The CIA installed Saddam and the US supported him, even when he was killing large numbers of his own people and his neighbours too. The US supported him in his war against Iran.
He fell out of favour when he invaded Kuwait. He got beyond US control.
Iraq did not get invaded though, until he tied Iraqi oil to the Euro. He got invaded a short time after that. At no time however, was he a threat to the USA or any european interests save in the purely commercial sense. Your metaphors are colourful but they are nonsense. They miss the total hypocrisy of the US and UK involvment in this invasion.
I'm never sure how much I should cut 'n paste (if any), but I know not everyone can get the Times articles.
In September and early October 2001 we were warned that an invasion of Afghanistan was impossible ˜ peaks too high, winter and Ramadan on the way, weak and perfidious allies as bad as the Islamists ˜ and thus that the invasion would result in tens of thousands killed and millions of refugees. Where have all these subversive ankle-biters gone? Apparently into thin air ˜ or to the same refuge of silence as all the Reagan-haters of the 1980s who swore that a nuclear freeze was the only humane policy of dealing with Soviet expansionism.
After the seven-week defeat of the Taliban, these deer-in-the-headlights critics paused, and then declared the victory hollow. They said the country had descended into rule by warlords, and called the very idea of scheduled voting a laughable notion. We endured them for almost two years. Yet after the recent and mostly smooth elections, Afghanistan has slowly disappeared from the maelstrom of domestic politics, as all those who felt our efforts were not merely impossible but absurd retreated to the shadows to gnash their teeth that Kabul is not yet Carmel. Western feminists, homosexual-rights advocates, and liberal reformists have never in any definitive way expressed appreciation for the Afghan revolution now ongoing in the lives of 26 million formerly captive people. They never will. Instead, Westerners simply now assume that there was never any controversy, but rather a general consensus that Afghanistan is a "good thing" ˜ as if the Taliban went into voluntarily exile due to occasional censure from The New York Review of Books.
The more ambitious effort to achieve similar results in Iraq is following the same script, despite even more daunting challenges. Fascistic neighbors rightly see elections in Iraq as near fatal to their own bankrupt regimes. Some have oil; others have terrorists; still more, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, have both. Unlike Afghanistan, there is no neutral India or Russia nearby to keep Islamists wary, only the provinces of the ancient caliphate to supply plenty of jihadists to continue the work of September 11. Our mistakes in the reconstruction of Iraq were never properly critiqued as naïve and too magnanimous, but rather they were decried by the Left as cruel and punitive ˜ as if being too lax was proof of being harsh.
Yet, thanks to the brilliance of the U.S. military and despite the rocky reconstruction and our own election hysteria, there is a good chance that the January elections can begin a cycle similar to what we see in Afghanistan. And at that point things should get very, very interesting.
Just as the breakdown of a few Communist Eastern European states led to a general collapse of Marxism in the east, or the military humiliation in colonial Africa and the Falklands led to democratic renaissance in Iberia and Argentina, or American military efforts in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama City brought consensual government to Central America, a reformed Afghanistan and Iraq may prompt what decades of billions of dollars in wasted aid to Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians, the 1991 Gulf War, and 60 years of appeasement of Gulf petrol-sheiks could not: the end of the old sick calculus of Middle East tyrannies blackmailing the United States through past intrigue with the Soviet Union, then threats of oil embargos and rigged prices, and, most recently, both overt and stealthy support for fundamentalist killers.
The similar effort to isolate Arafat, encourage the withdrawal from Gaza, and allow the Israelis to proceed with the fence have brought more opportunity to the Middle East than all of Dennis Ross's shuttles put together, noble and well-meant though his futile efforts were. The onus is on the Palestinians now either to turn Gaza into their own republic or give birth to another Lebanon ˜ their call before a globalized audience. They can hold elections and shame the Arab League by being the embryo of consensual government in the Middle East, or coronate yet another thug and terrorist in hopes that again the United States will play a Chamberlain to their once-elected Hitler.
If someone wonders about the enormous task at hand in democratizing the Middle East, he could do no worse than ponder the last days of Yasser Arafat: the tawdry fight over his stolen millions; the charade of the First Lady of Palestine barking from a Paris salon; the unwillingness to disclose what really killed the "Tiger" of Ramallah; the gauche snub of obsequious Europeans hovering in the skies over Cairo, preening to pay homage to the late prince of peace; and, of course, the usual street theater of machine guns spraying the air and thousands of males crushing each other to touch the bier of the man who robbed them blind. Try bringing a constitution and open and fair elections to a mess like that.
But that is precisely what the United States was trying to do by removing the Taliban, putting Saddam Hussein on trial, and marginalizing Arafat. Such idealism has been caricatured with every type of slur ˜ from both the radical Left and the paleo-Right, ranging from alleged Likud conspiracies and neo-con pipe dreams to secret pipeline deals and plans for a new American imperium in the Middle East shepherded in by the Bush dynasts. In fact, the effort not just to strike back after September 11, but to alter the very landscape in which our enemies operated was the only choice we had if we wished to end the cruise-missile/bomb-'em-for-a-day cycle of the past 20 years, the ultimate logic of which had led to the crater at the World Trade Center.
Oddly, our enemies understand the long-term strategic efforts of the United States far better than do our own dissidents. They know that oil is not under U.S. control but priced at all-time highs, and that America is not propping up despotism anymore, but is now the general foe of both theocracies and dictatorships ˜ and the thorn in the side of "moderate" autocracies. An America that is a force for democratic change is a very dangerous foe indeed. Most despots long for the old days of Jimmy Carter's pious homilies, appeasement of awful dictatorships gussied up as "concern" for "human rights," and the lure of a Noble Prize to ensure nights in the Lincoln bedroom or hours waiting on a dictator's tarmac.
