"Before Bush's invasion of Iraq, that country was NOT overrun by fundamentalists."
Irrelevant. I am speaking of European countries who have welcomed Sharia with open arms...and are now regretting it.
"Before Bush's invasion of Iraq, that country was NOT overrun by fundamentalists. Saddam Hussein had them in check. The initial invasion of Iraq and the ongoing war (which you are defending here) was not about "terrorism"l." "
Sure it was, Gopher. As I mentioned, WMD was a technicality required to pass political muster.
"So you're saying that anyone who disagrees with the Bush/Cheney approach to fighting terrorism is on board with the terrorists?"
Is that what I said...or is that what you heard? What I said was that it surprises me that those with a common repressive experience could view their independence so lightly so as to allow their own freedoms to be trampled on by those whose only goal it is to trample on other's freedoms.
"So any ex-JW's who aren't on board with Bush's anti-terrorist plan are weak pacifists who don't want freedom and don't love their country?"
No, not necessarily. I haven't seen their alternatives. Perhaps you'd like to publish one?
"Bush's incursion into the Middle East has caused millions of young Middle Easterners who were indifferent about America to turn into America-haters. Bush's execution of his war on terror has in effect bred millions of new potential terrorists. If / when America ever gets the hell out of Iraq, then the America-hating leaders over there won't have any fuel for their fire."
Evidence, please. The America-haters were America-haters before the Americans ever arrived...and the Muslim extremists have taught the "great satan" rhetoric since the inception of terrorist training camps in the late-70s. There are no "American-hating leaders" over there. There are dictatorial ruling families and warlords...and religiously brainwashed automatons who follow blindly.
Carlos
Pathological President defends Iraq War
by nvrgnbk 39 Replies latest jw friends
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Carlos_Helms
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Carlos_Helms
"Before 2003 there was solid evidence from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iraq had not restarted its nuclear weapons program.
That program had ended in 1992 with the first Gulf War.
The Bush administration simply ignored the facts in its pushing for the war."
If WMD were limited to nuclear weapons, I'd be inclined to agree with you.
As I mentioned, the war was "pushed" for a variety of reasons, primarily to obtain a strategic "high ground" in the theater from which to establish a fundamentally-sound base of operations. The WMD thing was, as I mentioned, used to pass political muster.
Carlos -
nvrgnbk
primarily to obtain a strategic "high ground" in the theater from which to establish a fundamentally-sound base of operations
That is very true.
Too bad it wasn't presented that way to the American people.
It appears that Cheney said it best when he vocalized the administration's opinion on public resistance to the war..." So?"
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Homerovah the Almighty
Sounds to me like Bush is trying to sell the effort still a worthy one for the sake of his own image and his administration. If any spoken regrets come out of him it will be long
after he's out of office, he's dumb but not stupid.
If any good comes out of this it will be Iraq developing into a modern Democratic Country with a fair and balanced Constitution for its citizens but realizing
that there is still such a strong fundamentalist religious faction in power there I have my doubts. I think the boat is really going to get rocky there once the US pulls out,
time will only tell. The saddest thing that could happen is if some strong armed religious tyrant was to take over the county and turn the clock back decades and greatly repress the citizens.
It would make the whole effort a redundant loss for so many not just the Americans but for the people of Iraq as well.
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Gopher
Bush's incursion into the Middle East has caused millions of young Middle Easterners who were indifferent about America to turn into America-haters. Bush's execution of his war on terror has in effect bred millions of new potential terrorists. If / when America ever gets the hell out of Iraq, then the America-hating leaders over there won't have any fuel for their fire."
Evidence, please. The America-haters were America-haters before the Americans ever arrived...Carlos, I'm quite surprised you even argued this point. It's been known for quite a while that America's involvement in Iraq has radicalized a lot of young folks in the Middle East against America. Can't you see it?
OK, here's just one article I found (there were others). http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0718/dailyUpdate.html
The article also addresses your question about a BETTER way to fight terrorists -- which would be actually going against individual terrorists or groups, rather than diverting American resources by fighting an ill-advised war which is only creating more terrorists !!
