-Palaces program. Afghanistan, well, that’s understandable, in a way; we were mad. We lashed out. But we should have stopped there, and let the UN deploy its extra-strong Frown Beams against the Iraqi ambassador in the hopes that Saddam would reduce the money he gave to Palestinian suicide bombers down to five grand. Five grand! Hell, that hardly covers the parking tickets your average ambassador owes to the city of New York; who’d blow themselves up for that?
Would the editorialists of the nation be happier if Saddam was still cutting checks to people who blew up not just our allies, but our own citizens? I’d like an answer. Please. Essay question: “Families of terrorists who blow up men, women and children, some of whom are Americans, no longer receive money from Saddam, because Saddam no longer rules Iraq. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Explain.”
The same people who accuse America of coddling dictators are sputtering with bilious fury because we actually deposed one.
Lileks’ piece fits nicely with Thomas Friedman’s op-ed in the New York Times, in which he reaches the reluctant conclusion that France is not our friend, is not our ally, but is instead acting as our enemy.
It’s time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy.
If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America to win in Iraq), and if you watch how France is behaving today (demanding some kind of loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government, with the rest of Iraq’s transition to democracy to be overseen more by a divided U.N. than by America), then there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq.
Now, I tend to have a different view of events than Friedman (France’s obstruction at the UN did not prevent a “real ultimatum” from being put to Saddam; that had already occurred), but his larger point is, I think, sound.
Wars, among their many, many faults, do have this virtue: they are enormously clarifying. This war is revealing who places other causes, whether transnational progressivism, anti-Americanism, narrow political self-interest, or even the preservation of their age-old view of themselves and the world, above the cause of winning this war.
The stakes are very large. The immediate stakes are, of course, the extermination of the current terror network before it gets its hands on WMD. Rest assured that, without this war, the Islamists would obtain these weapons – they fervently desired them, had the money to obtain them, and had close ties to governments that have them and are seeking more. In the corrupt cesspool of Middle Eastern politics, it was only a matter of time.
The larger stakes are, of course, changing the “root causes” of Islamist terror. The so-called “neo-con” strategy being pursued by the US addresses the root causes of terror by identifying the prevailing corruption, oppression, theocracy, tyranny, poverty, and ignorance in the Mideast as the root causes, and attacking those root causes at the source – the governments of the Mideast. Without some change in the current cast of characters, no improvement in the Mideast will be possible and Islamist terror will continue to be with us. Regime change throughout the Mideast is a necessay, but not sufficient, condition for the end of the Islamist terror networks.
Opponents of the war bear the burden of either demonstrating that the terror network and its state sponsors are no threat to the West (palpably impossible after 9/11), or coming up with a viable alternative strategy for triggering regime change throughout the Mideast. I await such an alternative strategy.
Not every issue has to be seen through the prism of the terror war, but those who address themselves to the war, either as diplomats, heads of state, or pundits, need to understand that their actions will aid one side or the other, and need to think very hard about which side they want to see as the victor and whether they are helping, or hurting, whoever it is that they want to win.
Its amazing how much drivel keyboard warriors can type using only one hand, if you know what I mean and I think that you do.
Iraq was contained, and even Rummy and Cheney admit they had nothing to do w/ 9/11. That puts the burden of proof on you to justify invading Iraq. We were attacked by Saudi terrorists operating out of Afghanistan. That’s not an open invitation to invade any country where they wear turbans.
Scott demonstrates an inability to comprehend the strategic scope of this war. One might as well say of Pearl Harbor “We were attacked by Japanese aviators operating out of the open ocean. That’s not an open invitation to invade any country allied with, or occupied by, Japan.”
If George Bush could have snapped his fingers on September 12 and magically killed every al Qaeda terrorist, that would not have ended the Islamist terror network and the threat they pose to the US. Remember, the first attack on the WTC was not carried out by al Qaeda, either, and neither was the Lockerbie bombing, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, or other attacks on the US and US citizens.
The enemy is not just al Qaeda, it is the entire Islamist terror network and their state supporters. If you do not understand that, then you truly do not understand this war at all.
Scott, do yourself a favor and read ENTIRE Lileks post (you can skip the “toddler introduction”) including links.
I think a big problem with Bush and Blair is that they haven’t fully explained the “drain the swamp” argument for overthrowing Saddam. They have largely left it to media analysts and the like. I haven’t read a single Bush speech where he said something such as, “We need to create some viable democratic, liberal states in the Middle East and Iraq is the place to start because it is already a relatively secular, modern place and what’s more, we can win”.
Whether or not Saddam aided the 9/11 hiijackers or not is besides the point. He aided folk who swam in the same murky waters as those who did, and his WMD ambitions were a sufficient threat to the region for the coalition to bring him down.
And for what it is worth, while I accept that nation-building can be a dangerous venture, the desire to rebuild Iraq as a liberal society and halt the evil regime of Saddam was a noble enterprise. I should hope that even Mr Cattanach would accept that. Or maybe he doesn’t really give a damn.
“We need to create some viable democratic, liberal states in the Middle East and Iraq is the place to start because it is already a relatively secular, modern place and what’s more, we can win”.
I’m guessing they don’t think they can say something like that, given the fantastic touchiness of diplomacy in the region and the nominal status of some states as allies, however shaky. But it’s the only rationale for the war that I can accept.
The appalling behavior of Saddam won’t do it, since we’re leaving so many other appalling regimes in power at this very moment. We can’t afford to right all the wrongs in the world – just the ones that threaten us directly.
So, we go in and make a clean spot in the festering mess that is the Middle East, then stand back and see what happens. Iraq was as good a place to start as any, since the earlier Gulf War was never really finished (and what a colossal bit of bad judgment on our part that was!) and they just might be secular enough to support a decent nation.
Weasel said:
“The appalling behavior of Saddam won’t [justify the war], since we’re leaving so many other appalling regimes in power at this very moment. We can’t afford to right all the wrongs in the world – just the ones that threaten us directly.”
This is the classic, “If we can’t do it all, then we shouldn’t do anything” argument.
Nothing ventured, nothing lost, eh, Weasel? Why do you bother going to work in the morning knowing that at the end of the day, you still won’t be a millionaire?
Bah.
There is an old saying, “it is a bit late to discuss a swamp drainage scheme when you are up to your ass in Aligators.”
Creating a clean spot is a nice idea but you need to make damn sure you know how to clean and not just shove stuff under the bed.
I’m not at all convinced at the moment after Afganistan that we’re anywhere close to knowing how to do that.
Paul, S. Weasel can answer for himself, but I think you are being unkind. I don’t think Weasel is suggesting that we should do nothing because we cannot do everything.
BTW, just in case Scott has still got the tinfoil hat on, let’s not forget that virtually all major intelligence agencies leading up to the war accepted that Saddam had sought to acquire WMDs, and the Blix report said it could not account for all the weapons. Given the urgency of the situation we face, that was a good enough reason. The paradox is that if Saddam really did have no WMDs and had not been trying to get them, he dug his regime’s grave by being so devious.
Moral of the story – if you play funny games with us, you are toast. I trust Syria, Iran and the rest have duly taken note.
Germany, Italy, and Japan had an explicit alliance. Iraq and Al Queda had no alliance whatsoever.
That’s what we were told at the time. Now that you had your war, we’re hearing how doubts were buired for political reasons.
We could use some perpetual motion machines, too.
“Pick a side!”
The hell I shall. A pox on both their houses. No government has my support, at all, ever.
Repeat after me
OCEANIA IS AT WAR WITH EURASIA!
OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EURASIA!
OCEANIA WILL ALWAYS BE AT WAR WITH EURASIA!
OCEANIA IS ALLIED WITH EASTASIA!
OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN ALLIED WITH EASTASIA!
OCEANIS WILL ALWAYS BE ALLIED WITH EASTASIA!
BB DOUBLEPLUSGOOD!
BB DOUBLEPLUSGOOD!
BB DOUBLEPLUSGOOD!
OCEANIA IS AT WAR WITH EASTASIA!
OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA!
