How bad is Bush?

BedHead · March 27, 2007, 10:12pm

I actually believe that this is the case. I agree with you, in the statement above as it is quoted. By the time we occupied these countries, they had no fight left and they were convinced of the fact that fighting more with us would only bring on more death and destruction. They were ready to lay down their weapons and accept what it was we imposed. And we quickly demonstrated goodwill, giving them a degree of freedom and letting them be their own masters, and we invested heavily via the Marshall Plan. And they were historically accustomed to accept a role as a democratically led largely united and peaceful country in each case.

But we weren’t in either case occupiers during the war’s prosecution, only in its aftermath in a time of surrender. We vanquished these armies for the most part away from their lands, so the situation was much cleaner, and that’s yet another place where your comparison breaks down.

But where you and I really differ is in thinking that we are free to act with Iraq as we did, let’s say, with Japan at the end of WWII in dropping the bomb. [In case you are wondering, I have supported our decision to drop the bomb on Japan.]

Do you think that the world would accept our leveling Fallujah and indiscriminately killing its entire civilian population? Do you think the US populace would, when the war was sold on the premise that they would welcome us with flowers?

This is where the thinking that went into this war went wrong. Our abilities to achieve success were not realistically calibrated against the limitations that are imposed upon our actions or the likelihood of ensuing events on the ground. None of those limitations would be there if Iraq had nuked us or attacked our people, as is the analogy in WWII. I mean some people think there should have been prosecutions regarding the Dresden fire-bombings, but many people realize it was just one immoral excess in a long, grueling war. People would have thought similar things if we were fighting Iraq as a defensive action.

No, we are not facing success in Iraq, and it is not a failure of will or morals on the part of one political party or another. It’s because the whole enterprise was based on elegant ideologies that in the real world amounted to nothing.

I would like to see one Republican Senator get up and seriously suggest that what we need to do now is flatten two or three Iraqi mid-sized cities to demonstrate our power and bring this thing to success. That my friend is the logical end of what you are implying.

You see, I basically believe in your views of force, but I am willing to admit that there are serious limitations to a democratic country that is a world leader in being able to inflict such force indiscriminately according to its whimsy without regard for context.

We may get to the point where we are fighting Iraq War III and it is to the death, not for the purposes of establishing democratic self-sovereignty for some Middle Eastern land.

But you haven’t answered my question, at least not since I’ve refreshed this page, about what interest do you think would be served by doing so?

interesteddad · March 27, 2007, 10:13pm

No offense, but right wing Los Angeles talk show hose Dennis Prager doesn’t have the faintest idea what he is talking about when he says that nobody could have predicted.

As Ron Suskind wrote on page 327 of his book, “The One Percent Doctrine”:

The problem wasn’t that the experts failed to consider all of the possible outcomes. The problem was that the Cheney/Rumsfeld axis systemically silenced dissenting views before they got to the President. The dissenters were Valerie Plame’d within the admininstration, told in no uncertain terms to shut up.

This continued after the invasion. The military commanders on the ground saw the situation unfold on the ground. In the first month after the invasion, they thought they were dealing with rag-tag “dead-enders”. However, by the end of 2003, they knew that the war was just starting. They realized that the “insurgency” was actually very well organized, very well-funded (with the billions looted from the Iraqi treasury), and using very sophisticated coordinated strategy to destabize the country. For example, relentless bombing of oil pipelines and electricity plants to sabatoge the economy. The Bahgdad CIA chief, in consultation with the military commanders, outlined exactly this scenario in a major report to Washingon in late 2003. He was silenced. Told that he was ruining his career. And, subsequently transfered out of Iraq. Washington did not want to hear it. Anyone who dissented from the corporate line was Valerie Plame’d by Rumsfeld and Cheney.

The President has said that the military brass never asked for more troops. Indeed. They were operating in climate where they knew full well that asking for more troops was not tolerated by Rumsfeld. Things were “going well”, “mission accomplished”, just a “few dead-enders left to round up”.

That has been the fundamental flaw in the Bush administration handling of this whole sorry mess. Bush relied on his advisors and his advisors stacked the deck so that he only heard what they wanted him to hear. Anyone who tried to present contradictory evidence was trashed like Valerie Plame or fired like a US Attorney.

conyat · March 27, 2007, 10:22pm

Methinks you protest too much. Why not read about John Hagee and his millions of supporters and all the neocon politicians who have attended his functions and spoken in support of him?

And that bull about liberals relishing America’s defeats is a prime example of the kind of hate speech that until I started confronting it, used to be so common here no one even noticed it, any more than the fish talk about the water. If anything, it’s the neocons who are relish American’s setbacks in Iraq–they keep insisting that there have been no mistakes; everything is going fine; and keep repeating the same actions, same decision process that have caused so many unneeded American deaths. If that’s not relishing poor outcomes, I don’t know what is.

