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September 27, 2006VanityA commenter in a previous thread says Iraq was a "vanity" war. I suspect many historians, a few years on, will increasingly take this view. There was the dynastic vanity of the son who wanted to right the perceived shortcomings of Poppy's prior Mesopotamian involvement. There was the Cheneyesque 'I know best' vanity of the soi disant wise, knowing elder calmly steering us through the choppy Hobbesian waters. There was the crude Jacksonian vanity of Rumsfeld, who never cared a whit for the Iraqis. There was the Wolfowitzian vanity of the too exuberant high-brow neo-cons (and there was also the "cakewalk" vanity of the low-brow, group-thinking, spittle-licking ones). There was the 'shock and awe' vanity of Tommy Franks. There was the vanity of good intentions, as with Colin Powell--soldiering on rather than resigning earlier--likely thinking he could temper all the cheap bravado and mitigate the fall-out resulting from the gross incompetence that surrounded him. And then there was something of a national vanity: that Afghanistan had been too easy, 9/11 too big, and so we needed to kick a little more ass, to put it colloquially. Further, and we shouldn't forget or gloss over it, there were a helluva lot of us who got dragged along for the ride, played like chumps we now know with hindsight. Realist types like me mostly did based on fears of Saddam's supposed chemical and biological WMD capability (relying on Tenet's 'slam dunk' for the causus belli), thinking 9/11 might have inspired Saddam, and per 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' that he might decide to cozy up with transnational terror groups like al-Qaeda to deliver a severe second-round blow to the U.S. Like many New Yorkers and others who were impacted or witnessed the attacks, I suspect, I suppose I also felt much anger, fused with an ill-advised sense of absolutist, moral righteousness that was its own form of self-indulgent vanity too, one that helped spur on copious helpings of jingo-fever in the air--with too few of us asking the hard questions about the hows and why and whos of how the post-war nation-building effort would be pursued (I speak here of Iraq, not the fully warranted conflict in Afghanistan). Such public confessionals aren't particularly pleasant, of course, but they have the merit of being honest reflections of what I now believe, for whatever they're worth. Yes, it is true, Saddam was an odious character, and few mourn his passing from the scene. But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that we've committed a major blunder in Iraq, having helped stoke a new generation of jihadists in the Iraq bog, while having taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, and now floundering, to varying degrees, in both places. Our national repute in the Middle East is at a low ebb indeed, not to mention many others parts of the globe. Repairing this damage will take many years, perhaps decades even. Meantime, Islamist sentiment is growing in countries like Egypt and Syria--and our crude and naive democracy exportation policy appears increasingly untethered from such realities. We have become a clumsy, self-gratified and cocksure power, navigating a hugely complex region too often like purblind ignorants (see the recent Lebanese fiasco, to use a word in vogue, or our unserious, lazy policies with regard to Iran and Syria, among other examples). But I digress, as we were speaking of vanity, meaning really a decadent self-satisfaction, an arrogant refusal to admit mistakes, a bloated sense of American exceptionalism. The irony is, what other country can assume a responsible mantle of world leadership at this turbulent time, if not us? Certainly not China, or the EU, or Russia, or anyone else. But we are dropping the ball, alas, including critically the moral high-ground, with our "evasive, quasi-participation" with regard to the Geneva Conventions (General Batiste's phrase), via the Addingtonian machinations bent on ensuring the Legislative Branch (wink wink) has blessed the Executive Branch's right to torture, albeit disguised with legalistic obfuscations or barely credible disclosure requirements in the Federal Register, among other such profoundly irresponsible chicanery that would have previously been unimaginable in our country anytime in the post-war era, if not well before then. Well, in my humble view, the time for vanity is past, the time for recklessness is past, the time for falling easy prey to bamboozlement is past, the time for 'new paradigmists' thrashing hard-won tradition is past. It's high time for walloping doses of reality and sobriety and, above all, competence. But where is it? Certainly not among the incorrigible Beltway cheerleaders calling for a rapidly pitched together air-war on Iran, whatever the consequences. Have they no sense of deliberate statecraft or basic professionalism? Above all, have they no honor or shame? Posted by Gregory at September 27, 2006 08:39 PMComments
"public confessionals aren't particularly pleasant" but can be very effective advertising. I briefly read BD a couple of years ago but stopped because it seemed like just another exercise in admin apologetics. fortunately, I recently tried again and discovered that I had made a serious mistake (that's two admitting their errors - could it be a trend?). you now have one more devoted reader since I know that your opinions are sincerely held, though malleable in the face of new evidence. -charles Posted by: ctw at September 28, 2006 04:44 PM | Permalink to this comment
Can we call Iraq a quagmire yet? Those of us who have been "right all along" appreciate your admission Lets face it, the key to stabilizing Iraq isn't going to be more And the question is how much damage the US will sustain over the next To me, the answer is "too much" -- this is a "vanity war", and if the We can't win the war on terror in Iraq -- we can only lose it there.