OCEANIA WILL ALWAYS BE AT WAR WITH EASTASIA!
OCEANIA IS ALLIED WITH EURASIA!
OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN ALLIED WITH EURASIA!
OCEANIS WILL ALWAYS BE ALLIED WITH EURASIA!
BB DOUBLEPLUSGOOD!
BB DOUBLEPLUSGOOD!
BB DOUBLEPLUSGOOD!
Germany, Italy, and Japan had an explicit alliance. Iraq and Al Queda had no alliance whatsoever.
They had a pretty decent working relationship, as documented by the Lileks piece. More importantly, the exact contours of which Islamonutter group is linked to which tyranny are irrelevant to me – the whole stinking mass is intertwined, incestuous, and has to go to ensure the safety of the West.
We could use some perpetual motion machines, too.
This verges perilously close to a statement that the peoples of the Mideast are simply incapable of living in viable, democratic, liberal states. Thus do “progressives” betray their true priorities. Please, Scott, distinguish your position from “What can you expect from the wogs, anyway?”
A pox on both their houses. No government has my support, at all, ever.
A profoundly irresponsible statement, in my opinion. The foreseeable result of this attitude is the continued expansion of terrorism and the eventual deploying of WMD against our cities. You may not advocate that result, Julian, but those are the consequences of your proposed stand in the world that we live in.
Wishing the war will just go away doesn’t work in the real world, so I ask Julian and Scott – do you hope we win, or do you hope we lose? If you hope we win, how will your position on how to prosecute the war bring about our victory?
Ah, the great socialist argument of “if you think our government program will fail, that only proves you are a racist.” Can government programs cure inner city poverty? If you doubt that, is it because you hold the people who live there in contempt?
The War on Terror is no different than the War on Drugs, or the War on Poverty.
All “evidence” the Bush canp doesn’t have the guts to expose to public analysis. They can put up or shut up about this.
I hope we quit (no invasions of Syria or Iran, and hand Iraq over to somebody Iraqi and get the hell out). You present a false choice – what you want is “winning”, so either I hate my own country enough to want us to lose or I have to agree with you.
If we invaded Canada tomorrow, would you support it? If you opposed it, would that mean you wanted us to lose and wanted Canadians to kill as many US soldiers as possible?
On a point of historical accuracy, Germany declared war on the United States immediately following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor.
I hope we quit (no invasions of Syria or Iran, and hand Iraq over to somebody Iraqi and get the hell out).
Somebody will win this war, Scott. Your proposed course of action is a little misleading – I doubt very much that we plan to invace Syria and Iraq absent some pretty signficant provocation. Both nations are liable to start to come our way without invasion.
Handing Iraq over to somebody Iraqi and getting the hell out is exactly the plan of the Bush administration. They want to hand the joint over after laying the groundwork for a decent society.
Would you prefer to hand it over in its current condition, which would be a recipe for civil war and the rise of another warlord like Saddam? In my book, that would be a defeat for the US, and would do nothing to rein in the terror networks, would remove the pressure from the rest of the Mideast to reform, and would put us right back on the path that led to 9/11, only with smallpox and nukes next time.
Scott, I took your earlier statement to mean that viable, democratic states in the Mideast are about as likely as perpetual motion machines. To my mind, that is the same as saying they are impossible, which is hard to distinguish from saying that the people of the Mideast are incapable of responsible self-governance. We can argue about the means for reaching this end, but you seem to believe the end is impossible a priori.
BTW – “with us or against us” may be a false choice, but only if you believe that it is possible that the Islamist terror network will continue in existence without mounting attacks on the West. I do not believe that is possible. When your enemy says “its you or us,” then they have the power all by themselves to force you to pick sides.
The Islamists have thrown down this gauntlet, so I don’t think it is a false choice. If you choose to ignore the Islamists, they will come for you sooner or later, bearing germs and nukes.
Nono, Paul…I supported action in Iraq.
I just didn’t support it for the purely humanitarian reasons, however healthy it is to lance a boil like Saddam. I don’t trust anyone who claims to act from motives of pure altruism. Including us.
R.C. Dean lambastes Scott Cattanach for making a claim that “verges perilously close to a statement that the peoples of the Mideast are simply incapable of living in viable, democratic, liberal states“.
Well, the peoples of the Mideast are certainly capable of migrating to viable, democratic, liberal states — but whether they are capable of truly creating such states themselves is an empirical question, not a moral issue. They certainly haven’t created any such viable, democratic, liberal states up to this moment in time .
So if “winning the war” means ousting Sadam, it certainly has been won. But if “winning” means establishing a rule-of-law democracy in Iraq, the US will have their work cut out for them. As Frederick W. Kagan points out in a recent article “War and Aftermath”, the belief that “Network-Centric Warfare” is enough is a pipe dream:
“[The Iraqis] must be persuaded not merely of the shocking awfulness of American power, but of the desirability of pursuing the policies the U.S. wishes them to pursue. And they must not be driven away from the pursuit of those policies by the horrors and opportunities presented by a chaotic, lawless vacuum created by our precision weapons. To effect regime change, U.S. forces must be positively in control of the enemy’s territory and population as rapidly and continuously as possible.”*
Even that sounds too optimisitic – since it probably means having a US soldier or policeman behind every Iraqi male aged over eight for the next fifty years, if not longer. Does anybody, apart from the odd wishful thinker a la R.C. Dean, seriously believe that the US has the guts or the capability to make an investment anywhere near this order of magnitude?
………………………….
*http://www.policyreview.org/aug03/kagan.html
All “evidence” the Bush canp doesn’t have the guts to expose to public analysis. They can put up or shut up about this.
Scott, are you familiar with the terms such as: “Intelligence”, “Classified Information” or “Protected Sources”?
Don’t bother answering, if we would find a nuke in Iraqi desert with notarized Saddam confession that he personally supervised building it and that the intended target was a SuperBowl game you would respond that it was planted there by the CIA in order to justify Subjugation of Sovereign Nation by The Yankee Empire in order to Steal their Oil, and anyway it was never used so where was the threat?.
Concluding paragraphs of the article Lileks links give this explanation of administration’s silence on the subject:
“The Bush administration has thus far chosen to keep the results of its postwar findings to itself; much of the information presented here comes from public sources. The administration, spooked by the media feeding frenzy surrounding yellowcake from Niger, is exercising extreme caution in rolling out the growing evidence of collaboration between al Qaeda and Baathist Iraq. As the critics continue their assault on a prewar “pattern of deception,” the administration remains silent.
This impulse is understandable. It is also dangerous. Some administration officials argue privately that the case for linkage is so devastating that when they eventually unveil it, the critics will be embarrassed and their arguments will collapse. But to rely on this assumption is to run a terrible risk. Already, the absence of linkage is the conventional wisdom in many quarters. Once “everybody knows” that Saddam and bin Laden had nothing to do with each other, it becomes extremely difficult for any release of information by the U.S. government to change people’s minds. ”
I believe that the concern expressed by the author is misplaced. There was never a chance that the “Hate America First” or “Bush is Hitler” crowd would ever, ever accept any evidence that would not conform to their world-view. See Scott’s posts above.
Luckily, the majority of us dumb Americans fervently hope, as Lileks does, that we will win. The alternatives are to horrible to contemplate. And not only for America.
The exact same “your limited government ideology is no longer relevant in our Age of Terror” argument is being made for both the war that you support, and the expanded domestic police powers LS seems to oppose. Why am I living in a dream world concerning not occupying Iraq, but you’re not concerning not having video cameras on every corner?
Do you want the police to fail (i.e. lose) because you want to deny them expanded domestic powers? You’re either with the police or agains them – we can’t risk anything else in times as dangerous as these.
They need us holding their hands for the next generation or so (the amount of time being tossed around for how long we’ll be there)? What’s the matter, are you too much of a racist to think Iraqis can handle their own affairs starting right now?
Scott Cattanach:
That’s interesting information, but I wonder how you know this? That you have inside knowledge of both Al Qeuda and the Iraqi Baath party is a bit much to accept just on your assertion, so perhaps you could explain a bit about how you came about this knowlede?