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Studies: War radicalized most foreign fighters in Iraq
Saudi and Israeli studies show that most foreign fighters were not terrorists before Iraq war. By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
Two new studies, one by the Saudi government and one by an Israeli think tank, which "painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States" have found that most foreign fighters in Iraq were not terrorists before the Iraq war, but were "radicalized by the war itself." The Boston Globe reported on Sunday that the studies " cast doubt" on claims by President Bush that terrorists have "seized on the opportunity to make Iraq the 'central front' in a battle against the United States."
However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence.
A separate Israeli analysis [by Global Research in International Affairs] of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior Al Qaeda operatives who are organizing the volunteers, 'the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq.'
The Globe also reports that American intelligence officials and terrorism experts have a very similar picture of these fighters: that prior to the Iraq war, they were not extremists who wanted to attack the US in an Al Qaeda-like manner, but "are part of a new generation of terrorists responding to calls to defend their fellow Muslims from 'crusaders and 'infidels.' "
'The president is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on terrorism, but this is a front we created,' said Peter Bergen, a terrorism specialist at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.
Columnist Terry Neal of The Washington Post, talked to Stephen Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former US Coast Guard commander, whose recent book, as well as his articles in the Council's journal Foreign Affairs, argue that Iraq is a "phony war" based on Mr. Bush assertions' that we have to fight the terrorists there rather than here.
Mr. Flynn believes that by diverting so many resources to the war in Iraq, we've not only helped to create more terrorists, but that "America remains astonishingly vulnerable to attacks from Al Qaeda, which has morphed under Bush's watch, from an organization to a worldwide movement ..." He says the recent attacks in London show how patient Al Qaeda has become, using the three cell approach: The first cell is the leadership cell, the second cell is the reconnaissance team, and the third is the 'action' team.
Iraq has not changed that equation one bit, Flynn argues. It has only diverted resources from the more pragmatic approach of targeting and hunting down terrorists around the world and, even more important, bolstering domestic security ... The US administration and its hawks are stuck in a 'state-centric perspective, cold war idea that deterrence is about overwhelming power and offense. But that has nothing to do with the overwhelming reality of this threat.'
In the United Kingdom, The Belfast Telegram reports that the respected Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, and the Economic and Social Research Council, have said that British involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan "have put Britain at a greater risk of attack." The Chatham House report, issued Monday, also said that Britain's support for the US did not create an equal partnership, but instead turned Britain into a "passenger compelled to leave the steering to the ally in the driving seat".
Chatham House warned that Iraq had created difficulties for the UK and the coalition. 'It gave a boost to the Al Qaeda network's propaganda, recruitment and fundraising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for Al Qaeda-linked terrorists, and deflected resources that could have been deployed to assist the Karzai government [in Afghanistan] and bring bin Laden to justice,' it said.
Both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw reacted strongly to the report by Chatham House. The Guardian reports that Mr. Blair said the recent attack on London was the result of fanatics who subscribed to an " evil ideology" rather than opposition to any policy and that it would be " 'misunderstanding of a catastrophic' order to think that if we changed our behavior they would change theirs."
Mr. Straw also denied that Britain's support for the US made it more of a target for terrorists. "I'm astonished that Chatham House is now saying that we should not have stood shoulder to shoulder with our long-standing allies in the United States," he said.
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Carlos_Helms
"That is very true.
Too bad it wasn't presented that way to the American people.
It appears that Cheney said it best when he vocalized the administration's opinion on public resistance to the war..." So?" "
True enough, Nvrgnbk. But the idea was to take the intel that was most convincing and use that to convince congress that an attack was the most viable option. It ought to have been "sold" as it was: with multiple benefits. But it wasn't...and now the admin will have to answer for their lack of candor.
"The saddest thing that could happen is if some strong armed religious tyrant was to take over the county and turn the clock back decades and greatly repress the citizens."
And that's what the administration is trying to avoid, Homerovah. I'm not a big fan of "nation-building." I've often said it's like handing an ape a hundred-dollar bill. But you never know.