Lots of truth in this. Still: "Yes, it is true, Saddam was an odious character, and few mourn his passing from the scene" The pro forma disclaimer that "Saddam was a bad guy" is a) painfully cliched "Yes, it is true, Ba'athism is an odious 12-step program." Posted by: Knemon at September 28, 2006 06:18 PM | Permalink to this comment
>Above all, have they no honor or shame? Well there are those of us who thought neither term applied to Republicans as far back as the year 2000 and certainly in 2004. Of course, we voted for the other guys. So, sorry for your shame and despair. My feelings are basically, tough-titty, you voted for it, probably twice so suck it. Now when you, and the rest of the folks who got suckered start calling for the unconditional replacement of Republicans responsible for this debacle you give me a call. Cause all I hear right now is the faint whine "but the Democrats would be worse." It's a disaster and it's your fault. You live with it. My conscience is clear. Posted by: Richard Bottoms at September 28, 2006 06:36 PM | Permalink to this comment
This was beautifully written, I'm not sure I've seen it said better. Imagine being a liberal (or at least what passes for a liberal these days, on social policy anyway) who supported the war - there are alot of us out here and who need to admit our vanity as well. Imagine my thinking that somehow the inherint superiority of our ideals, military, governmental and international infrastructure would triumph over a manifestly dishonest and incompetent team running the thing. Imagine my vanity in trusting that it made sense if Tony Blair said it did. The lesson for people like me is that who is running a war is not merely important, it is *definitive*. Posted by: Jill Cerino at September 28, 2006 06:50 PM | Permalink to this comment
Greg-- You say this: Realist types like me mostly did based on fears of Saddam's supposed chemical and biological WMD capability (relying on Tenet's 'slam dunk' for the causus belli), thinking 9/11 might have inspired Saddam, and per 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' that he might decide to cozy up with transnational terror groups like al-Qaeda to deliver a severe second-round blow to the U.S. But did you not have doubts when the inspectors came back in March 03 and reported that there was no nuclear program and that they had found no evidence of WMD in any of the places the US had insisted they were to be found? Did you not find it disturbing that the security council consensus was to continue inspections, a consensus that was not presented formally because the administration withdrew a war resolution they were certain to lose (despite an earlier proclamation from Bush that there would be a vote regardless of the "whip count")? I could see that people like Kenneth Pollack could have believed--extrapolating in the absence of evidence--that stockpiles had grown since 1998. But what I could never understand is why the evidence that did get gathered after the inspectors returned was so widely ignored, and is still seldom mentioned. As Pollack noted in an Atlantic article, the source for the intelligence cited by the administration was the pre 1998 work by the inspectors. In March, it was absolutely clear that Saddam represented no threat to the US or to the region, that he'd had nothing to do with 9/11 or state sponsored terrorism, and that between sanctions and no-fly zones, his regime had been crippled. How was it that you did not see that then?
