One thing we should note:
It is quite difficult to hold accountable a shadowy terrorist organization that hides under cloak of darkness.
It is much easier to deal with elected officials. Not to say it always works--but I am hopeful. Many of those organizations feel emasculated, and act out in desperation. They have now achieved a bit of legitimate power, self-determination, self-actualization...and now commensurate responsibility follows closely.
It can be a good thing--though they may go about shaking their penii (newly made man bravado) for a while. They may find their masculinity slammed in a door if they don't reel it in within an appropriate time.
I really think this may be a good thing.
Whether This War Was Worth It
In Analyzing Iraq, Consider the Effects of Having Done Nothing
By Robert Kagan
Sunday, June 19, 2005; Page B07
Serious scholars still debate whether the Civil War was necessary, never mind the more obvious "wars of choice" such as World War I, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, wars in Vietnam and Kosovo, and the Persian Gulf War. To a certain brand of American isolationist, even World War II was unnecessary and counterproductive. So there is nothing remarkable about polls showing Americans wondering whether the recent Iraq war was "worth it." It is a great American myth, voiced by John Kerry last year, that
the nation goes to war only when there is no question about the necessity of going to war. There's always a question. Even if the Iraqi insurgency disappeared tomorrow, George Ibrahim al Washington became president of Iraq and every liter of Saddam Hussein's onetime stockpile of chemical and biological weapons suddenly appeared in the desert, historians would still spend the next century debating whether the war was "worth it."
Wars remain subjects of debate not just because their "necessity" is in doubt but also because their results are mixed. No war has produced unmitigated successes. The Civil War did not completely "free" African Americans, who remained oppressed for another century. World War I destroyed Europe, and helped pave the way for the rise of Hitler and the Soviet Union. World War II defeated Hitler but enslaved half of Europe behind the Iron Curtain and introduced the world to nuclear warfare. The Persian Gulf War drove Hussein out of Kuwait but helped produce the Osama bin Laden we know today. Add to that the millions of innocent lives lost, and the toll of these wars, generally regarded as "successful," is high. Does that mean those wars were not "worth it"? Demanding unmixed results and guarantees against the unintended consequences of war is as unrealistic as demanding absolute confidence in the "necessity" of going to war in the first place.
One simple answer to the problem is not to go to war, ever. But for those not inclined to absolute pacifism, the question of whether a war is worth it has to go beyond such simple categories as "necessity" and whether or not the aftermath of war is an unmitigated success. It requires delving into the messier and hazier calculations that good historians spend careers contemplating.
One problem is that we always know what did happen as a result of war, but we never know what didn't happen. What if we had not gone to war in Europe in 1917, Korea in 1950, or even Vietnam in the 1960s? Would we have rued those decisions not to act as much as we now rue the decision not to drive Hitler out of the Rhineland in 1936? To answer such questions requires predicting, with only the conflicting and incomplete evidence available, what the world would have looked like had we not gone to war. We know what happened as a result of not going to war in 1936. We know, in particular, that British efforts to avoid war in 1936 and then in 1938 at Munich did not prevent war at all but only delayed it. Yet we can only try to guess what might have happened had Imperial Germany been allowed to conquer Europe, or had communist victories in Korea and Vietnam been allowed to stand unchallenged. A few years ago Michael Lind wrote a provocative book titled "Vietnam: The Necessary War," in which he argued that, even knowing what we know now, it was correct for the United States to fight a limited, losing war in Southeast Asia -- to "lose well," as he put it -- rather than allow a quick and easy communist victory.
To assess whether the Iraq war was worth it requires seriously posing the question: What would have happened if the Bush administration had not gone to war in March 2003? That is a missing but essential piece of the current very legitimate debate. We all know what has gone wrong since the Iraq war began, but it is not as if, in the absence of a war, everything would have gone right. Those who want to have this debate cannot simply point to the terrible toll in casualties. They have to address the question of what the alternative to war really would have meant.
There is not much dispute about what kind of leader Saddam Hussein was. Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright once compared him to Hitler, and the comparison was apt in a couple of ways. Hussein, as we will soon relearn in excruciating detail, had contempt for human life and no qualms about killing thousands of his own citizens and many thousands more of his neighbors' citizens, about torturing women and children and about using any type of weapon he could buy or manufacture to burn, poison, infect and incinerate political opponents and even entire populations, so long as they were too weak to fight back. This alone placed him in a special class of historical figures, a not irrelevant factor in determining whether his removal, even at the present cost, was worth it. Was it not worth at least some sacrifice to remove such a man from power?