In the struggle in Fallujah hinges not just the fate of the Sunni Triangle, or even Iraq, but rather of the entire Middle East ˜ and it will be decided on the bravery and skill of mostly 20-something American soldiers. If they are successful in crushing and humiliating the fascists there and extending the victory to other spots then the radical Islamists and their fascistic sponsors will erode away. But if they fail or are called off, then we will see Days of Sorrow that make September 11 look like child's play.
We are living in historic times, as all the landmarks of the past half-century are in the midst of passing away. The old left-wing critique is in shambles ˜ as the United States is proving to be the most radical engine for world democratic change and liberalization of the age. A reactionary Old Europe, in concert with the ossified American leftist elite, unleashed everything within its ample cultural arsenal: novels, plays, and op-ed columns calling for the assassination of President Bush; propaganda documentaries reminiscent of the oeuvre of Pravda or Leni Riefenstahl; and transparent bias passed off as front-page news and lead-ins on the evening network news.
Germany and France threw away their historic special relationships with America, while billions in Eastern Europe, India, Russia, China, and Japan either approved of our efforts or at least kept silent. Who would have believed 60 years ago that the great critics of democracy in the Middle East would now be American novelists and European utopians, while Indians, Poles, and Japanese were supporting those who just wanted the chance to vote? Who would have thought that a young Marine from the suburbs of Topeka battling the Dark Ages in Fallujah ˜ the real humanist ˜ was doing more to aid the planet than all the billions of the U.N.?
Those on the left who are ignorant of history lectured the Bush administration that democracy has never come as a result of the threat of conflict or outright war ˜ apparently the creation of a democratic United States, Germany, Japan, Italy, Israel, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, and Afghanistan was proof of the power of mere talk. In contrast, the old realist Right warned that strongmen are our best bet to ensure stability ˜ as if Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been loyal allies with content and stable pro-American citizenries. In truth, George Bush's radical efforts to cleanse the world of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, bring democracy to the heart of the Arab world, and isolate Yasser Arafat were the most risky and humane developments in the Middle East in a century ˜ old-fashioned idealism backed with force in a postmodern age of abject cynicism and nihilism.
Quite literally, we are living in the strangest, most perilous, and unbelievable decade in modern memory.
The skepticism I hold of the Bush administration's middle-eastern endeavors is that the US has had a long history of supporting characters and "regimes" that are antithetical to American values in order to meet their own short and/or long term goals, vis a vis Iraq, Iran, Nicaragua, South America (Operation Condor etc...).
Can anyone comment on this (in light of Iraq) to illustrate or prove dissimilarities between present and past behaviors (beyond assertions of"it's a different administration" please).
The skepticism I hold of the Bush administration's middle-eastern endeavors is that the US has had a long history of supporting characters and "regimes" that are antithetical to American values in order to meet their own short and/or long term goals ... Can anyone comment on this (in light of Iraq) to illustrate or prove dissimilarities between present and past behaviors... .
McTag wrote:More McTag twiddle! (That of course excludes that portion of your comments, "Your metaphors are colourful" ... :wink: )Iraq did not get invaded though, until he tied Iraqi oil to the Euro. He got invaded a short time after that. At no time however, was he a threat to the USA or any european interests save in the purely commercial sense. Your metaphors are colourful but they are nonsense. They miss the total hypocrisy of the US and UK involvment in this invasion.
John McCain, being interviewed by Tim Russert on Meet the Press yesterday, praised the Marines' hard work and bravery in Falluja. Then Russert asked him if he thought we needed more troops in Iraq. McCain replied, I have been saying that for a year. Russert asked How many? McCain said 40,000-50,000 more.
I have always admired McCain for telling truth to power. He would be a Secretary of Defense that would set a whole new tone of accountability in this country. (Dream on...) He did admit that finding so many troops would be difficult and a challenge but said that we need to do it.
One can disagree with a person's strongly held belief on a subject, the way I disagreed with McCain's support of the war, and still respect his independence of thinking and straight-forwardness that over-write partisan divisions. He is a real leader.
I don't care ... twiddle... example of doublethink.
It is not opinion to say ... twiddle ...Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. Also, it is quite interesting and very telling that in the entirety of the 9/11 commission report not a single, solitary mention of al-Zarqawi appears.
Gen. Tommy Franks wrote in his memoir, "These camps[referring to several camps in NORTHERN Iraq occupied by al Qaeda fighters who had fled Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban]were examples of the terrorist 'harbors' that President Bush had vowed to crush. One known terrorist, a Jordanian-born Palestinian named Abu Musab Zarqawi who had joined al Qaeda in Afghanistan -- where he specialized in developing chemical and biological weapons -- was now confirmed to operate from one of the camps in Iraq."
Once again, ican, the camps to which Franks refers were situated in NORTHERN IRAQ, IRAQI KURDISTAN
AN AREA BEYOND THE IRAQI REGIME'S CONTROL OR GOVERNANCE, AN AREA PROTECTED BY THE COALITION ALLIES.
Propaganda is a very powerful mind control tool, ican. Please seek professional counseling to alleviate yours of this.
I as well.
But, you must remember: you cannot fight beliefs with facts. It's like hitting a pillow with a baseball bat.
I predict a post with lots of words like infer and reasonable and logical[/b] coming from Ican any minute now, with plenty of formatting in there for emphasis...
Cycloptichorn
...Franks and Duelfer found evidence of additional reasons for invading Iraq after the start of the invasion of Iraq, so such evidence is too late to be relevant.