jayackroyd "In March, it was absolutely clear that Saddam represented no threat to the US or to the region" I agree. Given that intelligence claims are always probabilistic estimates, I could never see what weapons or capability Sadaam was even ALLEGED to possess that constituted an imminent or serious threat to the United States such as to justify or require an invasion. Whatever nerve gas or anthrax he may have possessed couldn't be delivered effectively or reliably against us, and we would have destroyed him if he had attempted any such attack. But we needed to kick some more butt, and militarily conquest would be a cake walk. So the Bush administration hyped the fears, and those who were afraid to look weak in the face of a "threat" felt compelled to go along. Posted by: chew2 at September 28, 2006 07:36 PM | Permalink to this comment
Nice post, but to put it bluntly, I don’t think you’ve learned all the lessons our little misadventure in Iraq has to offer. Why should any one nation be the “responsible mantle of world leadership”? This is just a euphemism for being the biggest kid in the schoolyard, with all the possibility for arrogance and abuse of power that marked the run-up and execution of the war so far. I take no joy in seeing my country trapped between a prolonged engagement and a humiliating withdrawal, but we asked for it didn’t we? Posted by: Wes at September 28, 2006 08:05 PM | Permalink to this comment
BTW, we are not cheering for defeat, we are saying unless you change the people running the show, now, defeat is inevitable. Posted by: Richard Bottoms at September 28, 2006 08:32 PM | Permalink to this comment
Why invade Iraq. Because the Administration thought they could do it on the cheap just as they have done everything since 9/11 on the cheap. I.E. no need to expand the Army, ask the American People for any sort of sacirifce or even just stop their tax cuts. Saddam could be easily toppled, the Administration's money backers, Haliburton, etec would be rewarded with big juicy contracts, (Well at least that worked), the Iraqis would love us (well they did for about 10 minutes), the US would have the bases to launch Air & Ground Strikes against Iraq & best of all, Iraqi oil would pay for all the costs of the War & the Occupation. Given all these & other mistakes, does anyone have any confidence in this admistrations ability to do anything more complicated then a Boy Scott encampment? Posted by: David All at September 28, 2006 10:58 PM | Permalink to this comment
Why should any one nation be the “responsible mantle of world leadership”? This is just a euphemism for being the biggest kid in the schoolyard, with all the possibility for arrogance and abuse of power that marked the run-up and execution of the war so far. because there is such a thing as leadership, and "being a bully" is separate and distinct from it. I can't think of any President in my lifetime other than Bush II who did not understood the nature, and limitations, of international leadership. Previous presidents have understood that leadership is both a privilege and a burden --- Bush II sees it as an entitlement, and acted accordingly. And unfortunately, because of the trauma (and subsequent exploitation of that trauma by Bush II) of 9/11, the usual "checks" on a President who tries to take things too far were missing.... Posted by: p.lukasiak at September 28, 2006 11:13 PM | Permalink to this comment
I've had a profound sense of dread and repulsion since this war in Iraq was started. As time went on that sense only became more profound, or more dreadful, or more repulsive. Sometime between then and now I stumbled across BD, as one stumbles across things on the internets, and I became a regular reader. At the start I read to try to understand how anyone with a lick of sense -- which Greg has, I think, though it's not much of a compliment to get such a characterization from someone like me, I suppose -- could give this war any sort of support. I've watched Greg become more and more disillusioned about the country's leadership, which confirmed for me his good sense and his intellectual honesty. But I don't care about having been "right" early on -- the utter squandering of America's fine young troops, its treasure and its good name simply beggars the imagination. How could we have been taken to such a point unless by someone with nothing but malice in mind? A vanity war? maybe, but it looks much worse than that to me. disaster, fiasco, catastrophe, etc etc -- we're going to run out of words for this soon. Posted by: David at September 29, 2006 02:27 AM | Permalink to this comment
Greg, Don't you think all this hand-wringing is just more vanity? "We wanted so badly to believe...", "the crucible of a nation...", a 21st-century update of Studs Terkel's Good War...just how much spit, piss and the bitterest vinegar does that all now seem? By permitting such a thoroughly nasty, dishonest, capricious band of mean spirits to take the reigns of power, what more or less would you have expected? Fukuyama & Co.'s high gloss of intellectual imprimature, the Fox News Pravda and the screaming shits of Coulter were all signs of vanity right from the get-go, and what stuns me more than your 'horrifying realization' of this wretched administration and this idiotic war is how you didn't recognize the vanity of any of it back then. Believe me, this 'vanity' which you now wear on your face like a rotten egg is nothing new, and the realization of it is just more vanity...I'm with Rich Bottoms on this one. It gives me no pleasure to say it, but - live with it. Posted by: sekaijin at September 29, 2006 04:00 AM | Permalink to this comment
