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The Democratic candidates were quick to issue statements about Bhutto's murder yesterday. I found the angle of critique of Obama's comments to be particularly blind, however. Come by Nation-Building (or my masochistic cross-post at DKos) and see why.
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Don't try this on Huffington Post. Over there the word "Bush" causes brainlock and full-on conniptions.
It's one those, "I can establish a difference between me and the other jerk(s) who want the job, while still coming across as tough, and when I get elected, no one will remember I said it, and if they did, my press secretary (Michelle) will have to earn her salary explaining what I REALLY meant." type o' deals.
I could make a decent, subjective case specifically based on strategic timelines, centered around the regional discreditation of al Qaeda (who can't even get decent press on Al Jazeera these days) and its impact in accelerating disapproval of terrorism. Plus the eventual character of the Iraqi government is yet to be seen, and it may yet represent a "third way" between Islamic radicalism and autocracy, commonly seen as the twin, competing power centers that breed terrorism.
So it's certainly not "impossible to deny," as if making that case signals a fundamental break with Planet Earth.
But I'm being semantical and distracting from your main point in the piece, which is a very good one.
Even if one can't stand Bush with all one's might, the law of averages and the breadth of employees in the government of the United States demands that some foreign policy aims and initiatives are commonly shared across political affiliation.
Hmmm, nothing specific. I've been researching a piece on Iraqi political progress/reconciliation for about the last 45 days, should have a multi-part piece w/analysis companion post at the LWJ soon. This will at least look at the government of Iraq component. I'll let you know when it's out.
I have heavily-caveated hope for Iraq, even though the federal government is dysfunctional. Pakistan, however ...
The commenters over at DKos seem reasonable thus far.
The "mistake" may, in my humble opinion, have been taking over the job of kicking him out of Kuwait, and thus finding ourselves in an open-ended conflict with a guy who knows how to keep us bogged down, while Al Qaida uses the Iraqi peoples' distress (remember the sancions? Almost daily bombings?) as a heavily televised and compelling pretext for terrorist attacks all over the world.
I'm not saying the current status quo is necessarily preferrable, but the alternatives were ugly also. A successful Al Qaida termination of America's containment of Hussein would have boosted their (now sagging) popularity immensely.
Furthermore, and again - it's complicated, while no WMD were found, the Darfur Report found that the plan was to reconstitute those programs after the UN gave him a pass.
I'm with Bill on this. That line grated on me too.
But since we're revisiting history, imagine if the Bush I administration through Ambassador April Glaspie had told Iraqis that we viewed Saddam's beef with Kuwait and the KSA as a purely internal matter. Then when his tanks headed to cross the desert into Saudi Arabia, we stood aside and waved.
What would the past 17 years have been like? Was Saddam a greater threat to us than the KSA?
Once we took sides against Saddam, we were locked into the history we live today. However before that point things could have been very, very different.
Would they have been worse - from a purely American perspective? Was he a man we could deal with?
I dunno.
I will happily agree if you want to assert that the Iraq War could have been a positive strategic step in the war against terrorists (the war on terror, on the other hand, is a farcical construct). However, for that to be so would have required a lot of things to go our way that didnt, and for us to have done a lot of things that we didnt (for example, not disbanding the Army, or implementing something like Vietnam-CAPS from the start). In other words, the Iraq War was a longshot Hail Mary even if it was executed with perfect precision by the Second Coming of Bush Senior and Al Gore.
Since the war against terrorists is kind of important, and those guys are still a worldwide threat with significant body count to their name, I personally think a more conservative yet focused approach was a wiser avenue. Something like, dropping even half of the resources we have squandered in blood and money on Iraq into Afghanistan instead. Ah well. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Stuck now.
(thanks for compelling me to write this, I will cross post and update my entry at Nation Building)
I'd like to add that the battle of Falluja probably went a long way towards helping America's reputation. The bad guys learned that we do not just hide behind our technology, but will instead engage in urban warfare, kick down their doors, and kill them the old fashion way. Their mentality is one where they now fear any head to head battle with us. The war in Iraq has shown we won't let some dictator violate a cease fire agreement, shoot at our aircraft, attempt to kill one of our retired presidents, and violate 16 or so UNSC resolutions. Perhaps a Democrat president will, but if a conservative is elected president, watch out.
Now that Iraqis have witnessed the true horrors of Islamic terrorism, I suspect they may become an ally in the future, possibly even a member of NATO. They may allow us to have some air bases in Iraq.
My only concern is that our military may be a bit tired after fighting 2 wars to take on Iran.
Looking back, with 20/20 hindsight, I firmly believe Bush did a poor job selling the war to the public. But I wanted Iraq invaded in the mid 1990's, so I'm not complaining.
Um, first you need to make a case that it categorically hasn't been. Since you're the one asserting it, that's where the onus of proof lies.
Even without requiring you to make a case demonstrating this, those questioning your statement don't even have to argue that it has been a positive strategic move; they simply need to argue that it's too early to tell.
I do not understand how that is supposed to logically follow from the previous statements. I'm sorry, but this looks a lot like reasoning backwards from desired conclusions.
The bottom line for me remains that it is far too early to tell how this approach will ultimately perform in comparison to the WWI/WWII 'sit and wait until a significant percentage of the world is enflamed in war and then finally expend grotesque quantities of lives and wealth putting the fires out' and the WWIII 'sit and wait until the enemy wastes a grotesque quantity of their own lives and resources trying to compete and finally collapses' strategies.
And what makes it even harder for me to just swallow your unsupported assertions is how well the early intervention and national reconstruction approach appears, in comparison so far to WWI-III's records of wastage of lives and resources, to be performing.
Oh, and BTW -- I get to claim the lives lost and wealth wasted in Viet Nam, and the subsequent Killing Fields, for my side, as part of the whole learning process.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.