Higherlead can you please explain to me how it is that you think we have the high moral ground to kill millions of Iraqis the way you suggest that we do. I really don’t think generalized hatred for brown-skinned people is going to turn world opinion our way.

We did drop atomic bombs on Japan, but we were attacked first, something you seem to have forgotten. Iraq didn’t attack us and was no threat to us. Where we to kill millions of Iraqis simply to change their government, we’d be fighting the entire world instead of just an insurgency. But perhaps that’s what you want.

interesteddad · March 27, 2007, 10:28pm

James Kurth has written about this extensively in his historic reviews of US democracy building. Germany, Italy, and Japan have nothing in common with Iraq. All three were EXTREMELY homogenous populations, with industrialized economies. In other words, all three had the pre-conditions for democratic nation bulding. Although destroyed by war, the basic psyche and institutions of the populations were in place for rapid stabilization. You didn’t have two ethnic groups of Japanese who had been trying to kill each other for a thousand years.

The fundamental flaw in US strategy is that you cannot ignore the sectarian divides in Iraq. They are real. Forget religion, they are real from a political standpoint and its a zero sum game.

The most truth I’ve heard about Iraq this week came from NBC correspondent Richard Engel in his interview with Charlie Rose. In answer for the common call for the “Iraqis to stand up and do something”, he replied, “the Iraqis are doing something, they just aren’t doing what we want. They are standing up and killing each other in an all out civil war for control of their country.”

In their study of civil wars and an Iraq end-game, the Brookings Institute has laid it out in stark terms. There will be no stability in Iraq until the Iraqis are done killing each other. At some point, they will be spent, but that time may not come for five years or even ten years. Only when that point of sheer killing exhaustion is reached will the Iraqi people decide that they have more to gain from a settlement than from continued killing. The United States is largely irrelevant to this process, just as France (for example) would have been irrelevant if it had injected its Army into our Civil War. Our Civil War, like the Iraq Civil War, is a fight over fundamental political control.

BedHead · March 27, 2007, 11:42pm

Interesteddad: Thanks for a couple of great posts. I saw a Richard Engel documentary he filmed himself, and I read his book. I think Americans should watch his documentary to see how bad things are there.

I was able to find this link, though I don’t exactly know how it relates to what I saw by him:

<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17725245/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17725245/</a>

higherlead · March 28, 2007, 12:39am

“Do you think that the world would accept our leveling Fallujah and indiscriminately killing its entire civilian population?”

No I expect they would meet at the United Nations and pass a resolution that said we were a very naughty country and that if we did it again they would pass an even more harshly worded resolution calling us big stinkers. After that devastating blow the French would then ask if we wanted to buy some Air Buses.

The Germna’s and Japanese were also faced with the prospect of being occupied by Stalin’s Red Army if we packed up and went home which also made them more compliant.

“I would like to see one Republican Senator get up and seriously suggest that what we need to do now is flatten two or three Iraqi mid-sized cities to demonstrate our power and bring this thing to success.”

It is to late now. It needed to be done early. Remember this thing didn’t start big. There was very little initial resistance. At the first sign it should have been slapped hard. This is what Iraqis expect their rulers to do, but of course it is not what Americans expect governments to do. When it didn’t happen the Iraqis lost both fear and respect. Then a combination of Baathist resistencce, foreign Salafist and Al Qada elements, and Shia militias were allowed to grow and get out of hand. Al Qada had the strategically brilliant idea of stirring a civil war and we were tied in knots with the NY Times running Abu Ghurayb picture for 44 days straight.

Of all the violence over there relatively little is actually directed our way. My strategy over there wouldn’t have been a surge. I would have sat the sides down and flat out told them if they want to have a civil war go for it. Which one of you guys wants me to arm them? Frankly I don’t give a hoot which of you gets ethnically cleansed.

Anyway we can agree the war is lost BedHead and when we come home there will be one big contrast with the aftermath of Vietnam. Charlie was never going to follw us but Al Qada and the Salafists will.

higherlead · March 28, 2007, 12:48am

“But you haven’t answered my question, at least not since I’ve refreshed this page, about what interest do you think would be served by doing so?”

We will have to fight in Iraq again because the Iranians are a very real threat and the only way we can bring pressure on them is if we can get some physical proximity. Things are going even worse in Afghanistan than they are in Iraq but since the liberals have been saying that ungovernable rabbit patch is where we should be rather than Iraq for years the mainstream media don’t dare tell about it. At least not until we are in full retreat.

