05-30-2008, 10:16 PM
Couple of thoughts touching on Skippy and Esthete's posts:
1. My personal opinion is the Bush admin did not deliberately create the false WMD intelligence. I think too much was read into what were untrustworthy and biased sources. We read our own fears of Saddam having WMD and the chaos that would create in the Middle East and the economic/political consequences of that chaos into the intelligence. Ironically, if Saddam had been willing to comply with UN inspections, he probably would have adverted an invasion, but he chose not too because he feared appearing weak to the West and to his greatest strategic threat, Iran.
2. Intelligence work is a game of guesswork to begin with. Political leaders make decisions based on intuition and data that can't be nailed to the ground as absolutely proven to be true in a court of law. As Esthete mentions, there were plenty of good geostrategic and moral reasons to get rid of Saddam, but they weren't enough in and of themselves strong enough to convince the American public to support an invasion.
3. The seeds of Vietnam and Iraq can ironically be found in the aftermath of WW I. The Big Four's ignorance of budding nationalism in Third World countries such as Iraq and Vietnam would come back to bite them in the tush in the coming years. Ho Chi Minh was a young nationalist working in France as a dishwasher when the Big Four were negotiating the peace treaties; he appealed to them for help in granting Vietnam independence from France's colonial grasp, but he was ignored and he ended up turning to Stalin and Mao for help. Had we, in the Kennedy and Johnson admins, been willing to convince South Vietnam's government to change to a republic-style of government and open up the political process to the Buddhist majority of the populace, I would be willing to bet that the Vietnamese people themselves would have eventually moderated and neutralized the communist orientation of the North Vietnamese government. This is currently what is going on in Iraq. Instead of blindly supporting the Shiite dominated government and attempting to bomb into oblivion any opposition to it, Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy got the troops up close to the populace to gain their trust, provide services and work with the Sunni tribes in Anbar and elsewhere in standing up to and destroying Al Queda in Iraq.
4. With regards to rallying the American populace to support military offensive operations, the basic truth, in my mind, is the American populace is not willing to risk sending men to possible death to prevent a possibile negative outcome from happening. Simply put, unless the President is able to convince the American public that a threat from another country is real and extremely dangerous, we are not willing to commit to war to prevent a "maybe" from happening. This is a good thing because as a republic, the consent of the people must control and precede our policy choices.
1. My personal opinion is the Bush admin did not deliberately create the false WMD intelligence. I think too much was read into what were untrustworthy and biased sources. We read our own fears of Saddam having WMD and the chaos that would create in the Middle East and the economic/political consequences of that chaos into the intelligence. Ironically, if Saddam had been willing to comply with UN inspections, he probably would have adverted an invasion, but he chose not too because he feared appearing weak to the West and to his greatest strategic threat, Iran.
2. Intelligence work is a game of guesswork to begin with. Political leaders make decisions based on intuition and data that can't be nailed to the ground as absolutely proven to be true in a court of law. As Esthete mentions, there were plenty of good geostrategic and moral reasons to get rid of Saddam, but they weren't enough in and of themselves strong enough to convince the American public to support an invasion.
3. The seeds of Vietnam and Iraq can ironically be found in the aftermath of WW I. The Big Four's ignorance of budding nationalism in Third World countries such as Iraq and Vietnam would come back to bite them in the tush in the coming years. Ho Chi Minh was a young nationalist working in France as a dishwasher when the Big Four were negotiating the peace treaties; he appealed to them for help in granting Vietnam independence from France's colonial grasp, but he was ignored and he ended up turning to Stalin and Mao for help. Had we, in the Kennedy and Johnson admins, been willing to convince South Vietnam's government to change to a republic-style of government and open up the political process to the Buddhist majority of the populace, I would be willing to bet that the Vietnamese people themselves would have eventually moderated and neutralized the communist orientation of the North Vietnamese government. This is currently what is going on in Iraq. Instead of blindly supporting the Shiite dominated government and attempting to bomb into oblivion any opposition to it, Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy got the troops up close to the populace to gain their trust, provide services and work with the Sunni tribes in Anbar and elsewhere in standing up to and destroying Al Queda in Iraq.
4. With regards to rallying the American populace to support military offensive operations, the basic truth, in my mind, is the American populace is not willing to risk sending men to possible death to prevent a possibile negative outcome from happening. Simply put, unless the President is able to convince the American public that a threat from another country is real and extremely dangerous, we are not willing to commit to war to prevent a "maybe" from happening. This is a good thing because as a republic, the consent of the people must control and precede our policy choices.