Oh, I see, what you really meant was you hadn’t yet seen evidence that convinced you there was a connection. Now that’s instantly believable, but hardly supports the cagegorical denial you started with!
And later you say this:
Well, there’s government programs, and there’s government programs. One can be firmly against Welfare As We Still Know It without believing that if the government removed all police from the inner cities things would improve there.
In other words, the fact that they were caught last time they lied makes them afraid to show the evidence this time. Very comforting.
Look, our govt cannot say “I can prove anything I wish to claim, but the evidence is classified, so shut up and obey”. Actually, they can and do say that, but you cannot expect me to buy it.
Ok, ok, “no known, and obviously no public, treaty like the Axis had”.
The “yellowcake” story was beaten to death before. Last time I heard British intelligence was standing by its claim that Saddam was seeking sources of uranium from Africa. There was also indication that the original report had nothing to do with Niger, but rather with Congo, and then it was twisted to fit the “Bush lied” stereotype.
But please believe in what you wish. Bush lied, people died etc.
“In other words, the fact that they were caught last time they lied makes them afraid to show the evidence this time. Very comforting.”
Sorry, Scott, that still hasn’t been shown to be a lie. The US was relying on British intelligence. The British still publically stand by their evidence.
Since you can’t tell the difference between a lie and the truth, I don’t think I can trust the rest of your statements.
Why This Bush Lie? Part 2
Washington despises an incompetent liar.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Wednesday, July 16, 2003, at 4:34 PM PT
During the past week, the press has swarmed over the Bush White House demanding to be told the circumstances that led the president to say, in this year’s State of the Union address, that Saddam Hussein had “recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” This information was based almost entirely on documents that the CIA and the White House knew were false. That makes Bush’s statement a lie. But, as Chatterbox observed yesterday , we can count at least six other lies told by or on behalf of President Bush in this calendar year alone. That doesn’t include two addled lies Bush uttered while trying to extricate himself from Yellowcakegate?that the CIA didn’t doubt the uranium story until after he gave the speech, and that the United States went to war because Saddam wouldn’t let inspectors into Iraq….
One of the things I like about Tom Friedmann is that he is one of the very few prominent columnists whose commentary is mostly about foreign affairs rather than domestic politics.
Actually, Friedmann is part of a very small minority even among all columnists, including bloggers. Most commentary about Iraq makes one point about the situation there and uses it to make the case that the Bush administration, or the administration’s critics, better shape up. Now, I happen to disagree with some of what Friedmann said today about France; I think French policy toward the United States in Iraq is largely the product of just two men, Chirac and de Villepin, and that it is way over the line to start calling France an enemy of the United States as Friedmann does today. France will still be there after Chirac and de Villepin are gone. But at least Friedmann recognizes that France is pursuing a policy for French reasons, not because it is on one side or the other of our domestic policy debates.
For the record, I think American critics of the Bush administration have an obligation to acknowledge that American national interests are at stake in Iraq now. Most though not all of them do, and in fairness this administration has never distinguished itself with frequent or skillful efforts to either explain its policy or develop support for it. But those who support the administration’s policy in Iraq, and I am one of them, have responsibilities too. One of them is to look at all of the assumptions behind our policy with a critical eye, not simply to defend all of them because their critics tend to be critics of Bush also.
One of those assumptions involves the likelihood of Iraq becoming a stable democracy in a timeframe of no more than a few years. The assumption may be well-founded, and certainly at this point we have little choice but to proceed as if it were. It is no more than common sense to point out, however, that it is extremely, astonishingly, optimistic –optimistic about Arab culture; optimistic about the interaction of different religious and ethnic factions in a state not ruled by ruthless, arbitrary force; optimistic about Iraqis’ ability and willingness to take full responsibility for political decisions after 30-odd years of living under a Stalinist system that made all decisions for them; optimistic even about the potential for long-term stability in a country with a very large proportion of young men who have easy access to sophisticated weapons. Do Iraqis have a right to live in freedom? Well, sure. But whether they are actually able to keep the freedom we give them is another question, the relevant question, and the odds against the answer being an affirmative one are very, very long.
That’s one issue, maybe the most important one, but there are others. I will mention just one, which we can expect to be hearing a lot about very soon: reconstruction and its costs. Administration critics will be taking the position that these are higher than they need to be because of crony contracting by Cheney et al. I think they will be wrong, or at least mostly wrong. But reconstruction cost estimates are bound to be higher than they need to be for other reasons, the biggest one being that we have never reconstructed Iraq before. The CPA is burdened (as always) with a shortage of people able to speak Arabic and negotiate timely deals with local (i.e. cheaper) contractors, and may be burdened as well by existing regulations relating to government procurement and contracting that require giving preference to American firms.
It is not running down the war effort to point out that the CPA is in way over its head in this very important area or to suggest ways of bypassing inconvenient obstacles on the way to reaching the objective of a reconstruction that works for Iraq and that we can afford. Off the record of the recent past, though, I expect many of the administration’s defenders to react to such criticism as if it were inspired by a desire to have America’s Iraq policy fail. If they do they will not be doing the administration, or the country, any favors.
Scott, Iraq was not contained in any meaningful sense of the word, given the rather porous nature of it’s borders with Syria and Jordan, and the ability of… oh, the French?… to sell it weapons during the embargo. The continuous flow of terrorists into Iraq as we speak puts paid to the notion that Iraq and Islamofascist groups had no common cause.
As to the rest:
–Posting with your Caps Lock turned on reads as shouting. If you are *trying* to portray a Hyde Park nutter, I suppose that’s your perfect right; but others will value your continued commentary appropriately.
–John Hawkins is a model of forbearance, having given you several comments’ worth before he weighed your abilities at reasoned discourse and found them wanting. For myself, when I see you open a comment string by accusing the author of the article of masturbating at the keyboard… well, I know how I value the gifts of people who open a debate with an ad hominem comment.
Just sayin’…
Oh, dear.
My apologies to Mr. Thacker, for mis-attributing his forbearance to Mr. Hawkins.
Proving, as if anybody needed the proof, that “preview” and “post” are two different functions.
He made one comment that was nothing more than “I don’t believe anything you say”, which I addressed immediately. I don’t see where you get your comment.
RCD said:
Would you prefer to hand it over in its current condition, which would be a recipe for civil war and the rise of another warlord like Saddam? In my book, that would be a defeat for the US, and would do nothing to rein in the terror networks, would remove the pressure from the rest of the Mideast to reform, and would put us right back on the path that led to 9/11, only with smallpox and nukes next time.
All this is true and reason enough to hold the course we have before us in the battle for Iraq. RCD may be implying this but I’d like to elaborate a bit if I may. What disturbs me most about the pull out scenario, particularly when bleated by the bleeding hearts of the leftist world, is that it is immoral.
Those who discuss exit strategies as though 6 months is a long duration for this type of thing are really saying that they don’t mind if our coalition simply chooses not to clean up the mess we helped make. It makes no difference who’s party is in charge at the moment. It would be immoral to not try our damnedest to assist Iraq in becoming a civil and modern society, particularly since we initiated the events that leave them without a functioning gov’t.
Don’t misunderstand me. I was completely behind this effort. But even if I weren’t and considered Saddam a legitimate gov’t, I still couldn’t consider abandoning them unfinished to me a moral or acceptable proposition. For me, it is not an option. That is the exit strategy as I think it should be.
Isn’t that what transpired in Afghanistan? And yes, it resulted in some unsavory characters taking advantage of the situation. Characters who later plotted and succeeded in harming us. But that’s not all they did. They brutilized the citzenry while we turned a blind eye.
How the hell is that the right thing to do in any measure?
CBK
If someone invaded the US, they’d almost definitely be shot at by civilians. Does that make the US a terrorist haven?
If they love us for invading, then the invasion is right. If they hate us and shoot back, then that proves Iraq is a terrorist haven and so the invasion is right.