This confessional, not the first one here, may well be an honest expression of belief, but to be an honest expression of fact it would have to include acknowledgment that Belgravia Dispatch had no impact on policy three years ago, and doesn't now either. Years ago when I was working in Washington it dawned on me that being there and hearing about everything that was happening before the rest of the country did gave one the feeling of being part of great events. For the most part this feeling was a delusion, so I left. The blogosphere is like that. You can throw together a lot of information (more than most people have time to digest), write about it, publish what you write, and get responses, all in a matter of a few hours. What that is, is the ability to start a conversation, to think out loud, to entertain, even to change a mind or two through analysis or polemic. What it is not, is influence. This isn't true of all blogs. Blogs that break news have a niche now, since the mainstream media cover certain types of stories only slowly and with great reluctance. Every now and then they break a story that changes something in the real world; you could argue that Josh Marshall's persistence in following the story of Trent Lott's remarks at Strom Thurmond's birthday party gave us Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (and thanks so very much for that, Josh, by the way). Blogs that focus relentlessly on one subject can become in a small way what the New York Times used to try to be, sort of a cyberpaper of record. Eric Reeves' Sudan blog fills that position with respect to Darfur. It may not be influence, but it's not nothing. Most of the blogosphere is just talk, always has been, and shouldn't be thought of as anything else. There's nothing wrong with that, indeed there's much to be said in favor of conversation in written form (especially, as Churchill might have said, with oneself as chief conversationalist). As spectators observing great events we are surely entitled to comment on them, but -- as we were talking of vanity -- we are best to remember that spectators we are, and spectators only. Posted by: Zathras at September 29, 2006 04:20 AM | Permalink to this comment
Good comment, Zathras, and great apology, GD.
Great post zathras!
True, we have no direct influence on either the policy or the players, but perhaps we can influence a change elsewhere: FIRST STEP: Remove the sycophant, rubber-stamp Republican majority in Congress from the administration's arsenal of enablement... Posted by: jim in austin at September 29, 2006 04:35 PM | Permalink to this comment
Realist types like me mostly did based on fears of Saddam's supposed chemical and biological WMD capability (relying on Tenet's 'slam dunk' for the causus belli)..... If Tenet's 'slam dunk' was revealed by Boob Woodward in April 2004, how is it possible that you relied upon it in 2003? Posted by: milo at September 29, 2006 04:48 PM | Permalink to this comment
milo: good and fair Q. i meant this more figuratively, as in Tenet sitting behind Powell at the UN when the latter spelled out the bill of grievances on the WMD front to the int'l community, with Tenet's presence serving to 'confirm' same from Langley's perspective. 'Slam dunk' has become something of a rote, generalized way of saying 'the CIA thought it was the real deal' (meaning Iraqi WMD). to stress, i didn't have the chronology in mind writing this, and didn't mean i relied on Tenet's 'slam dunk' comment literally, but rather to the extent the CIA was on the record saying Saddam had WMD in the advent to war. hope this clarifies, but again, fair to point out. thx,gd Posted by: greg at September 29, 2006 04:58 PM | Permalink to this comment
The strategic necessity of the Iraq war is separate from Bush, and your own vain Bush-bashing (at least not using the potty-mouth words of most on Left, thank you for more cerebral insults) seems to have left out some issues. There is no world cop. If you are now arguing that it was wrong to support Bush in going after Saddam, after 17 UN SC resolutions, and after the official 1998 US policy was "regime change", you must be arguing for more of the UN. The same UN which is allowing the genocide in Darfur -- but won't call it genocide, and won't send troops to stop Sudan's murderous allies unless Sudan agrees. And you think the UN is better than Bush's US? Talk about unhinged vanity. Oh wait, you don't quite say that. Bush is horrible, yada yada, but ... no articulated alternative. Intellectual coward. WE We only lose if we give up -- and you've become so anti-Bush you'd prefer to give up. "our crude and naive democracy exportation policy appears increasingly untethered from such realities." I don't see only this. There have been problems, since any Arab "allies" are dictators -- there are no Arab democracies except Iraq (and N. Lebanon, sort of). It looks like there has been pro-democracy movement in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. As long as a significant force of the US is in Iraq, there won't be big battles between Sunnis & Shia. The question becomes, when do the Iraqis want peace enough to not only live in peace with other Iraqis, but stop their tribesmen who are still willing to use violence? It's not Bush, not America (nor certainly BD or TG-LD) -- it's the Iraqis in Iraq. The time when Iraq is won is up to them. It took S. Korea some 25 years after 1953 before they had democracy. Isn't that considered a success? S. Vietnam, with 17 more years of patience (after 1972, to 1989) would also have been a success.
