--- "Miller, Jeffrey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Too bad that there is no WMD research or acquisition > going on, and that we're going to be hard-pressed to > set up a democracy there. We're going to be there > for far long than anyone seems willing to admit - > far more, in any case, than the 18-24 months that > most pessimistic commentators in the administration > seem to think.
You believe that there is no WMD research going on in Iraq? What do you think about what Colin Powell said to the UN? For that matter, not a single country on the UN Security Council claims that Iraq is _not_ working on WMD - why do you think they're all wrong? Why do you think Saddam, after spending 12 years continually trying to acquire them, has suddenly changed his mind? > > Destabilization of Saudi Arabia? When has anyone > in the > > govenerment stated this? > > Quite clearly. I refer you to Richard Pearle's > analysis and subsequent comments from Wolfowitz, > Rumsfield, and Cheney. Out of curiosity, given what a crappy government Saudi Arabia is, why do you think this is bad? Incidentally, Richard Perle has no official power whatsoever, he's just a conservative intellectual on an advisory board, and there is _no_ chance that Dick Cheney has ever publicly stated that we want to destabilize the House of Saud. I would be stunned if Wolfowitz had said anything like that either. Now, that's not saying that this isn't a goal, but I'd like to see a public statement backing that up. > No, because a) disarmament is no more pressing an > issue on 9/12 than it was on 9/10 b) inspectors > aren't turning up much of anything, c) if we had > intelligence on a WMD program enough to kill > multiple people over, why aren't we sharing it with > inspectors, a d) there's no proof of Iraqi > involvement with AQ. a) Why? The major argument made by every terrorism scholar I am aware of for why we had not yet been attacked by WMD is that terrorist groups did not have the incentive to cause that many casualties. 9/11 spectacularly proved otherwise. b) So what? 150 people led by Hans Blix in a country the size of Texas where the government is actively hiding them, and you think they'll find stuff? Apart from which, that's not even true. They have found several things that are specifically forbidded Iraq - any one of which would put them in material breach. c) The job of the inspectors is not to find weapons. It is to _verify Iraqi disarmament_. If Iraq is not cooperating - and not a single country on the Security Council claims that it is - then it is, by definition, in violation of 1441. Finding weapons is immaterial to 1441. If you want to argue that UN Security Council Resolutions are meaningless, then feel free to do so, but that's a different argument. d) So what? I disagree, but so what? > ..and look how long we procrastinated when there > was actual bloodshed on the ground, at how we ran at > the first sigh of blood -- and for that matter, what > about other humanitarian crisis' that have occured > or are occuring around the world? We're not > intervening there, are we? So what? The argument that we let black people die in Africa so we need to let Arabs die in Iraq is a profoundly surreal type of affirmative action. If it is humanitarian _and_ in our interest to do something, why not do it? It is hardly reasonable to argue that the only legitimate use of force is whne it is _not_ in the interests of the United States. I am not casual with the lives of American soldiers, and therefore am not enthusiastic about sending them into battle when it's not in the interests of the US. But here we can do a good thing _and_ we can protect the security of our country. That sounds win/win to me. There is something deeply weird about the central argument here - we didn't do a good thing in some places, so we must never do a good thing anywhere. You're saying, if I understand you correctly, that we should do nothing because of consistency, and consistency isn't even a moral principle. > We can't do that, because of the aftermath of the GW > and the political actions since. Why not? If the Bush Administration were as evil as you seem to believe, what's stopping them? Everyone in the world except Britain and us was in favor of lifting the sanctions and buying Iraqi oil - why not just go along with it? It's not about oil, except insomuch as oil gives you power. It's about power. It's always, always, always about power. > Yes, we /could/ have, however that was an untenable > position to have taken during the 95th hour of the > invasion. Read "Crusade" for a basic intro to these > issues. I have. Also _The General's War_ (I know Mick Trainor, actually). And _A World Transformed_. I don't think you are correctly conveying what they were saying. It was untenable because the opinion of the Arab world was important to us. But we had the capacity to do it - with ease. We _chose_ not to because we thought Saddam would fall without our intervention, and because we weren't willing to occupy Iraq for the amount of time it would take. Now the stakes have changed. Saddam has proven surprisingly resistant to internal rebellion, surprisingly recalcitrant and innovative when it comes to acquiring WMD and (through his attempted assassination of George Bush among many other things) demonstrated that he is, in fact, willing to take actions that would lead to his own destruction if he thinks he can remain undiscovered. Not a good recipe. The stakes changed on 9/11. Before, we thought we could live with threats like that. Now we know that we have to eliminate them. > There are PLENTY of other issues at stake - that you > can only defend a war in Iraq by attacking one > platform of the peace movement isn't terribly > convincing. Well, it does seem to be the _only_ platform of the peace movement. You can't reasonably argue that it would be bad for the Iraqi people - the war, no matter how incompetently conducted (and if you think that the US military will conduct the war incompetently, you haven't been paying attention the last few years) will certainly leave them better off than they now are. You could argue that it is not in the interests of the US to do such a thing, but (if I understand you correctly) that's not what you are doing - because attacking the motivations of the Administration isn't that. It's telling, actually, that ad hominem attacks are the best the anti-war movement seems capable of doing. The actual merits of the policy are almost never debated. It's always about that oil hungry Texas cowboy. > Except that we DIDN'T. We've had at least one > military engagement with Iraq - air-to-air, radar > sites bombed, cruise missile attacks, etc - every > week since the end of the GW, not to mention > maintaining the no-fly-zones, the bases in Saudi > Arabia (you know, the ones that has Osama's beard > all twisted up), and our Coast Guard and Navy > running random interdiction efforts against all > Persian Gulf naval traffic. > > -j- And this was not keeping our word how? Iraq signed an armistice, which it violated. It agreed to abide by UN resolutions, which it violated. It agreed to disarm - it failed to do so. It attempted to massacre all of the Kurds and Shiites - the no-fly-zones which you seem to criticize are set up solely to protect them from the Iraqi army. You object to this? What exactly is your problem with all of the above? The bases in Saudi Arabia we will be leaving in the near future, for a slightly more hospitable locale. Gautam __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