Scott says:
During the past week, the press has swarmed over the Bush White House demanding to be told the circumstances that led the president to say, in this year’s State of the Union address, that Saddam Hussein had “recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Didn’t the complete sentence begin with something like,
“According to British intelligence”?
It seems to me Noah is lying, as the intelligence was not based on CIA info at all. Look up Bush’s complete speech, Scott. I did. Perhaps Noah should too.
Perhaps the Washington Press Corp should be looking to the East to see what Tony’s position is on this. Last I heard Tony still stands by this.
CBK
cbk, at this point, all you’re saying is “it can’t be a lie, because the governments involved refuse to admit its a lie.”
No. What I’m saying is that I don’t know it is a lie. And neither does Noah and neither do you.
It’s not that difficult a concept.
Furthermore…
If you say it is a lie when you don’t know it to be a lie, that is, well, lying.
Bush Faced Dwindling Data on Iraq Nuclear Bid
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 16, 2003; Page A01
In recent days, as the Bush administration has defended its assertion in the president’s State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy African uranium, officials have said it was only one bit of intelligence that indicated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.
But a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and former administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq….
Scott, I’ve read all about this Bush Lied crap. So far no one has proved it, only “suggested”, “asserted” and lied about it.
If you or anyone can prove it, be my guest. It’s been tried. Believe me when I tell you that if it could be proved, the liberal media here in the States would be aaaaaaalllllllll over it.
They can’t.
I have a whole bevy of liberal chums who rail the same thing. They quote Gore, Dean, Hillary, anyone and everyone who says, “Bush lied”.
Still unproven.
But just because Pincus or Noah or Vander Heuval assert or suggest a thing, it doesn’t make it so.
Just curious…how is it that Bush lied, but nobody seems concerned that Clinton and the entire world’s intelligence community thought much the same, including Blix and his merry band, but that isn’t lying?
And while you are considering that, I could surely find a similar article supporting Bush’s assertions.
Military, intelligence and law enforcement officials reported finding a large cache of Arabic-language documents in Tikrit, Saddam’s political stronghold. A U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said translators and analysts are busy “separating the gems from the junk.” The official said some of the analysts have concluded that the documents show that Saddam’s government provided monthly payments and a home for Yasin.
Yasin is on the FBI’s list of 22 most-wanted terrorist fugitives; there is a $25 million reward for his capture. The bureau questioned and released him in New York shortly after the bombing in 1993. After Yasin had fled to Iraq, the FBI said it found evidence that he helped make the bomb, which killed six people and injured 1,000. Yasin is still at large.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-09-17-iraq-wtc_x.htm
Get back to me when you have something more concrete than unspecified reports that unknown officials have concluded evidence not available to the rest of us to double-check proves X.
“Get back to me when you have something more concrete than unspecified reports that unknown officials have concluded evidence not available to the rest of us to double-check proves X.”
Scott, please take your own advice.
Thank you, Katherine.
Scott, when you find that proof, you should work the WashingPost and NYTimes against one another. Don’t fall for the first bidder, okay?
Is it your stance that to not go to war, we have to prove Bush claims false, instead of him having to prove them true? That the only acceptable proof of Bush lying is a memo from Cheney saying “Dear George, lie thru your teeth.”? He made claims based on evidence that turned out not to justify them. It was later shown that they had good reason to doubt that evidence even before he made his claims.
That’s lying. Sorry to doubt the honesty of your God-appointed right wing evangelical President.
–If we invaded Canada tomorrow, would you support it? —
they’d welcome us in Alberta and other parts, too.
The Canadien military would if only for the fact they’d get to play w/some modern toys.
Ship the Quebeccers back to phrawnce.
–They need us holding their hands for the next generation or so (the amount of time being tossed around for how long we’ll be there)? What’s the matter, are you too much of a racist to think Iraqis can handle their own affairs starting right now?–
show me their Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe and brothers and I’d say yes. It has nothing to do w/racism. It has to do w/living conditions and history. And from what I’ve been reading, they’re not doing so badly.
Do you think the NorKs can handle it once Kimee is gone?
Scott, didn’t I mention Laurie Mylroie and Jayna Davis to you before?
How about Ramzi Yousef??
Did you google and read???
Scott, you are falling for the delusion that WMD was the only rationale for going to war.
The war was justified by the ceasefire agreement, the 17 resolutions, humanitarian concerns, terrorist connections AND wmds. The WMDs were simply icing on the cake.
You should recall that our left-wing hummer-getting filanderer justified lobbing bombs in 1998 on the same premises. Difference is Bush thought it wise to follow through rather than simply bomb a few facilities.
You implied above that if the Iraqis are happy you’d support it.
Well, I offer this:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/18/090013.php
and this:
http://globalspecops.com/view.html
Really, Scott, you should expand your sources of information. Have you read the resolutions? Did you read the ceasefire agreement of 91?
WMDs were the claim that got people to back the war. That and the belief that Saddam was behind 9/11. Neither were true. Just because you personally would have supported the war w/o the WMD issue doesn’t make it irrelevant.
No, what I said was that the person I responded to would use Iraqi happiness or anger as justification for the war, no matter which he got.
How do you know what got people behind the war? Again, you presume omniscience. How lucky you are to know what others only speculate.
I don’t know a single person who thought the war was based solely on WMDs or 9/11.
I also know that the meetings of the US Congress and at the UN focused on far more than WMDs.
Again, I must ask, did you read or hear or watch Powell’s presentation to the UN before the 1441 resolution?
And I don’t think WMDs are irrelevant. I don’t know the whole truth. I didn’t witness it. I’m not privy to all the information that the intelligence community has. AND NEITHER ARE YOU!!!
That is my point. If masses of people, choose like you, to limit their information input, I can’t help that. If you prefer others to think for you, and you prefer to get your news pre-chewed by Pincus, et al that is your privilege. But don’t act like you know things that you couldn’t possibly know.
You act is if all this was based on one single piece of intelligence.
Has the British Intelligence been proved erroneous?
What about the Russian intelligence?
France’s intelligence?
German intelligence?
Blix’s reports that about 95% of Saddam’s inventory from 1998 was unaccounted for as of this past spring?
Do you assert that Powell’s presentation is what decided the issue in the minds of the general public?
“X can’t be true because I don’t personally know anyone it applies to” isn’t an argument.
I never said x can’t be true. I said I don’t know it to be false.
Are you willfully ignorant?
Do you read? And if so, do you comprehend?
Did I not mention previous resolutions? Ceasefires? Discussions in Congress?
Did I mention the world’s intelligence community?
Did I mention Blix’s reports?
Only a fool would think that the public is a monolith that all think the same and decide things the same. I’m not going to pretend to know what “the public thinks”. It is not my habit to pretend to know that which I cannot know. Just because you don’t have a problem with intellectual dishonesty doesn’t mean the rest of us should follow your example.
My only argument is that you are an idiot who makes claims you can’t prove. And further, phrases those claims as though they are factual.
I have been successful in that. You have yet to prove your assertion that Bush lied. But, if you and other’s repeat it enough it MUST be true!
I’m done with you.
I’m sure I’ll read about your “world exclusive” in the NYT when you find your proof.
Bush made claims despite knowing the evidence for them was shaky, at best. That’s dishonest. My failure to disprove them to your personal satisfaction (i.e. my failure to prove a negative, which is pretty much impossible in general) does not make Bush an honest man.
Oh, my yes; war does enormously simplify matters. One need no longer ask, “will this war achieve the intended goals, or indeed, anything anyone involved would have considered remotely likely at the outset?”
One can trust that the need to huddle together in the trenches will tend to obscure the fact that had there been no war, there would be no need to avoid bullets – and no need to listen to the Sargent-Major.
Therefore wars are the favorite tool of those who’s diplomacy has failed. And often as not, they have absolutely nothing to do with the public objective, they have to to do with silencing domestic criticism. In other words, the government seeks out the largest, deepest, suckiest quagmire and then jumps in, knowing that sink or swim, for the duration there can be no patriotic criticism of whatever efforts are needed to get out again.
I’d be the first to agree that the roots of the existing evils in the Middle east is the political culture there, that Saddam’s government was one of several monstrosities.