Amore intriguing question is whether a decision not to go to war in 2003 would have produced lasting peace or would only have delayed war until a later date -- as in the 1930s. There is a strong argument to be made that Hussein would have pushed toward confrontation and war at some point, no matter what we did. His Hitler-like megalomania does not seem to be in question. He patiently, brutally pushed his way to power in Iraq, then set about brutally and impatiently making himself the dominant figure in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, using war and the threat of war as his principal tools. In the early 1980s he invaded Iran and fought it to a bloody standstill for the better part of a decade. No sooner had that war ended than he invaded Kuwait. He fancied himself the new Saladin, much as Napoleon and Hitler had fancied themselves the new Caesar.
Many argue that, even if all this is true, Hussein was nevertheless contained through sanctions and no-fly zones and therefore could be deterred. Many advanced this argument before the war, too, even when they believed with as much certainty as the Bush administration that Hussein did have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. And, indeed, although for most Americans the question of whether the war was "worth it" revolves around the failure to discover the stockpiles that most believed he had, nevertheless the key issue, I believe, remains the same as before that failure: whether Hussein could have been contained.
For another fact not in dispute is that Hussein remained keenly interested in and committed to acquiring weapons of mass destruction, that he maintained secretive weapons programs throughout the 1990s and indeed right up until the day of the invasion, and that he was only waiting for the international community to lose interest or stamina so that he could resume his programs unfettered. This is the well-documented, unrefuted -- and unnoticed -- conclusion of both David Kay and Charles Duelfer. Whether Hussein would have eventually succeeded in acquiring these weapons would have depended on other nations' will and ability to stop him.
That is a question to which we will never have a definitive answer, and yet it is critical to any judgment about the merits of the war. The most sensible argument for the invasion was not that Hussein was about to strike the United States or anyone else with a nuclear bomb. It was that containment could not be preserved indefinitely, that Hussein was repeatedly defying the international community and that his defiance appeared to both the Clinton and Bush administrations to be gradually succeeding. He was driving a wedge between the United States and Britain, on one side, which wanted to maintain sanctions and containment, and France, Russia, and China, on the other, which wanted to drop sanctions and normalize relations with him. The main concern of senior officials in both administrations was that, in the words of then-national security adviser Samuel "Sandy" Berger, containment was not "sustainable over the long run." The pattern of the 1990s, "Iraqi defiance, followed by force mobilization on our part, followed by Iraqi capitulation," had left "the international community vulnerable to manipulation by Saddam." The longer the standoff continued, Berger warned in 1998, "the harder it will be to maintain" international support for containing Hussein. Nor did Clinton officials doubt what Hussein would do if and when containment collapsed. As Berger put it, "Saddam's history of aggression, and his recent record of deception and defiance, leave no doubt that he would resume his drive for regional domination if he had the chance." Nor should we assume that, even if the United States and others had remained vigilant, Hussein could have been deterred from doing something to provoke a conflict. Tragic miscalculation was Hussein's specialty, after all, as his invasions of Iran and Kuwait proved.
It is entirely possible, in short, that if the Bush administration had not gone to war in 2003, the United States might have faced a more dangerous and daring Saddam Hussein later on and felt compelled to act. So, in addition to whatever price might have been paid, certainly by the Iraqi people and possibly by Iraq's neighbors, for leaving Saddam in power, we might have wound up going to war anyway. There is the further question of what the entire Middle East would have looked like with a defiant, increasingly liberated Hussein still in power. To quote Berger again, so long as Hussein remained "in power and in confrontation with the world," Iraq would remain "a source of potential conflict in the region," and, perhaps more important, "a source of inspiration for those who equate violence with power and compromise with surrender." Whether historians judge the war favorably will depend heavily on whether post-Hussein Iraq does indeed provide a different sort of inspiration, but, again, the effort to change the direction of the region was surely worth paying some price.
This may be no solace to those who have lost loved ones in this war -- and it certainly does not absolve the Bush administration from the errors that it made before and after the war and continues to make today. But these are the kinds of considerations that ought to be part of any serious debate over whether the war in Iraq was "worth it."
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.
All comparisons without any relevance. This guy has something to sell, and it has nothing to do with evaluating the Iraq war on its very own. We went to war in Iraq on lies. We went to war in Vietnam on lies. That's the only comparison that makes sense. The rest, as they say, is chaos and many innocent dead people - all based on lies.