Carlos -
BurnTheShips
The war was over in 03. It is the occupation that they screwed up. Things turned around under General Petraeus and the surge strategy last summer. Last month had the lowest US casualties since '03. The strategy is working, and brigades are being sent home now. I can't blame Bush for defending his decisions, and my own problem with him has been with the prosecution of the war, and not the war itself. Actually, Rumsfeld gets the lions share of the blame but Bush hired him of course.
Here is a recent piece by VDH on the National Review Online:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDE4MGE3MWM1YWIxMTkyZjUyNGZkODQyYTY3NmQ5ZDA=
Iraq in Review
Is there anything left of the antiwar Left’s criticisms of the Iraq war?
By Victor Davis HansonM any commentators on Iraq had no strong ideas about the wisdom of removing Saddam Hussein, but often predicated their evolving views on the basis of whether we were perceived as winning or losing — and later made the necessary and often fluid adjustments. So in light of the changing pulse of the battlefield, it is time once again to examine carefully a few of the now commonplace critiques of the Iraq war.
1. We took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan by going into Iraq, thereby allowing the Taliban to regain the advantage.
Any two-theater war can result in less resources allotted to one of the two fronts. But such multiple-front wars, whether in World War II or the Cold War, have never stymied the United States military. More importantly, if we are truly in a global war against Islamic extremists — as al-Qaeda itself reminded us when it announced that Iraq was the key front in their jihad against infidel crusaders — then the problem is not necessarily fighting the insurgents in Iraq, but whether it is a theater conducive to our aims and resources — and can be won.
In other words, Iraq simply upped the ante of a larger war, promising disaster if we lost, and enormous advantages if we won. Progress in Iraq is already having positive effects in Afghanistan, where an experienced American counterinsurgency force is fighting extremists who know that their kindred are on the verge of losing militarily and politically in Iraq, and are afraid that the same bitter calculus now applies to them.
In the first years, the odds were with the terrorists — given indigenous Muslim local populations, the hostile neighborhood of a Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and anti-war fervor at home and abroad. But once the U.S. military defeated al-Qaeda in Anbar, the population turned on Islamic terrorists, and the elected Iraqi government gained stature, then Islamists in and out of Iraq suffered a terrible defeat.
We learned to fight a war of counterinsurgency and win hearts and minds far from home; they lost an insurgency — and with it the support of the local and once naturally sympathetic Muslim population. Note that suddenly journalists, intelligence analysts, and politicians are struck by al-Qaeda’s implosion, as the Muslim street turns on radical Islamists, who themselves are torn apart by internal ideological schisms.
While many critics remain too heavily invested in antiwar positions staked out between 2003–7 to cite the war as a contributory cause, the obvious catalyst for al-Qaeda’s fiasco is its terrible performance in Iraq. Remember, if Americans adjusted their own support for the war on their perceptions of the success or failure of the U.S. military, why wouldn’t millions in the Middle East do the same with radical Islamists like al-Qaeda, whose fortunes on the battlefield have only gone from bad to worse?
2. Bush lied about the war and entered it under the false circumstances of fears of WMD and Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda.
Bush erred in focusing on WMDs when the Senate and House approved over 20 writs for war, all of them as valid now as they were in October 2002. That said, it is hard to find a single prominent congressional critic of the war who has made the case that the administration itself altered intelligence information, doctored reports, or had substantially different assessments than those provided to Congress or offered up by foreign governments. The reason recent critics of the war such as Sen. Rockefeller are utterly unconvincing in their allegations of administration malfeasance is that the record shows that they themselves had access to the same information, and often outdid the President in their prewar rhetoric and saber-rattling about Saddam.
But again, the battlefield, rightly or wrongly, colors these controversies. In a world in which there is no longer a Saddam Hussein (who would now have had his hands on trillions of dollars in oil revenue), a Libyan WMD program, and Dr. Khan’s nuclear export business, the proliferation issue is becoming less contentious. (If one were to believe the National Intelligence Estimate, Iran ceased its weapons-grade nuclear track opportunely right after Saddam’s capture). Since 2003, thousands of Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda’s notables have been killed, and the organization routed and discredited; it is hard to see how Iraq has not had positive effects in curbing proliferation and damaging the organization that was responsible for 9/11. Moreover, disputes about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s post-Afghanistan odyssey, assorted terrorists in Saddam’s Baghdad in 2003, or al-Qaeda in Kurdistan during Saddam’s rule become less contentious with the knowledge that al-Qaeda, between 2003–7, tried to win, and then lost, Iraq.