But you don’t fix a car by shooting it full of holes.
Not even if you don’t CARE about mutuality or conceptuality or ethical considerations, much less international reaction; the approach is simply stupid.
Myself, I’d have surrounded Iraq with cellular towers and flooded it with smuggled and airdropped cellular telephones with web access. Giving people the ability to communicate and do business without being monitored by their own government would have made it essentially irrelevant.
If invasion were truly necessary, I’d have gone about it incrementally; create protected areas, enhance all aspects of local infrastructure, use the resulting influx of population to finance it’s own protection, carry on. It might take five years to convert a threatening nation into a collection of irrelevant cantons, but in the end, there it would be; compartmentalized, quarantined and probably a lot better off. In spots, at least.
Anyway, I’m generally unimpressed about emotional appeals to my empathy about oppressed people elsewhere. I point out that iraqis have some of the heaviest concentrations of civilian firepower in the world; so who’s job IS it to be rid of an oppressive government.
Certainly the fact that they didn’t shoot at Saddam all that much, compared to the current volume of fire directed our way is a damning referendum on how well we are managing to “stabilize” the area.
Yet another triumph of ideological wishful thinking over common sense.
“Bush made claims despite knowing the evidence for them was shaky, at best. That’s dishonest. My failure to disprove them to your personal satisfaction (i.e. my failure to prove a negative, which is pretty much impossible in general) does not make Bush an honest man.”
Bush made claims = a positive
you claim Bush made claims based on shaky evidence
you fail to prove this
you fail to prove he is dishonest
Sam, look at the articles I linked to above, which all point to claims Bush made about WMDs, and point out he had reason to know his claims weren’t backed up by anything as solid as he implied.
If we invaded Canada tomorrow, would you support it?
That would depend on why we invaded Canada. If the Canadians were running out of landfill space for mass graves, torturing infants, gassing the Quebecois, draining the swamps of Northern Canada to exterminate the Inuit, and generally acting like Baathists, yeah, I probably would support the invasion.
One need no longer ask, “will this war achieve the intended goals, or indeed, anything anyone involved would have considered remotely likely at the outset?”
Of course, when the war is a defensive war that has been forced on you by the slaughter of your people, I am not sure that most of these kinds of questions are really very relevant.
Therefore wars are the favorite tool of those who’s diplomacy has failed.
Before diplomacy can work, both sides must desire a diplomatic solution. When only one side wants such a solution, then war is inevitable and it is hard to say that the other side’s diplomacy “failed.” Tell me, graphictruth, did Polish and Dutch diplomacy fail in WWII? Please, fill us in on the diplomatic failures that led to the planes crashing into the WTC. Is our failure to submit to Wahhabist dhimmitude a failure of diplomacy? Because I submit that nothing less would have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
Remember, we did not start this war. Saddam Hussein started the war between his nation and the West when he invaded Kuwait; this year’s invasion merely finished the war according to the terms of the 1991 ceasefire violated by Hussein. Finishing the war with Hussein at this time was also the logical next step in the terror war, which is why we picked the timing we did.
Al Quaeda started its war with the West all by its lonesome, and I simply do not see how the current terror war can be attributed to a failure of diplomacy. We tried diplomacy with these people for decades, and it got us a smoking hole in lower Manhattan.
But you don’t fix a car by shooting it full of holes.
Sic semper tyrannis.
If invasion were truly necessary, I’d have gone about it incrementally.
Excellent recipe for maximum casualties. In addition, this is exactly the kind of “fighting to a stalemate” that will lose a war every time.
Further regarding the Bush Lied/Did not!/Did TOO/twerp!/Fool/LIBERAL thread…
Busharoo’s specialty is not the overt lie, it’s the “undisprovable” allegation.
Go ahead. PROVE you have no weapons of mass destruction. Proving a negative is a literally impossible thing.
Anyway, this is a largely semantic argument, and beside the point.
My concern is not that Bush lied – governments do lie, often for very compelling reasons that really do have their roots in national security. I don’t like it, but I can live with it.
But I’ve become convinced that nobody in the Bush whitehouse is aware that there is a difference between “the truth” and “what we say the truth is.”
The idea that the current holder of the Football of Doom might be sincerely convinced that he’s being entirely, sincerely HONEST with the American People just freaking TERRIFIES me!
I’m sure that will be seen as partisanship, but I assure you that if a Dem as dumb as dubya got into the oral office I’d be equally scathing.
Indeed, had Gore one, I certainly would be.
I am quite astounded at the kinds of things I have read in recent comments. It strikes me that most people who post on Samizdata don’t share Libertarian values. Which is counterintuitive, with all the emphasis in the links section on Libertarian blogs and web sites.
Many of the posts I have read sound like rehashed neoconservative propaganda. If you are a neocon, just come out of the closet.
If you want to understand real approaches to Libertarian foreign policy, look here:
http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=list&type=topic&topic=Foreign+Policy
I mean invading today’s harmless Canada. My point was that you’d both oppose the invasion, but wouldn’t want to see our soldiers slaughtered either. That’s the difference between quitting (deciding what we’re doing is stupid and stopping voluntarily) and losing (being forcibly stripped of decisionmaking power).
My bad. Here is the link again for anyone who is interested…
Libertarian Party – Foreign Policy Archives
“Only a non-interventionist foreign policy will help keep Americans safe from hijackings, bioterrorism, and whatever vicious and evil future attacks such terrorists might conceive.”
Beware of government propaganda, Libertarians say
October 8, 2002
“There’s no way for ordinary Americans to determine whether all of Mr. Bush’s claims about Iraq are true,” said Libertarian Party Communications Director George Getz. “But we do know that past presidents have told the public bald-faced lies in order to whip up war hysteria.”
…
One example is the notorious babies-being-pulled-from-incubators hoax that was perpetrated in 1990 by a Washington public relations firm, with a little help from Bush’s father, President George Bush.
“As the elder Bush tried to rally public support for the war against Iraq, he recounted the horrors that occurred when Iraqi troops invaded a hospital in Kuwait City,” Getz said. “In a nationally televised speech, the president said: ‘Babies have been ripped off of incubators and those incubators [were] shipped off to Baghdad.’
“There’s only one problem with the story,” Getz continued: “It wasn’t true. It had been fabricated by Hill & Knowlton, a PR firm that had been paid $10.7 million by the government of Kuwait to sway U.S. public opinion in favor of the war.
…
And George Bush isn’t the only president to have employed wartime propaganda to trick the public, Getz noted. Lyndon Johnson’s claim that the North Vietnamese fired on a U.S. ship in the Gulf on Tonkin in 1964 was instrumental in getting the Senate to vote for a war resolution, though historians now agree that the shooting incident never happened.
Terrorism is a tool to influence governments, via scaring the electorate. In the absence of governments to scare, it would be a pointless tactic, just stupid and non-effectual murder. By analogy with the famous quote, “terrorism is the continuation of lobbying by other means”.
There is no war.
I hear “terrorists”, but all I see is (a) “clerics” with more mouth than sense, but more sense than balls, failing to convince the rest of Britain’s moslems to rise up in Jihad (they would rather sell you groceries) (b) the security state having a big happy “who needed civil liberties anyway” party.
The western world is not under attack by moslems. It is, at most, “under rant” by a few hotheads, if that’s even a phrase.
There are no WMDs. Iraq didn’t have any. The terrorists don’t have any. They’re a bunch of illiterate backwater arab yokels. They wouldn’t know a nuke from a microwave oven. The nearest they come to microbiology is the infestations upon their own scabrous hides.
If there were real terrorists in Britain or the USA, then they wouldn’t need WMDs. They could drive either country into a blue shivering funk by randomly suicide-machinegunning a few crowded malls, while screaming “allahu akbar!” Far more bang for the buck. There’s nothing effectual preventing them. They haven’t. They don’t exist.
9/11 wasn’t indicative of a national malaise. It was a fluke.