A second thought on Robert Kagan's article. He's doing what the Bush administration does best; change the justifications to make it fit the best scenario. If we wait long enough, they may come up with a justification that might reconcile the American sacrifice against what may result as something positive. The problem Kagan hasn't addressed is the fact that this war in Iraq may last longer than WWII and Vietnam put together.
Do you refute anything in that article?
How does one comment on any idea that is full of "if's?"
Do you refute this:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
. And, indeed, although for most Americans the question of whether the war was "worth it" revolves around the failure to discover the stockpiles that most believed he had, nevertheless the key issue, I believe, remains the same as before that failure: whether Hussein could have been contained.
For another fact not in dispute is that Hussein remained keenly interested in and committed to acquiring weapons of mass destruction, that he maintained secretive weapons programs throughout the 1990s and indeed right up until the day of the invasion, and that he was only waiting for the international community to lose interest or stamina so that he could resume his programs unfettered. This is the well-documented, unrefuted -- and unnoticed -- conclusion of both David Kay and Charles Duelfer. Whether Hussein would have eventually succeeded in acquiring these weapons would have depended on other nations' will and ability to stop him.
That is a question to which we will never have a definitive answer, and yet it is critical to any judgment about the merits of the war. The most sensible argument for the invasion was not that Hussein was about to strike the United States or anyone else with a nuclear bomb. It was that containment could not be preserved indefinitely, that Hussein was repeatedly defying the international community and that his defiance appeared to both the Clinton and Bush administrations to be gradually succeeding.
What happened before the UN weapon's inspectors went into Iraq doesn't mean anything. What is more important is the fact that nothing was found after the so-called "Saddam's committment to obtain WMDS." You may not be able to reconcile the logic, but what is most current is more important than what happened in the past. So when the UN inspectors were looking for WMDs in 2002-2003, they found none. After our preemtive attack on Iraq, the US military looked and looked for those WMDs, but could find none - and that's after Colin Powell told the UN Security Council we knew the locations where they were 'hidden.' Those are the facts you seem to ignore.
I don't ignore it. I just think history, common sense and knowledge of Saddam Hussein plus the attempts of his to fool inspectors trumps it.
Triumphant Hariri pledges reforms in Lebanon By Nadim Ladki
Mon Jun 20, 4:02 PM ET
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese politician Saad al-Hariri pledged sweeping reforms on Monday after his anti-Syrian alliance won control of parliament in the first elections for three decades without Syrian troops in Lebanon.
Official results for Sunday's final phase of elections in north Lebanon showed the bloc led by Hariri -- the son of slain ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri -- sweeping all 28 remaining seats, taking its overall total to 72 in the 128-member assembly.
The victory means parliament has a majority of lawmakers opposed to Syria's influence in Lebanon for the first time since the 1975-1990 civil war.
European Union monitors gave the May 29-June 19 elections a clean bill of health but urged an overhaul of controversial rules on the organization of polls.
"The elections were well-managed and took place in a generally peaceful manner within the framework for elections," the EU election observation mission to Lebanon said.
"However, there is an urgent need for complete reform of the election framework," it said, singling out lax campaign financing rules which it said set an uneven playing field.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice congratulated Lebanon for holding elections in a "respectful way" and urged Syria to remove any intelligence agents it has in the country.
She told Arab television Al Arabiya that "this great democratic enterprise ... is done thanks finally to the removal of Syrian military forces, though Syria needs to remove finally non-trench military forces that it might also have in the area."
Hariri said people had voted for change and dedicated his victory to his late father: "I owe my father everything."
He told a news conference that he would issue next week a comprehensive program based on the late billionaire tycoon's ideas.
"There should be administrative and financial reforms, anti-corruption measures and economic, development and social programs. That's what we are going to do," Hariri said.
Sunday's win makes Hariri, 35, a leading candidate for the post. He brushed aside questions on future political moves, saying he wanted to consult with his allies first.
UNLIKELY ALLIANCE
The anti-Syrian list squared off against an unlikely alliance of pro-Syrians and Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian and long time critic of Damascus.
Aoun's victory in the Christian heartland of Mount Lebanon in last week's round stunned the movement whose street protests following Hariri's assassination on Feb. 14 forced Syria to bow to global pressure and pull out of Lebanon.
Aoun accused Hariri of buying votes and playing on sectarian differences to secure victory in northern Lebanon, ruling out any chance of teaming up with him in government.
