Holes In Thoughts: A simple test on the Iraq war

Monday, August 20, 2007

A simple test on the Iraq war

I don't think many people disagree with me that the Iraq war could be going better.

But I was thinking about whether or not I was against the war, in of itself: was it right to oust the crazy old dictator, Saddam Hussein?

In light of the fact that Al Qaeda and Iraq had no significant ties, and that they didn't have weapons of mass destruction, I think the best way for each person to answer that is this:

Would you have gone to war with Iraq before 2001?

That is, would you have been in favor of militarily ousting the guy? I don't think I'd have been in favor of it, but I can understand why someone who enjoys torturing people for no good reason (there is no good reason) shouldn't be a head of state.

But at that time and now, I'm quite sure we can do more good for more people through political means both friendly and coercive. Sometimes, it's just not possible to win a war, no matter your military might. You've got to recognize that as a country; it's what Eisenhower did when he got the heck out of Korea and, very importantly, this brilliant general used political means that drew lines and kept a cold peace for more than fifty years.

Our track record of regime changing is uniformly bad: it didn't work in Vietnam, it didn't work with Pinoche or anywhere in South America, and it didn't work in Iraq.

The only time that we went into that kind of situation and had it not totally blow up in our face was when, in the first Iraqi war, we stopped short of Baghdad.

So while I'm not opposed to a strong military, or even military action, if this is how it's going to be carried out, we may as well not bother! Moreover, we should have taken the world's unity with the United States - and we had it after 2001, before we attacked Iraq - to levy economic, political and social reform through economics, politics and social means.

~~~

I suppose what bothers me more than anything about the whole debacle after 2001 is that we had the whole world on our side. The changing of the guard in Birmingham had 2 minutes' silence and - at this old English ceremony - our national anthem was played.

So much good will is impossible to recover, and difficult to gain without these tragedies.

Labels: government, politics, war

posted by Steve @ 6:17 PM

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