I mean invading today’s harmless Canada. My point was that you’d both oppose the invasion, but wouldn’t want to see our soldiers slaughtered either. That’s the difference between quitting (deciding what we’re doing is stupid and stopping voluntarily) and losing (being forcibly stripped of decisionmaking power).
Well, if GWB just up and invaded Canada for no good reason, I would of course oppose it. He would likely face impeachment, if not a mutiny, so I doubt my opposition would be uppermost on his mind.
Of course, quitting such a war and going home wouldn’t have the dire consequences that quitting and going home would have in Iraq, either. I am quite comfortable opposing offensive wars where there are no US national interests at stake – for example, I thought US involvement in the Bosnian mess was a mistake on both these counts.
However, the terror war is fundamentally defensive – they attacked us, and failing to win the terror war will have catastrophic consequences.
“Only a non-interventionist foreign policy will help keep Americans safe from hijackings, bioterrorism, and whatever vicious and evil future attacks such terrorists might conceive.”
Bilge. The terrorists hate us for who we are. They are in a war to the hilt with us, and have been for decades. The war is on, regardless of whether adopting a “noninterventionist” policy 20 or 30 years ago would have prevented it (and I don’t think it would have). Exercising benign neglect toward an enemy bent on our utter destruction is an excellent recipe for mass slaughter on American shores.
If we withdraw from fighting this war in forward theaters, it will be fought (and lost) in the US. It will be lost in the US because we cannot keep them and their weapons out. It will be lost because such a purely defensive war will mean the end of privacy and civil liberties, and thus the end of what is worth saving, in the US.
As syntax free pointed out, no gov’t has a monopoly on deception.
I called Scott out for what I consider to be unethical behavior.
Maybe Bush did lie. Maybe he didn’t. Point is neither Scott, nor Noah, nor Pincus prove he did. None of them KNOW he did. They can suspect and believe and be as convinced as GraphicTruth seems to be. That still doesn’t make it so. And it doesn’t make it right to frame what you think as if it is something you actually know.
Noah uses Pincus’s (and other’s) speculations to assert that “Bush lied.”
Scott repeats that same speculation as fact.
We have words, gentlemen. They mean things.
I am perfectly ready to say that Bush may have lied. But I’m not ready to say that Bush in fact lied. To do so would be to lie.
Knowingly stating speculation as though it is fact is lying.
GraphicTruth says:
But I’ve become convinced that nobody in the Bush whitehouse is aware that there is a difference between “the truth” and “what we say the truth is.”
Well, I’ve become increasingly convinced that the Scotts and the general media of the world can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction either.
If Scott says Bush lied often enough I should believe him? Talk about the Stalinists tactic (another accusation for Bush). Quantity has a quality all its own, right fellows?
And the most telling aspect of this partisan accusation is the fact that nobody cried “Liar” when Clinton said:
This situation presents a clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere. The international community gave Saddam one last chance to resume cooperation with the weapons inspectors. Saddam has failed to seize the chance.
…
The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world.
The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government — a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people. Bringing change in Baghdad will take time and effort. We will strengthen our engagement with the full range of Iraqi opposition forces and work with them effectively and prudently.
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcripts/clinton.html
And perhaps I am jaded here. I expect politicians to stretch the truth. I’m thoroughly dissappointed in the media’s blatant disregard for their ethical role and even more disturbed that seemingly intelligent people simply eat up what they read without any signs of questioning the validity of the claims being made.
Personally, I’ve yet to be convinced Bush lied. Nor am I convinced he didn’t lie. You know, Heinlein, fairwitness, etc…
“There is no war (…).
The western world is not under attack by moslems. It is, at most, “under rant” by a few hotheads, if that’s even a phrase (…).”
“9/11 wasn’t indicative of a national malaise. It was a fluke.”
Wow! You are putting lots of faith in the official propaganda line of The Religion of Peace, Julian. However, I am not willing to take a risk that you may be wrong. 3000 dead in one hour on one sunny day convinced me that if somebody says that they want me, the infidel, dead, they mean it. If it makes me Cowardly Warmongering Neo-Con NotTrueLibertarian RepublicanBushTrueBeliever (or whatever the current “in” invective is), so be it.
I find it fascinating that the bulk of this thread is made up of backward-looking arguments about whether Bush lied and whether we should have gone into Iraq when we did.
I tend to be much more interested in looking at the current situation and trying to figure out how we get things to turn out as well as possible. Toward that end, I, for one, hope we win, and I am interested in discussing (a) who “we” are, (b) what will count as “winning”, and (c) what the best way is to achieve whatever counts as winning. People who can’t get the Bush lied meme out of their head long enough to discuss these issues strike me as folks who have other agendas going on that have nothing to do with the war.
People who want to argue that Saddam Hussein shouldn’t have been deposed by force of arms have a very, very difficult moral, and for that matter legal, case to make. But, again, this is a backward-looking issue that I am, frankly, bored with unless someone has something genuinely new to say.
Julian raises an interesting question – are we even really at war? I suggest that this is a question for its own post and discussion, because I think it broaches a very interesting question about how war has changed in the last 50 years. I think some of Julian’s factual predicates are shaky, but heck, his last comment is one of the most interesting and original on the thread. At least he’s not boring me with warmed over Bushitler stuff.
I don’t really care what the Libertarian Party thinks, and I have not regarded it as a useful source of libertarian thought for some time. Their foreign policy prescriptions are hopeless in this day and age. I tend to think that national defense is a legitimate function of government, and that forward defense beats the hell out of any of the alternatives on the purely practical and selfish ground that I would rather see wars fought over there, rather than over here.
How many flukes does it take to make a pattern of aggression?
The USS Cole
The US Embassies in Dar Es Salaam. Tanzania & Nairobi, Kenya
The 1st WTC bombing
The Khobar Tower bombing
Is that enough?
CBK
RC Dean baffles me with two posts in response to mine. As Contextfree asks, Is there a LIBERTARIAN in the house?
Apparently quoting me, as he places it in italics, and all other uses of italics are quotations of mine:
“If we invaded Canada tomorrow, would you support it?”
I ask in turn, where the hell did that come from?
Certainly. And when we are invaded by the Greater Mexican Hegemony following the Tijuana Massacre, I will no doubt support our desperately over-matched and depleted national Guard units as they fight a desperate rear guard action to buy time for some actual combat troops to get back home. I’ll support them in the same way any good Citizen will – Passing ammo, since I ain’t fit to shoot and march any more.
But short of that… Oh, you mean the criminal action against the world trade towers? Well, son, you find me someone who’s ACTUALLY responsible for that and make them hold still for a Marine division to have a nice battle and maybe we can call it a war. Me, I call it a criminal act of terror, and crime is dealt with by police action – and actual police, courts and stuff like that there.
Oh, wait, you are REEEELY talking about Just Retribution. Well, son, so do they, so do they. Hard to say who’s fuller of hot air and hypocrisy.
Allow me to correct your Latin. Sic Semper Common Sense.
Breaking something MORE doesn’t FIX it. You do not address humanitarian problems with shrapnel, nor does it improve the lot of the people to remove running water, electricity and communications along with the gumment you disapprove of.
If one is so arrogant as to presume that a better job can be done, it is incumbent upon one to at least DO the freaking JOB!
Good lord, sir, even Lloyd George understood the basic requirements of effective empire.
Who said anything about “a war?” I said “invasion.”
When we invaded, there was no war. A few soldiers got shot, a lot more ran away. We have a war NOW that peace has been declared. When the “war” was happening, what was really happening was an armored home invasion.
What I’m referring to is carving off a digestible chunk and actually digesting it. Then moving on to the next chunk. Refer to Sun Tsu if you think this approach unrealistic, sir.
Now that would be blatant imperialism, and I’d never support it but it would at least have the virtue of being achievable and likely to result in a positive, or at least neutral cash flow.
It’s bad to have to say that one’s government is wrong. It’s far worse to look at a situation and realize that one has to say that given the facts in evidence, that they are freaking INCOMPETENT at BEING wrong. That they would have to improve by several notches to achieve a respectable FIBER, much less the usual SNAFU.