"We will be in the opposition. We can't be with a majority that reached (parliament) through corruption," he said.
Hariri's bloc has now won 72 seats, an absolute majority, but short of the two-thirds the anti-Syrian front had predicted.
Aoun and allies have 21 seats while a pro-Syrian Shi'ite Muslim alliance between Hizbollah and Amal have 35 seats.
The vote in northern Lebanon was marred by allegations of vote-buying, intimidation and other irregularities. The EU said there had been a number of such complaints.
Lawmakers will jostle for a say on divisive issues such as the fate of Lebanon's head of state, President Emile Lahoud, a close ally of Syria, and international calls for Hizbollah guerrillas to disarm.
The resurfacing of sectarian tension and the emergence of Aoun as the main Christian political leader make it more difficult to force Lahoud, a Maronite, to quit.
It is unlikely the shape of the blocs will withstand the complexities of Lebanese politics and sectarian tensions over the course of parliament's four-year term.
An early indication comes this week when the new assembly meets to elect a speaker, a Shi'ite by tradition.
Amal chief Nabih Berri, a close ally of Damascus who has served as speaker for the past 13 years, is favorite to win re-election. Several Hariri allies have said they would not vote for Berri, whose alliance with Hizbollah swept the Shi'ite vote.
Parliament must also nominate a prime minister, a post reserved for a Sunni, to form a new government to replace that of Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
(Additional reporting by Alaa Shahine)
Pull up a chair!!
Hardliner wins election in Iran...
Was this a legitimate candidate...or is he a figurehead for the powers that be?
What do you think about it?
Well, it's certainly a surprise
.
It was already a big surprise when he reached the run-off; everyone was betting on an ample Rafsanjani lead with perhaps reformist Moin (or Moeen) coming in second - but Moin ended fifth, instead. Despite a high turnout, which had been predicted to benefit reformists.
I havent read about the run-off yet, but regarding the first round there were complaints of fraud. It was considered very suspicious that the Guardian Council had published an opinion poll that, unlike any other, already had Ahmadinezhad in second place, and even more suspicious that the Council published partial results the day after the elections showing him in second place when the Ministry of the Interior's numbers still had him third.
But the result could also have reflected the alienation of voters who want real change, with dissidents like Noble Prize winner Shirin Ebadi calling for a boycott.
For one, because the spectacle of free elections served to cloak the fact that the President thus elected will be nothing but a figurehead. When Khatami was first elected as reformist President in 1997 with such a surprising massive majority, mostly thanks to the young and women, he won a position that still had considerable clout. However, already then the office was secondary to the authority of the Guardian Council and Supreme Leader Khamenei. And as Khatami's government and the Guardian Council kept clashing and undoing each other's decisions and actions, the Council used its overriding power to whittle away ever more of the President's authorities, making Khatami ever more impotent - and the population, in turn, disillusioned in Khatami; two strikes in one.
By now, the office is thus a rather empty one, so the elections were something of a show - despite the wholly sincere enthusiasm and involvement of these or those voters.
A second reason for the boycott call was that, even if the counting of votes had been completely honest, the race was already rigged. After all, the Council of Guardians had controlled the nomination process. And out of over 1,000 initial registrations, it had only approved seven candidates. And a number of better-known reformists were barred, (deliberately?) leaving Moin, a rather uncharismatic figure, as the standard-bearer for true reformism.
Possibly the most progressive voters followed the boycott call (especially in the second round, which must have been depressingly uninspiring for them), yielding the victory to the conservative mayor of Teheran? Ahmadinezhad has a strong following in Teheran's poorest neighbourhoods, it seems, because of practical things he achieved for the city.
Anyhow, clever strategisms of the conservative Guardians there. In the short-term. In the long-term, it makes it more likely that the longing for change will take on more violent forms.
Turnout in the second round was only 47%, compared with 63% in the first round, which would confirm the above (Ahmadinezhad winning because reformist voters stayed home).
Still, on the bright side - this was the take of the Dutch news about the first round (I came here looking for a thread to post this in, in fact, and am kinda flabbergasted that there hasn't apparenly been any thread on the Iranian elections at all, only that stupid one about "War With Iran Has Begun"). And though the eventual results cast a pall on the analysis, I think it still makes an interesting and important point:
Quote:Youngsters decide in Iran
NOTE ->16 June 2005
(translated from NOS Nieuws)
The era of the popular reformist Khatami is over. In Iran a President may only serve two terms and so there will be an other now. Khatami won twice with a landslide, but the last few years he's come under very much criticism.