3. Mistakes in Iraq were legion and irreversible.
It is better to see such controversies in terms of long- and short-term consequences. Examine the two most discussed — the Iraqi army and troop levels. Disbanding the Iraqi army without providing temporary financial support for young males with military skills was disastrous. Yet in the long-term, building a new army without tens of thousands of hard-core Baathists — as was true of the de-Nazification program with German army in 1946–7 — offered a greater chance for eventual success.
Did we send too few troops? Apparently we had enough manpower to take out Saddam, which we did brilliantly in three weeks — a force determined partly in reaction to the first Gulf War, when current critics then alleged that we had needlessly sent over far too many troops, both our own and those of the unwieldy coalition.
Evaluating the surge is more complex, since in a vast theater the size of Iraq, an increase of a little more than 20 percent in troop strength probably does not per se win wars. We forget now that many supporters of the surge were calling for 80,000-100,000 more troops in 2004–7. The 30,000 troops was a compromise figure, given our commitments elsewhere.
As important as the 30,000 reinforcements were, just as critical were three other factors associated with it: a signal to both Iraqi friends and enemies that we were staying on and fighting to win; a radical change in tactics from counterterrorism based in compounds to counterinsurgency intended to protect the local populations from terrorist reprisals; and the appointment of Gen. Petraeus as senior commander in Iraq who won the confidence of the Iraqis; silenced critics at home; and energized his officers on the ground with a new commitment to victory.
Again, there were tragic mistakes — focusing on WMDs as a sole casus belli, the pullback from the first siege of Fallujah, and bellicose Presidential rhetoric coupled with operational tentativeness — all of them regrettable, none of them fatal or comparable to the disastrous foul-ups of World War II, Korea, or Vietnam.
4. Democratization was naïve and bound to fail, given the realities of the tribal Middle East.
In fact, the promotion of constitutional government, however clumsy our efforts in 2003–4, was the only chance the U.S. had after the fall of Saddam Hussein to stabilize the country and hurt our terrorist enemies. No development infuriated al-Qaeda more than U.S. support for elections and a constitutional Iraq that undercut the slander of a 21st-century crusade to annex the ancient caliphate, and invested the Iraqi people themselves in the fight against terrorism for their own future. Iraq is not comparable to the Hamas plebiscite, in that its elections were in concert with a ratified constitution and a result of an American-led effort to depose Saddam Hussein.
One of the most surreal developments of the war has been the Left’s caricature of American idealism and our support for a democratic Iraqi government — a brave group of reformers who have been more tarred and demonized by American politicians than have been their al-Qaeda enemies.
Should we see a President Obama, and he realizes that Iraq is working, expect the Left to cease its criticisms of neocon democracy fantasies, and instead adopt Iraq’s democracy as yet more proof of Obama’s hope-and-change idealism in foreign policy.
5. The real winner of the war was Iran.
In the short-term, yes — Iran benefited from the removal of its traditional enemy, Baathist Iraq, and from the initial pan-Islamist rallying against the U.S. presence in Iraq. But in the long-term, should Iraq succeed, nothing will be more destabilizing to Iran than to have a free society next door, where Shiites say, write, and read what they wish, and do so in pluralistic fashion. Again, the ante has been raised. Should Iranian-backed militias lose in Iraq, the theocracy will have suffered a terrible defeat, at a time it diverts precious oil dollars to failed military adventures while its silenced population rations gas. Iran’s theocratic government must either incite a U.S. preemptive strike, or destroy Iraqi democracy — or it is doomed.
6. President Bush’s presidency was ruined in Iraq.
If we were to lose the war, then yes. But should we win, should a constitutional government stabilize, should al-Qaeda keep unraveling, and should the hiatus of terrorist attacks against Americans at home and abroad continue, then historians will rank Bush in Trumanesque terms: a similarly orphaned presidency that ended disliked — even as it crafted a strategy to defeat global Islamic terror by taking the fight to the heart of the Middle East, while establishing proof of America’s good intentions by fostering constitutional government that offered Iraqis an alternative other than the usual Middle East non-choice of theocracy or autocracy.