I am not disagreeing with you because you are a neocon, sir. I am disagreeing with you because you are an apologist for morons; attempting to patch the titanic with a wad of bubblegum.
Sir, while extremity in the service of patriotism is no vice, patriotism is NOT willful blindness, no matter what you were led to believe in Civics class after pledging allegiance to the rag.
I refuse to do so – I refuse to worship idols.
I’d be more than happy to AFFIRM my support of the principles expressed in the Constitution. But I won’t blindly follow a flag, any more than I’ll salute the roman eagles. Not to put too fine a point on it, sir, that is not patriotism, it’s superstition.
Apparently, though, you feel that your responsibility is to stand behind the president, whatever he does.
Well, I feel my responsibility is to stand behind the president with a loaded ballot. And if by some circumstance that option is denied me then all our American traditions tell me that it is not just my right, but my sacred duty to oppose that tyranny with my last breath.
Sir, I was born in Canada; of a US mother and Canadian father. A US citizen in such circumstance may walk into any US Council and sign a simple form to be shut of all responsibility, moral and fiscal, for the excesses and embarrassments of their government. I have never done that, though I’ve oft been sorely tempted.
But I was raised in this nation and formed by it; I shall not spare it or you my right to speak to it’s failures.
One last rhetorical question: since when was invading another country at the expense of life, limb and treasure a CONSERVATIVE option?
Bob King
Katherine wonders if it’s fair to criticize Bush for confusing his beliefs with the truth when that’s a common failing of ideologues left, right and middle.
Well, it’s a good question. I’d agree that such wishful thinking is endemic, there are many that would rather be Right or Left than factual, and would be more embarrassed by speaking out of step with Accepted (insert ist here) Thought than to be proven wrong by events.
But pundits don’t have the phone number of the Strategic Air Command. They do not have the ability to order covert operations against sovereign nations. They, in general, get to yammer without actual direct consequence. Therefore, their yammering may be seen as a sort of public good; a commodity in the marketplace of ideas.
Badly injection-molded out of cheap plastic though it may be, it at least serves to point out it’s own lack of quality and may serve for those who can afford no better.
But the president has guns, and bombs and army divisions – and entire agencies devoted to the task of ensuring that, at least privately, he’s no excuse for self-deception.
Nonetheless, results speak for themselves; and I will point to the very book he loves to cite:
“By their fruits ye shall know them.”
graphictruth:
I was not questioning your patriotism, only your approach to this current situation in which we find ourselves.
I think it is foolish and ultimately suicidal to treat the attack on the WTC as a criminal act to be approached with ordinary police methods. That is taking a knife to a gunfight, and will have the predictable results. One look at the ongoing trial of the so-called 20th highjacker should convince anyone of that. If we took your approach, al Qaeda would be untouched in its Afghan base, free to carry on as it has in the past.
I am quite familiar with Sun Tzu, thank you. I have a copy on my desk. Nowhere does he recommend leaving an enemy in power who you have the ability to decisively defeat with minimal cost to yourself.
I am also studying military history. I am fascinated by your belief that we can “invade” a country without being at “war” with that country, and your apparent belief that we could have carved off a slice of Iraq, left Saddam in power, without adverse consequences and with eventual success. What you describe is something very much like a civil war, and reminds me strongly of our strategy in Viet Nam. Fighting a war for any purpose other than immediate regime change is fighting to a stalemate, and is historically an excellent recipe for failure and further war (see, e.g., Korea, Vietnam, arguably WWI).
I don’t know how you fix Iraq without first getting rid of Saddam. We tried squeezing him out with nonviolent means for over a decade and failed. The only sure way to get rid of him was to finish the Gulf War. Tyrants deserve whatever bullets they catch. Tyrants like Saddam are not “fixable”, and their societies cannot be fixed while they are still around.
I don’t blindly follow the President or the flag. In fact, I am very disappointed with GW Bush on a number of fronts, and had little use for any of the military adventures engaged in by various Presidents over the last, oh, 30 years, with the exception of the Gulf War. I happen to think that the current war is justified war of self-defense, being fought, appropriately, in the homelands of the enemy.
“Katherine wonders if it’s fair to criticize Bush for confusing his beliefs with the truth when that’s a common failing of ideologues left, right and middle.”
I really don’t want to continue this, as it is leading nowhere. People who believe that we are at war have completely different perceptions of reality, with according necessary policies, than people who don’t believe so, and we will always keep talking past one another.
But I challenge graphictruth to provide a quote from my posts where I “wonder if it’s fair to criticize Bush for confusing his beliefs with the truth”. I have not thought about it while posing here (now that you mentioned it I will). You must be channeling some other Katherine.
For those who don’t remember their history, we tried dealing with al-Qaeda as a police action for nearly a decade before 9/11. If you believe it was effective, that’s your choice.
There are people in the world who wish to impose their Sharia upon me. Towards that end, they have murdered some of my friends. Their objective makes the oppressive British nanny-state look benign. This seems to be something that many people cannot fathom.
There are other people in the world who wish to impose their totalitarian will upon us all.
Both parties were operating freely within a common region, population and culture. Both parties openly used murder and terrorism.* The entire region was totalitarian and oppressive. The only variation was in the degree of theocracy, from the secular Ba’athists, through the hybrid Saudis to the theocratic mullahs of Iran.
On 9/11, the US was attacked more brutally than it had been in the past. The attack was bloodier than the one that set us to wage total war for 4 years, culminating in the nuclear destruction of two cities. Compared to the historical precedent, our response has been meager.
Instead of unleashing our full power, the Bush administration chose a measured, careful approach. The objective, however, remains the same: the utter destruction of those who attacked us. While Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had distinct power structures and governments that could be overrun, the middle-eastern totalitarians are a scattered, murky bunch. To destroy them, we must change the culture in which they operate. Nothing else will suffice.
Personally, I hope Osama bin Laden is still alive. I hope he is watching, unable to change events. I hope he lives long enough to see our success. I hope he dies of despair as the peoples of the Middle East reject his ways.
* While there is no proven link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, SH was openly supporting terrorists. One example of this was the $25k payment made to the families of suicide bombers.
P.S. It occurs to me that some parties may reject the belief that al-Qaeda is capable of waging war because they are not a government. My response to this is that governments do not have a monopoly on any form of violence. There is more evil in the world than just government. Some of those who reject government are far, far worse.
Sorry, Katherine; one rotation too many of the scroll-wheel confused me. That should be laid at the feet of CBK. Thank you for the correction. 🙂
I’m going to then take that as a springboard to a general comment and a wider reply.
Indeed. Hence my view that at the end of the day, facts and outcomes matter more than perceptions of what the facts oughtta be. I believe that has been my point all along.
I think it clear that the president did not know for sure that Iraq had anything at all to do with terrorism. It’s also clear he welcomed the opportunity the situation presented.
Maybe there’s good reasons in the abstract for getting rid of Saddam – not that we have, or achieved any meaningful set of the “achievable goals” so confidently rummified from a nice safe podium.
But that’s neither here nor there.
In order to combat evil it’s necessary to take risks; that is inarguable. Killing three thousand people to make a point deserves an apt riposte, one that is both telling, and effective beyond question; indeed, beyond the wildest nightmares of those responsible.
And in such straits, the loss of an equal number of combat personnel would not be too great a sacrifice. Or for that matter, even a city I happened to be in at the time. Perish forbid, but there it is.
Instead, our polices have resulted in a climate in TWO nations that are, if anything, MORE favorable to breeding terror unhindered, MORE polarization, less reason for moderate Islam to even clear it’s throat in defense of our position and therefore, this is neither a war nor a police action; it’s simply a tantrum.
And if you will note, the world reacts to it exactly like that.
It’s absolutely necessary to “do something” about terrorism. That does NOT include making the situation worse.
“Doing something” effective will have to include a realistic evaluation of our own contributions to the conditions that allow it to flourish, because we can do something about that.
If it was in our “national security interests” to foster the conditions at one point, well, it no longer is.
If it’s necessary to prevaricate or even lie about what we are doing and why, well, golly gee whiz, I think I can live with that too.
