Letters to the Editor
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this is not one man's madness -- how did he get on the ballot?
This is not the madness of just one irresponsible person. Nor, as much as I'd like to, can I blame the 5% of Americans who want Israel to exist because they think it facilitates the second coming. I blame the party operatives who allowed a madman who'd bankrupted several companies and one state to be their candidate for president, just because they thought he could win. Individuals like Cheney saw an opportunity to push through their own warped agendas (e.g. all-powerful executives, reinventing the military, democratising the Middle East). But there are always lots of ambitious & intelligent conservatives with more sensible goals. How could the party itself let this man anywhere near the ballot? The Republican party operatives are as guilty of the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties so far as Bush is himself. The US is to powerful of a toy to hand over to someone of questionable competence just so you can get your personal tax break or whatever.
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And those are just the consequences of the war that we can see now.
All of these things have been, are and will be on their own course no matter what we do or don't do. Gary's "The US is the center of the universe argument therefore we are in fact the prime mover everywhere at all times" is not only arrogant, it's stupid.
Pakistan has had 2 or 3 coups in the last 15 years.
Iran has embarked on their course since 1979.
Gary's favorite Nazis damned to hell, the Jews, were fighting Intifada II since the summer of 2000 (or since they were spawned from Satan's loins, depending on how liberal you want to appear to your friends).
Saudi Arabia is no more or less stable now than it has been since the end of the Afghan war and the mujahadeen came home.
Somalia? Civil war of sorts for 20 years, check.
Sudan? Ditto.
Egypt? The same leader frozen in place for 26 years, check.
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Wow. What a blog entry
This entry perfectly echoes my own sentiments. The pride, the overweening pride, of this administration has left us a disaster whose ramifications our children's children will still be working to resolve.
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So tired of this whining...
I think we can all agree that Bush and Co bungled this war in a truly historic way. What I continue to miss is a real deabate about where we go from here. I was against this war but have been reading a lot of what Tom Barnett has to say about this conflict and it's larger role in the world moving forward from 9-11 and to the tune of globalization.
In that context, I fail to see how anyone can see this conflict as anything except speeding up the inevitable. Does anyone really think that this upheaval was not going to happen in this region as the rest of the connected world closes in around these disconnected cultures?
What you have now is the rest of the world finally either dealing with (in the US's case) or watching these cultures that the world decided to "tolerate" in the name of short term peace and long term energy interests bumping into the rest of us in our connected and free cultures.
Whether you agree with this war or how it's been waged to date you are absolutely fooling yourself if you think we gain anything by walking away now. Bush is absolutely the worst guy to sell this concept right now (I voted for Kerry) but, the concept that if we leave they follow us here is not far from the mark.
The problem I see is that we're too focused on "killing" the enemy and claming "victory" and not focused enough on creating a place where people would rather go shopping than kill each other.
We will always have people who feel that the world is going in the wrong direction and are willing to use violence to put an exclamation point on that sentiment. They want a world that matches their own disconnected uber spiritual or ultra conservative view. They fear a connected world because it means more power is in the people than in a small group or a god/religious rule set.
The war in iraq, I think, was a way to start the change in this region and be a player in its outcome. We've done a horrificly bad job of it so far but, I think to pack up and go home now is a mistake. The change in this region of the world is just the beginning of much larger changes to come in this region and we should be involved in its outcome. Actively. However, I believe we can't destroy our way to a better environment there. We need some real foward thinking to move us past the "war and victory" mindset and more towards development.
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Whose disaster?
I think it is true that humans find it easier to understand and harshly judge small transgressions than grasp the totality of monumental acts of evil. So it is with Clinton and Bush and partly explains the attitude to the Iraq war. Is it a disaster because the war is not won, or is it a disaster because Bush commissioned the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people? I much admire Gary Kamiya’s writing but wonder how well his summary of the lessons learned would be welcomed if they were announced by Japan and Germany as afterthoughts on the events of 1939-45.
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Apologizing for Warmongers
Mr. Kamiya said: 'They drew it up like a blueprint: Grateful Iraqis would place flowers in the barrels of U.S. guns. A strong central government would take power, and democracy would flourish. The people of Iraq's neighboring states, Iran and Syria, would observe the vibrant new state and force their sclerotic regimes to reform, or they would rise up against them. The "culture of terrorism" would be ended, cut off at the source.'
Why do you persist in taking their marketing BS at face value? Those who thought up this war thought nothing of the sort. To give creedance to such tripe is to let them off the hook. I'll agree they certainly sold it that way (after reason #1, 2, & 3 were shown to be without merit).
The PNACers wanted to bust up an Arab regime that was a thorn in Israel's side. The last thing they wanted was a vibrant fully functional Arab state or states on their border.