Bush was terribly damaged by a series of poor spokesmen, his own bellicose soundbites of 2002–3, a series of tell-all defections of former intimates and officials, and an inability to cut U.S. consumption of imported petroleum. But that said, years from now, historians will look at the record and the results, not the present rhetoric, and his legacy could well be — “He kept us safe.”7. Our military is nearly ruined and the war was never worth the cost.We have paid a high price for our efforts with thousands of dead and wounded, and billions spent. But if the deterioration of a-Qaeda continues, America is kept safe, and the Middle East at last has some alternative to the dismal autocratic norm — one that curbs future oil-fed extremism — then Iraq will be the most important American achievement since the end of the Cold War. If we lose or quit, and Iraq devolves along the lines of the badlands of Pakistan, then, yes, the losses were not worth it.
For all the wear and tear on our military, recruitments are up, we have developed the most sophisticated and experienced anti-insurgent force in the world, and we are just beginning to shake-up the entire military by promoting a new generation of brilliant officers who came of age in the cauldron of Iraq.
In the end, the U.S. military has achieved the near impossible by removing the worst government in the Middle East and fostering what has a real chance to become by far the best. In some sense, whether Iraq was worth the high cost depends on whether one thinks the present-day liberal and humane democracies in Europe, Japan, and Korea were likewise worth the past, and far more terrible, price that America paid in blood and treasure to secure their enduring freedom.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. -
Forscher
So far I haven't seen a valid case made for Bush being "pathological."
I've expressed my position on the war before. The strategy was sound. The execution was not. Before labeling Bush a liar, please recall that Bill Clinton stated the same beliefs while still in office. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, and many other distinguished Democrats also stated the same things Bush did. That is, until Bush wanted to invade Iraq. Even then they didn't question the intelligence he relied on, care to call Hillary, Kerry and many other distinguished Democrats "pathological" as well?
I've always maintained Bush was set up and betrayed by Clinton loyalists in his administration who couldn't stand Bush's win in 2000. With the publication of several book recently, one by an intelligence insider, I think I can safely say my theory is on solid ground.
Forscher
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Forscher
By the way,
Malloy hasn't got a clue. His million Iraqi civilian death figure is based on a study in the Lancet which was financed by Soros and used extremely flawed research methodology to arrive at a pre-determined result.
Forscher
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Gopher
The strategy was sound. The execution was not. Before labeling Bush a liar, please recall that Bill Clinton stated the same beliefs while still in office. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, and many other distinguished Democrats also stated the same things Bush did. That is, until Bush wanted to invade Iraq. Even then they didn't question the intelligence he relied on, care to call Hillary, Kerry and many other distinguished Democrats "pathological" as well?
Most Democrats and Republicans in 2002 were of the same mind -- that Saddam had to go, he had violated UN resolutions, etc.
However, since then -- the Bush Administration has kept changing the reasons/excuses to stay in Iraq, and has kept moving back the goalposts for "success". The reasons/excuses came to include "we must fight a war on terror", and "we have to establish a Democratic base in the region".
In 2006/07 American public sentiment, tiring of the excuses, turned against sacrificing our children and our financial resources in that region. To mollify the public, the administration came up with benchmarks to be met to mark 'progress', and if those benchmarks weren't met we'd threaten to pull out of Iraq. One of the key benchmarks was a political sharing of power. Although military progress has been made with the surge, still Iraq is nowhere near a political compromise that the parties involved can live with. The majority Shia are determined to dominate and get revenge on the minority Sunnis.
The admnistration has lost its way, and cannot explain to the American people or even its own troops why we are there and what a victory would look like. It's a muddled outlook, similar to that which cost thousands of American lives and prestige in Korea in the 50's and Vietnam in the 60's and 70's.
In the old days, it was the Democrats who were the party of war, and the conservative Republicans who were more apt to want to be isolationist. Now the neo-conservatives have radically built up a culture of war and intrusion, whereas the Democrats have assumed the dovish anti-war position.
The American public will vote in November, based in part on which position they support.