But at the end of the day, I want to turn on the news and see an improvement.
Global stability has deteriorated since 9/11. Both perceived and (we are told) actual security has dropped markedly for all citizens.
At the same time, we have been asked to make considerable donations of our personal privacy, liberty and dignity.
What have we to show of it. Saddam’s head on a pike? Osama’s?
No. Peace? Security? Loot ending up in my bank account? Ok, how about some bread and a circus?
Not even that?
Giving the french LEGITIMATE reasons to feel morally superior annoys me. They at LEAST know how to pander to an electorate honestly.
Dishman says
I hope we win.
Charles Copeland: the peoples of the Mideast are certainly capable of migrating to viable, democratic, liberal states — but whether they are capable of truly creating such states themselves is an empirical question, not a moral issue. They certainly haven’t created any such viable, democratic, liberal states up to this moment in time.
Israel…?
😉
We already do a lot of what you suggest, graphictruth.
And that’s got us where we are today. Time is not on our side.
Look at what’s happening in Jordan and Pakistan.
Really a stunning debate with two sides seemingly talking right by each other. It seems to me that you either believe that we are at war with fascists dressed in religious clothing bent on killing us and all that we stand for because we are a threat to their way of life or you think its not a war, just some low life, mafia type criminal action to be responded in kind, proportional response and all that. I can not get my mind around people who take position number two. he said, she said, they all lied we all died yada yada yada is just a bunch of crap thrown up by unserious people who seem to think that liberal, free Western civilization isn’t really worth defending if some “cowboy” republican is using the same arguments that the “multilateralist” democrat used to justify his actions. If you have a better idea on how to disarm and defang and change the fascists bent on killing us all, then make that argument. But the idea that enemies can be defeated by pulling back and not offending them is not only stupid, it is suicidal. History is replete with civilizations destroyed because they lacked the will to defend themselves. Islamic Fascists have declared war on us, and if we let them win, they will not be so discriminating when they are filling up the mass graves.
Sandy P;
I’m not suggesting that such a cultural conflict would be pleasant, easy, one-sided or without losses; I merely suggest that it exists, and will continue whether or not we view it in ways that are likely to bring an ultimate victory within our lifetimes.
Now, short of literally wrecking western civilization and imposing Sh’aara on us all, I think the conclusion is foregone; the toys and freedoms most want come with certain inevitable costs.
But we can at least restrain our own leaders from wrecking our civilization, removing our freedoms and imposing their own versions of Sh’aara upon us in the name of a dubious “security” that they cannot actually deliver.
Breathe, Keven; breathe.
Or do the text equivalant; hit return every once in a while..
“Really a stunning debate with two sides seemingly talking right by each other.”
Indeed.
“It seems to me that you either believe that we are at war with fascists dressed in religious clothing bent on killing us and all that we stand for because we are a threat to their way of life or you think its not a war, just some low life, mafia type criminal action to be responded in kind, proportional response and all that.”
Well, if by “facists” you mean “people who we really seriously don’t want running our lives” then yep. But then Ashcroft and Wolfowitz and Hilary need to put on turbans. “Facist” is a seriously misused term, but if you were to start flinging it around, it would stick better to the whitehouse.
“Islamofacism” is niether facism, nor is it even that benign. Personally, I think feudalism or tribalism would be better words; the really toxic bits aren’t even in Islam, or indeed, counciled against. “Islamofacism”, indeed, has pretty much the same relationship with Islam as http://www.godhatesfags.com has with Christianity – eg, none whatsover, other than this; from time immamorial, vile people have used religion to exuse the inexcusable.
I can not get my mind around people who take position number two. he said, she said, they all lied we all died yada yada yada is just a bunch of crap thrown up by unserious people who seem to think that liberal, free Western civilization isn’t really worth defending if some “cowboy” republican is using the same arguments that the “multilateralist” democrat used to justify his actions.
If your reasoning as expressed in a presumably libertarian forum is to be taken as the quality of thought nessecary to support western civilization, perhaps it is not worth preserving. However, I’m inclined to give it the benifit of the doubt.
So I oppose our gumment’s efforts to look for Terrorists under the bed by using the Constitution as a handy torch.
“We had to distroy the constitution in order to save it.”
If you have a better idea on how to disarm and defang and change the fascists bent on killing us all, then make that argument. But the idea that enemies can be defeated by pulling back and not offending them is not only stupid, it is suicidal.
Throw another straw man on the fire.
The current situation is analogus to this. Someone – I don’t know who, exactly – firebombs my house and kills my dog and my child. Now, I know that that my kid got into some stuff here and there, but I don’t know with who, or what he might have done or said, and I don’t give a damn, because the guy across the street hates my guts and I hate his. So I get some buddies, break into his house, hang him from a lamp pole, rape his wives and daughters and then call a real estate agent to sell his house on “her behalf.”
This is not addressing the issue of terrorism. But it will make a lot of people who can read force ratios just as well as any other semiliterate person realize that if war is going to come to the Middle East, it will be assymetrical and they are holding the short end of the stick.
So, I absolutely guarentee you that the success the iraqi resistance is having is causing other nations there and elsewhere to include that contingancy in their war plans. You could call it “state sponsored terroism,” as if that were somehow more evil than dropping cruise missiles into civilian areas. Hell, it would be correct, too. But under the circumstace, there is no state in the region where NOT putting that into their war plans and making some overt preparation would be anything other than deriliction of duty.
“History is replete with civilizations destroyed because they lacked the will to defend themselves. Islamic Fascists have declared war on us, and if we let them win, they will not be so discriminating when they are filling up the mass graves.”
Yeah, and you know something? They ususally lost the will to defend themselves after they realized that the ideals and the reality were no longer in shouting distance. Rome fell after it lost touch with it’s own founding principles and started relying entirely on naked force. And after that, well, naked force was the only justification needed. Now, since human beings are pretty good at using naked force, it works well. For a time. But it also provides it’s own justification for others to try their hand at it, and eventually the Roman Empire was nibbled to death by ducks. BTW, I consider Constintine to be one of the ducks himself – and his empire followed the same pattern.
Now I am here to bury Caeser, not to praise him.
BOTH the terrorists and yammerheads that call this a “war on terror” presume they have the right to demand of me a donation of my liberties and my treasure to further their causes, depending upon which border I happen to live behind.
I’m a Libertairan, and I say that they are wrong.
I further say that it’s idiotic to assert that our foreign policy has nothing to do with this situation – hell Bin Ladin was on our freakin’ PAYROLL!
So while it’s an outragious situation and may not be tolerated, nonetheless, if you do not comprehend that we have just been hoist on the petard of our own presumptious meddling, you are delusional.
And clearly that is a common view.
Well, no matter what the common yobbo thinks, none of us may act with impunity. The cliche’ of Libertarianism is that “your right to make a fist ends at the tip of my nose.” This principle IS equally true the other way around.
Neither busharoo nor his cronies get that, and that is why what they are doing is the wrong response, in the wrong place, by the wrong means against the wrong people and will bear no resusts that have any relatonship to what he’s got in mind.
And yes, I too find that when I say things like that, I get incomprehending stares from Right and Left. I just thought that I’d be grokked HERE.
“Anyone who would trade a little freedom for a little security deserves neither.”
Apologies – forgot to spellcheck. Wish I could edit that last post… 🙁
R C Dean,
Not every issue has to be seen through the prism of the terror war, but those who address themselves to the war, either as diplomats, heads of state, or pundits, need to understand that their actions will aid one side or the other, and need to think very hard about which side they want to see as the victor and whether they are helping, or hurting, whoever it is that they want to win.
Here we go again: good vs evil, stooges vs backstabbers, the USA vs the non-USA…
Nobody’s going to win WW4.
But everyone can win peace for all. This doesn’t mean to stay passive: it means getting a broader vision & envergure that’s well beyond the miserable limits of US categories…
How can a backstabbing dwarf like France win such a blatant victory over a divine monument like the USA? Wake up & open up your eyes. The sooner, the better.