Which you think you have, also, but spend most of your time whining about the personnel the US voters have chosen, rather than specifying what should be done now, and why. Vanity insults. Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at September 29, 2006 06:23 PM | Permalink to this comment
Enough is enough. The hand wringing's gotta go. Replace it with outrage - healthy, righteous, inspired, rabid outrage. If blogs such as these could serve any purpose, it's this: what we need now is for bloggers, pundits and others out there to stop befriending power of the type rampant in our political corridors and start demanding accountability. We no longer have a functioning legislature - what we now have, with this piece of 'legislation' (I use the term loosely), is proof of something more akin to a pre-revolutionary Czarist Duma - a legislature in name only, made up of career bureaucrats, flunkeys, sycophants, fellow travelers, and the type of useful idiots Lenin dubbed and that Tony Judt reminded us of the other week (if anyone noticed). What needs to howl damningly is a reckoning with the type of government we have - we all want to believe that we don't deserve it, but we do. If you truly want to make a difference on this and other blogs, what you need to do is cease and desist from all this 'we were buffaloed' horseshit and just admit it - you wanted to believe you could sneak into bed with this power, and even convinced yourself you did, when what you got was at best was a whiff of the sheets. You cannot trust this power we have. Call it for what it is - and demand the resignations of every member of Congress who voted for this travesty. And while you're at it - scream as loud as possible and demand the resignations of every member of this administration, beginning with the President. Anything less than that is cybermasturbation. I realize it's unrealistic - but it isn't anything less unrealistic than the realization, after the fact, that you made no difference, and most likely gave more credence to people and things that never deserved it in the first place. Stop being so damned mortified and just FIGHT with what you have. Posted by: sekaijin at September 29, 2006 06:25 PM | Permalink to this comment
> there are no Arab democracies except Iraq (and N. Lebanon, sort of). Another American proudly demonstrating his ignorance...
lIbErTy dad, Now you may naively in the "freedon agenda" rhetoric but Bush from his actions in Lebenon, palestine, egypt, pakistan and all of central asia clearly does not. The "freedom agenda" is nothing more than a rhetorical device to ensure politcal support for an open ended commitment of resources in Iraq until the end of the adminstration at which point people of your ilk will be all over the internet claiming we were making "great progress" until Mccain or Hillory "lost Iraq" Enough!!!! Posted by: centrist at September 29, 2006 07:07 PM | Permalink to this comment
Would the "17 additional years commitment(you claim) to win in Viet Nam" even be worth 1% of what it would have cost to achieve? Ill answer that for you ....NO. The poor global economy of the 70s was at least partially due to our commitment to that war however "limited" it may have been in your eyes. The US and the cold war turned out just fine despite our "loss"! Posted by: centrist at September 29, 2006 07:23 PM | Permalink to this comment
Tom Grey, Liberty Dad and Gaping Mouth of Freedom. A few branches to put into your logic tree. May they bear fruit in the future: 1.) Denigrating one position does not support another by default. You sort of correct yourself, but you just HAD to put that UN slam in there, right? (Note that Greg does not mention the UN) 2.) Citing an argument from authority kinda doesn't work when you're using it to oppose that very authority. Defying the UN in order to enforce the UN's resolutions doesn't really work. (Note that Greg does not mention prewar rationale) 3.) You really should research facts (look the word up) before making objective statements. 4.) When determining the cost of a thing, you should first determine the currency. I would presume there is some upper limit to what you would accept in human deaths before 'giving up' is more valuable than slogging forward. Perhaps I shouldn't presume. 5.) A critique is not a solution. All recovery programs start with one important step, a step necessary before any solution can be offered. Consider reading about this process. Finally, cut 'n' paste debating points betray, my friend. You've done little to respond to Greg other than vomit forth non sequiturs and insult our host. I cannot hope that you will reconsider your interesting view on the world, but see if you can clean up your commenting skills. The denizens of the Internets will thank you for it. Posted by: mafisto at September 29, 2006 11:05 PM | Permalink to this comment