Saudi Arabia is a real problem too but anything that has any likelyhood of replacing the monarchy there would be 10x worse.

BedHead · March 28, 2007, 12:52am

Who or what are they a threat to? They don’t live next door to us. Do you think they’ll try to nuke us? Go after Israel? Withhold oil?

I am just trying to understand why exactly people think these countries in the Middle East are a threat. It’s good that we know what we are fighting for.

higherlead · March 28, 2007, 1:02am

“Higherlead can you please explain to me how it is that you think we have the high moral ground to kill millions of Iraqis the way you suggest that we do.”

Well frankly I don’t give a rat’s ehind about the high moral ground and I don’t care if the world loves us or hates us. But if I was going to make a moral case for say leveling Fallujah it would be this. If we would have done it early on and had acted as ruthlessly as Iraqis expect their governments to act we might not be facing the even greater death tolls that we are now.

The bottom line is somebody is going to terrorize these folks it might as well be us. I mean if they are going to suffer anyway why shouldn’t we benefit? Pretty cold-hearted huh?

higherlead · March 28, 2007, 1:18am

“Do you think they’ll try to nuke us? Go after Israel? Withhold oil?”

Bingo. Yes I think the leadership in Tehran is insane and I believe they will nuke Israel - though I don’t think this will usher the second coming or whatever it is conyat is all excited about.

BTW when we pull out of Iraq the civil war will turn into a regional conflict with the Saudis and other Arab states backing the Sunis and Iran backing the Shia and the Turks invading Kurdistan. It is that regional conflict that will probably drag us back in for round III.

higherlead · March 28, 2007, 1:19am

“Who or what are they a threat to? They don’t live next door to us.”

Neither did Ossama Bin Laden but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a threat.

BedHead · March 28, 2007, 1:36am

No, but our odds of successfully defending ourself against further attack will be greatly enhanced by firming up our borders (including nuclear detection equipment for storage containers) and all manner of police actions rather than attacking a single or several nations which may or may not harbor Al Qaeda operatives. War is not particularly effective; police operations and strong border security are.

higherlead · March 28, 2007, 1:41am

I am going to leave with one more thought here. Even if everything you guys say about George W Bush is true - he is evil, stupid, didn’t and doesn’t listen to the experts, should have known this would happen etc were true it still doesn’t make the case for a pullout. Can you guys tell me with certainty that the situation won’t spin even further out of control witht eh US out of the picture, that a regional war won’t result from the vacum?

Don’t make the same mistake Bush made and ignore the experts because a regional war is exactly what they are predicting. The Arabs will come to the aid of the Sunnis and the Irans to the Shia and then where are we? Do you guys really think everybody will leave the two factions to fight it out in glorious isolation? What happens if the regions two largest oil producers saudi Arabia and Iran start trading punches?

BedHead · March 28, 2007, 1:44am

Ah, so this is about Israel’s security.

And presumably aside from Israel, you are worried about our oil supplies. Because beyond those factors, why should we really care if these countries and ethnic/religious groups want to fight?

I heard James Baker say it most succinctly. Islamofascism is not a movement that will take hold in countries that aren’t Muslim.

Anyway, so oil and Israel are our big motivations in these dramas. Well, I think that focuses our minds on what needs to be done, not that they are easy tasks:

1 - Energy independence
2 - Figure out how to resolve Israel’s tense security situation or make different decisions about our commitment

If we have Americans dying in that part of the world, I just want it to be clearly known it’s for oil or Israel. I see no other compelling reason for the United States to be involved.

The other rationale – that they’ll come to our shores and attack us – is something we are better off not trying to handle through war, but by other means of defense.

interesteddad · March 28, 2007, 1:49am

According to the Washington Post, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has cancelled a scheduled gala White House dinner planned for April 17th. The King of Jordan has also notified the White House that a discussed state visit to the US in September wouldn’t be convenient:

<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032701761.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032701761.html</a>

interesteddad · March 28, 2007, 2:02am

Don’t assume that we are not well aware of the possibilities for regional Sunni/Shi’a strife in the middle east. I am the one who posted the links to the 148 page Brookings report on the future of Iraq after a US pullout.

You might enjoy reading James Kurth’s rather iconoclastic views on a broader Sunni/Shi’a conflict. He poses the question: Muslims killing Muslims across the middle east would be bad for the US, how? His theory? The notion of a Islamic jihad against the West loses a bit of its juice if Sunnis and Shias are busy fighting each other.

Kurth points out that the US was very successful in breaking the Communist “bloc” by encouraging friction between the Russians and the Chinese – a direct consequence of Nixon’s China overtures.

