----- Original Message ----- From: "JDG" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 8:42 AM Subject: Alternate History
>Announcing his candidacy for the 2004 Republican presidential nomination, >Senator John McCain said today that "George W. Bush was very foolish and >na�ve; he didn't realize he was being pushed into this needless conflict by >oil interests that wanted to seize Afghanistan to run a pipeline across >it." McCain spoke at a campaign rally at the World Trade Center in New York >City. >posted 10:57 a.m. A nice fantasy, but it is based on a false assumption. The unique criticism of Bush is not that he didn't invade Afghanistan, as Clinton did not. It is true that Kerry has stated that both Clinton and Bush should have invaded Afghanistan...and seems to have focused on Clinton's ability to convince the US to go to war in the Balkans as a precedent. The main criticism, outside of Kerry, was not that there wasn't greater offensive action against Afghanistan. A unilateral invasion of the country, without support of any neighboring country would have been extremely difficult to sell. The main criticism was the lack of focus on defense against terrorism in the US. It is not unreasonable to contrast Reno's description of daily principals meetings that went late into the night working on the potential for terrorism at the millennium with the lack of any principals meeting under Bush. Any organization knows the importance of questions that the leadership team is sweating out. They also know the message attached to having to run things through the right channels over several months before the first principals meeting. The first action is what is expected for a top priority issue, the latter is what one expects for a back burner issue. My sense is that Bush was less interested in fighting off the alligators (AQ) and much more interested in a big plan to drain the swamp. Thus, he was focused on regime change in places like N. Korea, Iraq, and Iran, and far less focused on stopping terrorists acting in the US. Before 9-11, that was not a totally unreasonable position. You can also see it in his pushing of an unworkable missile defense system. Last I heard, we are still planning on deploying it in the next year, working or not. I can see the appeal in offensive actions against states that support terrorism and missile defense, compared to the relatively mundane work of ferreting out what is going on in the US. But, it does appear, in hindsight, that the de-emphasis of defense was mistaken. We now see the continuation of that policy. Resources have been diverted from Afghanistan to the war in Iraq. We have been willing to risk the support of allies in order to invade Iraq. We have also been willing live with a situation where those governments that did ally us had to do it at risk to themselves. Thus, we have at least contributed to AQ's big victory in Spain by helping to set up a situation where the government was at risk in its re-election by acting against the expressed wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people. It is clear that I believe that, even with the recent troubles, that our actions in Iraq have been in the best interest of the people of Iraq. I also still think that our own best interests have not been served by moving in Iraq when we did. Focusing on Afghanistan and AQ while we improved our capacity to win the peace after winning the war has been my preferred strategy. I see parallels between the Bush Administration and the leadership of my old company. There is no doubt that the Bush Administration has far more competent people, but they both are/had been very firm in their beliefs in their own worldview. They both seemed fairly insulated from ideas that countered their assumptions. The strongest example of this was the view of the nature of the end of the war. The defense department was allowed to take it over to begin with; having pushed aside the "nervous Nellies" in the State department. There was a group in the White House who had been listening to the exiles talk about how welcome we and they would be, and how easy it would be to set up Iraq afterwards. Now, we may be near a cusp. Things can still turn out OK for the US, with things settling down after the interim government is in control. But, if I'm reading it correctly, there is some very astute political maneuvering in Iraq that includes the use of mobs and private armies. It is also possible that there will be just one free election, with radical Shiites taking a majority of the seats. It seems clear to me that pro-US candidates would not fare well. Our best hope seems to be moderates who will bad mouth us to get elected, and then work with us later. I have no objections to Bush's goals for Iraq. I think his convictions blinded him to the nature of the problem. From how I read the situation, he was very strongly influenced by the idea that the problem in foreign affairs is that the US has just not put its foot down when all the other countries of the world speak nonsense. If the US were only firm, on things like abandoning the ABM treaty, dismissing Kyoto out of hand, removing evil dictators, etc., then the rest of the world would realize that Uncle Sam was finished with being a push over, and reform. I hope that my fears turn groundless, and that an Iraq that resembles Jordan does emerge. That would be a tremendous success for the US. But, I think it is equally likely that the result will be an Iraq that resembles Iran, and a US that has had traditional alliances gravely weakened. We had Spain, the UK, Australia, and Poland among our strongest supporters. The Polish leader has stated that he was mislead by the US. The Spanish government was thrown out of office, giving AQ a major victory. Blair has lost a lot of ground, and may be on thin ice come summer. The opposition party in Australia is campaigning on a platform that includes withdrawing their support in Iraq. Worst case scenario is that we will be left with few solid allies on this. This post has wandered to a couple of other topics, but my point is that the criticism of Bush is not that he should have invaded Afghanistan in March, 2001. Rather, its that his plan for countering terrorism by focusing on countries like Iraq who sponsor terrorism instead of defense and AQ is/was not the best. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
