janc
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response 118 of 122:
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Aug 4 13:30 UTC 2003 |
If we were talking about an action that would have the potential to be
spun so negatively to the American public, Bush wouldn't have choosen
that course of action. He wouldn't trust that he could control the spin
in the US. I'm sure he's even less confident of his ability to control
the spin in the middle east. If this were a question of how something
would be received by Americans, he'd have found another solution to the
problem that would spin better. (I don't know what that would be in
this case. maybe you set up an Iraqi police force, give them a huge
funding grant to help them catch Sadam (which they use largely to bribe
people). I don't know exactly. Our politicians are so much better at
inventing these devices than I am.)
If Bush really wanted to convince the middle east that he was in Iraq
for the good of the Iraqis, then he'd have to be doing a lot of things
differently. This bribe is one. Another thing that would make a huge
difference would be if you threw a lot of effort into getting sewage and
electrical systems up quickly in the major cities. (No illusions about
this - it would be extremely hard to do - things were a mess long before
we arrived.) Doing that would be an obvious good to many Iraqis. It
would be a convincing demonstration that we are there to bring a higher
quality of life to Iraq. Hey, give Halliburton the contract - they can
export a barrel of oil for each Iraqi they supply with adequate sewage,
water and electricity.
I think Bush and his gang have a vision of the future which is basically
an American Global Economic Empire. A world where American can freely
exercise it's military power to ensure that things go the American way,
and where America need answer to no other nation. That sounds good to
many Americans. Not to me. Bush's father started on a different course
when he went out of his way to bring the whole world in on the first
Iraq war. He took a big step to establishing a world view where
American was a leader in a community of nations, but where other nations
were treated with respect. In that sense, this second Bush war in Iraq
isn't a continuation of the first, but an erasure of the first.
If you have the power for it, acting the petty tyrant is a lot easier
than acting as a community leader. It would certainly have been a great
deal harder to get anything done in Iraq if we had to coordinate with
the UN. Too hard for the younger Bush, apparantly. But in the long
term, working with the world would pay off. Each time you do the job
that way, nations get more used to working with each other and trusting
each other. You get slowly better at getting things done in that mode.
You build up credibility. Which has all been flushed down the toilet
now, for the sake of being able to efficiently pursue Bush's objectives
in Iraq.
And why? Where was the pressing national interest that demanded that we
trash our international crediability? There was never any evidence that
Saddam was a imminent threat to the USA. If there had been, as there
was in Afghanistan, there would be some excuse for unilateral action.
But there isn't and never was.
They did it this way because they want the American Empire, not the
Community of Nations. Lots of Americans agree. I don't.
Add that to the "Patriot Act" kind of business, where American's rights
are restricted to concentrate more power in the government (is this a
Republican ideal?) and you have the two faces of why I hate Bush. His
response to 9/11 has been to try to concentrate power in his own hands.
To do this he has actually been playing up the threat of terrorism,
making people even more scared than they legitimately need to be.
That's not a "show of leadership in the face of terrorism", that's
"exploitation of the fear caused by terrorism for your own ends".
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klg
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response 120 of 122:
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Aug 4 16:20 UTC 2003 |
Opinionjournal.com (8/1/03)
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that allied search teams
have "found dozens of fighter jets from Iraq's air force buried beneath
the sands." This took four months--and airplanes are a lot bigger than
vials of gas or germs.
And, just for fun (or maybe they're serious):
Left Coast Quagmire
California is a desert land roughly the size of Iraq. It is also an
object lesson in the dangers of trying to impose democracy in a culture
that is not ready for it. California "is degenerating into a banana
republic," writes former Enron adviser Paul Krugman in his New York
Times column. Leon Panetta, himself a Californian, writes in the Los
Angeles Times that California is undergoing a "breakdown in [the] trust
that is essential to governing in a democracy." Newsday quotes Bob
Mulholland, another California political activist, as warning of "a
coup attempt by the Taliban element." Others say a move is under way
to "hijack" California's government.
What isn't widely known is that the U.S. has a large military presence
in California. And our troops are coming under attack from angry
locals. "Two off-duty Marines were stabbed, one critically, when they
and two companions were attacked by more than a dozen alleged gang
members early Thursday," KSND-TV reports from San Diego, a city in
California's south.
How many young American men and women will have to make the ultimate
sacrifice before we realize it isn't worth it? Is the Bush
administration too proud to ask the U.N. for help in pacifying
California? Plainly California has turned into a quagmire, and the
sooner we bring our troops back home, the better.
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