Frank Apisa wrote:
You are absolutely right, George. These are probably those same "cry wolf" people who insisted George Dumbya Bush was gonna attack Iraq.
While I don't know for sure what were the Administration's real reasons for the attack on Iraq, I believe there were (and are) good ones for doing so.
It is very easy to criticize action taken to head off the possibility of a distant, but far worse, outcome. The costs and bad side effects of the action itself manifest themselves quickly, while the more distant motivating factor may remain, just a possibility. History doesn't reveal its alternatives, but its judgements can be pretty tough on those who, after the fact are found to have failed to take timely action to head off a serious danger while there was still time.
The standard example of this is the Governments of England and France during the mid 1930sa. Why, when they had all the advantages, didn't they respond forcefully when Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland? (We now know there may well have been a coup in Germany if they had done so). The fact is they were far more worried about the equally threatening and murderous threat posed by the Soviet Union, and saw Hitler as an effective means of halting the spread of revolution to Germany ( a real danger in the early 1930s) and as a potential bulwark against Soviet influence in Western Europe. It wasn't until ,later that they learned that the prospect of Nazi domination was, despite its modernity compared to soviet communism, every bit as hateful and far more proximate a danger than that posed by the Soviets.
Criticize Bush if you wish, but you would impress me more if you put it in a context of how alternatively we should deal with the challenge presented to the West by a Moslem world caught in backward authoritarian and theocratic political models, and, -- angry at both its own backwardness and the evils inflicted on it by European colonialism and European-inspired Zionism. -- looking for someone to blame for its troubles.
High Tide (is it HOT?) -- interesting piece. My impression is that the economic effects will be brief and transient; the world economy will continue top be driven by the same underlying factors as before. Even the historical data presented there confirms that with respect to previous events.
The decision to get ready to do something is not the same thing as the decision to do it -- particularly when the act of getting ready has itself the potential to tilt events in a favorable way, and, equally importantly, forestall worse actions on the part of the object of it all -- Iran. I believe the U.S. strategic view is that Iran is and has long been our chief strategic threat in the region. A country of 50 million, it dwarfs Iraq (with about 17 million). That is what motivated our relatively minor actions to support Iraq during the war in the 1980s. We didn't want to see either side emerge as a clear victor, and, at the time it appeared that Iraq might go under. (That support wasn't anywhere near the nonsense that Cicerone so credulously puts forward from the various purveyors of conspiracy theories).
I believe our analysis involves significant attention to the internal politics of Iran, which, for all its theocratic backwardness, has important, functioning elements of democracy and a large generation of young people who may be increasingly interested in joining the modern world.
Iran needs to sell its oil just as badly as Japan, China, and the U.S. need to buy it. We have a vital interest in keeping the Straits of Hormuz open, and just the presence of the second aircraft carrier and the Marine Expeditionary Force will be enough to dissuade iran from any repeat of the foolishness of the early 1980s when they tried and failed to curtail the flow of oil through these straits.