He was said not to act strongly enough against the conservatives and he would avoid confrontation too much. Probably that's all true and it is also true that many of the changes that the reformers had wanted to implement have been blocked by conservative, often unelected bodies.
Nevertheless his influence has been enormous. Iran is a very different country than it was in 1997. He has started a process of liberalisation that can't be stopped.
He started making stronger ties with other countries. That too is an irreversible process. More should have been done, but if you look at the themes of the election campaign his influence is very clear.
Completely taboo
Four conservative candidates with a background in the ultra conservative Revolutionary Guard are competing with three reformers and a centrist cleric. All candidates have adopted themes that previously had been exclusively entertained by reformers.
Some of them, such as the expansion of personal freedoms and the opening of ties with the West, even with America, were until recently completely taboo.
Now even conservative candidate Larijani calls for religious modernity, when as head of state television he has mostly broadcast programmes about strict religious morality.
And Rafsanjani, who was an important advisor of the founder of the Islamic Republic Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, wants to give women more rights. All themes of the reformers.
Reformers
And what about the reformers? The most important candidate, Moin, has pulled the programme of the reformers even further on. He has even opened ties with forbidden organisations in Iran and he has dared to demand that the President should get more actual authorities.
At the moment, spiritual leader Khamanei always has the last word. If it's up to Moin, the President will really obtain the executive power. This is a very fraught issue in Iran, considering that the untouchability of the spiritual leader if part of the fundament of the state order.
Turnout
[..] Turnout will be important. On a low turnout conservatives in Iran tend to get more votes. But a low turnout would be bad for the legitimacy of the regime as a whole. Turnout in the countryside is expected to be higher than in the city.
[Among reformers and conservatives,] Rafsanjani is a little bit in between. He is mostly known for his practical behaviour. He sees his country as a huge bazar where everything can be negotiated.
The Iranian youth will play an important role. More than half of Iranians is younger than 25. In Iran you're allowed to vote when you're 15. That's why many candidates target youngsters in their campaigns. [..] They smile on poters and on TV they debate students, even if it's an orchestrated debate.
Corruption and murder
But many Iranians don't want any of the candidates and don't see the use of voting. They say they're all people who are part of the system.
Some are suspected of corruption and even involvement in murder, like Rafsanjani, although that was never proven. They won't vote, because they want to get rid of the system, period. [..]
Heated discussions
Everyone you speak freely speaks their mind. On the street you hear heated discussions about politics. Youths have waged campaign evening after evening, with music, mixed dancing [!], and hooting. All that would have been unheard of in the Iran of a few years ago.
With that, Khatami, who conquered the country with his smile, his humanity and his approachability, has put an unerasable stamp on the country, even if he is not getting the credits from everyone for that now.
As said, with the final result in mind this take may now seem overly optimistic. But I think the point about Khatami's role, especially where it concens
social and cultural, rather than political change, is only fair.
If this guy, the hardliner--guess I have to learn to spell that train-wreck of a name-- is a figurehead to take Iran backwards and make it seem it was popularly supported-- I foresee some violence and clashes in the next few months.
What are our people on the ground in Iran doing now? Still fomenting a popular uprising?
If they just had an election, how do we justify "pressing for democracy"? Or is that the exact reason for the seeming "fair election"?
What made them (reformers) stay home? Apathy...? Fear, intimidation? Hopelessness?
What do you foresee as a result of the hardline win in Iran?
It just goes to show you liberals are not any more popular in Iran than in the US of A. Conservativism seems to always displace and fear honest freedom. I can only think of one historical exception.
Lash wrote:What made them (reformers) stay home? Apathy...? Fear, intimidation? Hopelessness?
What do you foresee as a result of the hardline win in Iran?
I haben't talked to Iranians in Iran and know nothing more than reported by the media and the various correspondants there.
Obviously the protesters urged Iranian co-citizens (and those abroad) to boycott the voting, saying that regardless of whether a hard-liner or a more moderate candidate wins, the election only legitimizes a system in which religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the final word on every important issue.
I suppose, things won't become easier now.
Lash wrote:
What are our people on the ground in Iran doing now? Still fomenting a popular uprising?
What do you mean exactly by this?
Thank Walter. Sounds quite plausible.
"I can only think of one historical exception."
which is?