BTW, I wouldn’t get too excited about Iran’s nuclear program. Our own CIA National Intelligence Estimate predicts that the earliest Iran could have a nuclear weapon would be in the 2017 to 2020 time frame and that it probably would not be deliverable by missle. They are working with 60 year old Manhattan Project level technology and building nuclear weapons is not easy. The best estimates is that they aren’t far along on their 1950’s German/Russian uranium enrichment centrifuge program. It’s very challenging to ramp up centrifuge production to a full production scale. The US abandoned that technology at the Oak Ridge labs in the 1950s because it is so inefficient for producing weapons grade fissionable material.

interesteddad · March 28, 2007, 2:05am

Or, by actually committing some resources to tracking down Al Queda rather than pouring hundreds of billions down the Iraq sinkhole.

CBK · March 28, 2007, 2:13am

<a href=“PREDIKSI168: Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Hari Ini Dan Slot88 Gampang Menang”>PREDIKSI168: Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Hari Ini Dan Slot88 Gampang Menang;

<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century</a>
the original paper can still be found on line , but read it several years ago, not pretty, it was well thought out in advance.

<a href=“PREDIKSI168: Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Hari Ini Dan Slot88 Gampang Menang”>PREDIKSI168: Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Hari Ini Dan Slot88 Gampang Menang;

Excerpt from wikipedia:
PNAC report: Rebuilding America’s Defenses
In September 2000, the PNAC issued a 90-page report entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For A New Century,[7] proceeding “from the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces.” The report has been the subject of much analysis and criticism.

The group states that when diplomacy or sanctions fail, the United States must be prepared to take military action. PNAC argues that the current Cold War deployment of forces is obsolete. Defense spending and force deployment must reflect the post-Cold War duties that US forces are obligated to perform. Constabulary duties such as peacekeeping in the Balkans and the enforcement of the No Fly Zones in Iraq have put a strain upon, and reduced the readiness of US forces. The PNAC recommends the forward redeployment of US forces at new strategically placed permanent military bases in Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia. Permanent bases ease the strain on US forces, allowing readiness to be maintained and the carrier fleet to be reduced. Furthermore, PNAC advocates that the US-globalized military should be enlarged, equipped and restructured for the “constabulary” roles associated with shaping the security in critical regions of the world.

[edit] Position on the Iraq invasion and occupation
In 1998, following perceived Iraqi unwillingness to co-operate with UN weapons inspections, members of the PNAC, including former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, wrote to President Bill Clinton urging him to remove Saddam Hussein from power using US diplomatic, political and military power. The letter argued that Saddam would pose a threat to the United States, its Middle East allies and oil resources in the region if he succeeded in maintaining his stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The letter also stated “we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections” and “American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” The letter argues that an Iraq war would be justified by Hussein’s defiance of UN “containment” policy and his persistent threat to US interests.

The 2000 Rebuilding America’s Defenses report recommends improved planning. The report states that “while the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification [for US military presence], the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein” and “Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region”.

[edit] Controversy
The PNAC has been the subject of considerable criticism and controversy, both among members of the left and right. Critics dispute the premise that US “world leadership” is desirable for the world or even for the United States itself. The PNAC’s harshest critics claim it represents a disturbing step towards total world subjugation by the United States, motivated by an imperial and globalist agenda of global US military expansionism and dominance. Critics of the United States’ international relations take issue with the PNAC’s unabashed position of maintaining the nation’s privileged position as sole world superpower. Some critics even assert that the fall of the Soviet Union indicates an end to the era of ‘superpowers’ and therefore any concept of military hegemony or ascendancy is overrated. Military might is not power in itself, say the critics; it requires huge financial commitments, strong domestic and international support, plus skillful management to be considered worthwhile.[8][9] PNAC position papers and other documents contain few references on building or maintaining any of these requirements.[10

interesteddad · March 28, 2007, 2:40am

William Kristol and Robert Kagan are both morons and viewed with total disdain by serious conservative thinkers. This whole neo-con democracy-imposing pipedream bitterly despised by long-term conservatives, who tend to take a much more pragmatic view of foreign policy.

Ironically, the traditional liberals and the traditional conservatives now share a fairly similar view of US policy – that we cannot and should not inject ourselves militarily in every two-bit problem in the world.

conyat · March 28, 2007, 7:11am

You’re right about that. The neocons have stretched our military so badly, we would have trouble taking on anything else.

And he’s still a threat, because your administration decided to divert resources from pursing him. I don’t remember the exact quote, but it seems your decider isn’t at all concerned about tracking him down.

Afghanistan is getting worse and worse–we’re losing ground there to the Taliban because you necons decided you’d be better served by creating new terrorists in Iraq than fighting the existing ones in Afghanistan.

How bad is Bush?

CONNECT WITH US