Re: Bicylist shot and killed for thrill

Mark Hickey wrote: 
Peter Cole <peter_cole@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I don't know what you mean by "it works". Personally, I think the war is already a failure since the cost has exceeded the benefit.


The cost is now - the potential benefit is long-term.

No one can prove "potential". We know the costs to date (more or less), they have been staggering -- thousands dead, thousands maimed, our military resources exhausted, a price tag likely to be at least $1T.

It's anyone's guess what the long-term impact will be. I don't see the likelihood that it will be positive, and it would have to be *very* positive to justify even the current costs. I think it's fair to say that the costs were significantly underestimated and the probability of positive outcome significantly overestimated -- I hold our leadership (all of them) responsible.

At this level of the debate we're characterizing the gamble as shrewd or incompetent. We have always followed a "realpolitik" course in the Middle East, backing those who support our current needs (including SH). The Iran/Iraq war was very much in our strategic interest, so we supported it, selling weapons to both sides. While previous administrations have made their blunders, the Middle East has pretty much gone our way for decades, without very large gambles. At the realpolitik level, this dog doesn't hunt -- huge cost, dicey future.


In the same way, I don't understand "GWB being right". He has already been wrong about everything, what is there left to be right about?


History will tell whether he's right or not. If the democracies in
Afghanistan and Iraq "work", they're going to cause profound changes
throughout the entire region. If so, like it or not, the man will go
down as a visionary. If he's wrong, he is a goat forever.

I do hope you'd rather him be right.

I really don't give a damn about the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. I figure they made their beds, let them lie in them. I wouldn't risk my own son for their benefit, so I won't ask others to risk theirs.

Saddam was widely admired in the Arab world. For all its problems, Iraq was perhaps the most modern Arab state. Look what happened in Iran after a regime change, I don't think most would regard that as progress. My point is not to defend the legacy of Saddam, but just to illustrate what a crap shoot the Middle East is. The track record on predictions in this latest adventure hasn't been good, I'm disinclined to give benefit of the doubt to further claims about the future.


In even the most rosy scenario, the US has done damage to the prospects of of a world governed by international law, through its unilateral actions, that is the greatest loss.

Prior to the war, the "international law" was the UN.

Now the rest of the world knows what a joke THAT was.

Pretty imperfect, I'd agree, but I think it has more long-term potential than unilateralism. Because of globalization, and the impact of technology, to think that the US can go it alone in any sphere -- trade, environment, crime, etc. is really a dangerously out of date mindset. The oil economy present a unique problem in that it creates huge transfers of wealth which tend to create "banana republics" on a grand scale. Manufacturing economies, like those emerging in India and China, can't help but grow a large, educated middle class -- the real source of social progress, and the real spawning grounds of democracies.

The sanctions were a blunt tool, creating a great deal of hardship for the people of Iraq, but they did prove to be effective in containing SH's ambitions. Likewise, the first Gulf War was a flawed, but reasonably effective, exercise in multilateral ism. We should have built on our successes rather than fall back to outmoded approaches.


In the Middle East, the neo-cons misunderstand the "enemy" the same way their comrades misunderstood SE Asia during Vietnam. Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise, and it will not be stopped militarily. To understand why Iraq will never "work" (in the neo-con sense), you have to understand why Arabs danced in the street after 9/11. History teaches that the only thing that will unite traditional enemies is the presence of a greater common enemy. We are fulfilling that role (again) -- remember China and Vietnam.


And I disagree. We are at war with a ideology, and the only way to
beat it is by making it impossible for that ideology to have state
sponsorship or access to WMD.

In Vietnam we made the mistake of thinking we were "at war with an ideology" (communism) when we were really dealing with the legacy of colonialism, we are making the same mistake. The animosity in the Arab world towards the West is for being dominated militarily for decades. We are currently fighting a coalition of fascists from the old regime and Islamic theocrats. Politics has made strange bedfellows, as it always will. We are creating our enemies, not defeating them.

As we've seen in Iran, the only solution to containment of WMD (a very real problem) is to multilaterally control the dissemination of those technologies. The invasion/occupation strategy doesn't scale. The oil consuming nations should disarm the oil producing nations, up until now, we've all been arming them to the teeth.


The ultimate irony in all of this is how the fundamentalists in this country -- a group to which GWB belongs and owes his presidency -- don't grasp the reality of Islamic fundamentalism. They expect the Arabs to behave "rationally" and embrace a secular democracy, while they maintain their own irrational positions and attempt to de-secularize their own government. Extremism begets extremism.


The government that Iraq will end up with will be considerably less
secular than the one it replaced. That in itself will be seen by the
Arab street as a significant point.

This is a likely outcome, and a bad one for social progress -- witness Iran.

The ultimate fallacy of this war is that were are attempting to determine Iraqi self-determinism for them -- such folly cannot end well. 


And I disagree again - I think the political process is well-designed
to have less and less foreign influence with every step taken.  By the
time the elections take place on the 15th, the government will be very
representative of the Iraqi people.  Give it a few more years, and it
will be more so.

Democracies are very fragile things. A large part of the populations of both Iraq and Afghanistan were complicit in prior oppressive regimes. I don't think either society is a good candidate for democracy. The real test of worthiness for democracy is whether the people themselves can throw off tyranny. I think both of these societies have failed that test miserably -- "evangelical democracy" is wishful thinking, and dangerously so.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Indifferent to Democracy
    ... Indifferent to Democracy ... Why the Arab world roots for American failure in Iraq. ... the Iraqi situation has shown the Arab world ...
    (soc.culture.african.american)
  • Re: The Prize
    ... foremost a successful democracy in the middle east. ... The cost, we all know ... to the question we are all asking about whether we stay or leave Iraq. ... That's not the prize. ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: FLICK: US will not be stopping in Iran.
    ... Iraq doesn't have a democracy in any meaningful sense. ... Iraqis didn't vote for freedom. ... And Iraq is the entire Arab world's last hope. ...
    (alt.true-crime)
  • Re: OT - Going to DC tomorrow
    ... Iraq because most reporters are confined to a tiny section of the ... The reporters don't leave the Green Zone because it is far too dangerous. ... How many peaceful Arab democracies can you name? ... Throw our interventions and impositions of democracy into the ...
    (alt.vacation.las-vegas)
  • Re: War to cost $5 Trillion or more?
    ... Iraq War Will Cost $12 Billion Per Month in 2008, Tripling Rate of War's Early Years ... The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. ... McCain on the Iraq War ...
    (alt.politics.bush)