To Mafisto: 2) All ideas of the UN and of international law are confused, and where authority or responsibility lies is a mess. "Defying the UN" -- what UN SC resolution has passed which the USA has defied? Based on the total lack of enforcement, General Assembly resolutions are about as binding as Amnesty International condemnations. Right, the USA will veto any UN SC resolution we'd be willing to defy -- but then we're not quite defying the UN. No UN SC resolution, no "UN will", no defiance. This applies as well to China protecting N. Korea and Sudan and probably Iran. 3) facts... ha ha ha! Naturally, no examples! (No country names of Arab democracies?) 4) Cost & currency are excellent and important issues. So tell me, how many S. Viet allies would have to be murdered by Peace Accord-violating N. Viet commies before you think it was a mistake to leave, a mistake to vote for Dems in 1974 who cut off funds? For me, 600 000 murdered is too many -- the Dems cutting off funds to our (ineffective, incompetent, and corrupt) ally so as to allow N. Viet victory was terrible. And the Cambodian Killing Fields domino was the worst human massacre in my life. I doubt that you have the courage quantify in deaths any of your own positions. Prior threads here, and on my own blog, show my consistent grading of Bush: less than 2500 US deaths is an "A", 5000 is a "B", 10 000 is a "C". With my quantities, unchanged for over 2 years, I don't rate Bush or Rummy as a failure or incompetent. Yet folks like Greg do -- without specifying a scale or a standard. 5) A critique may not be a solution, and may even be good. It might also be a case of vanity gone wild and as an excuse to shovel insults against those whose decisions on policies one disagrees with. That's what I think Greg is doing a bit much on his post. Centrist: It is likely that a majority of Iranians would vote yes in a referendum on "Should Iran develop nuclear weapons". Not sure they'd vote yes on "Should Iran renounce the Non-Proliferation Treaty and develop nuclear weapons?" I don't believe at all they would vote yes on "Should Iran wipe Israel off the map (even if Israel uses its nukes on Iran)?" We should spend how much power,prestiege, treasure and blood for how long to continue the folly? Certainly for at least 15 years, and at least 7000 more US casualties. I oppose reconstruction "aid" -- it should have been local Municipal bonds, to be repaid by taxes, initially all bought by the US gov't, but then to be made available on the market. There was a pre-2004 election debate, loans lost, aid won. The "prestige" which the USA lost in Vietnam led to the surrender of the (corrupt, somewhat torturous) Shah -- and the rise of an Islam that thinks America is a Paper Tiger. The historical example of Vietnam shows how terrible to leave Iraq now. The current example of Darfur shows an actual alternative to US action, waiting for the UN ... The real war is inside of Islam. Can Islam exist peacefully with Human Rights, with free speech, with free religion? The trend from 1979 through 2001 shows increasing Islamic desire to eliminate Western, Christian, American free speech. Not attacking Iraq, after 17 UN SC resolutions, would certainly have made more Muslims feel that the UN is weak. To claim fewer would become radical is a reasonable belief, but I believe in more would have become radical. Further, Greg supported the Afghan campaign. Had Iraq not been invaded, probably Afghanistan would be a bit better -- but both Iran and Iraq would be funding Taliban to disrupt Afghanistan. And the French call for ending sanctions on Iraq would have become louder and almost certainly accepted by the US in order to get French support for NATO in Afghanistan. As I see that likely scenario, the mess we have looks a lot better than the mess we would have had. What about the needed "sense of deliberate statecraft or basic professionalism?" -- oh yeah. Rwanda shows how great that works. [This IS a vanity thread, after all...] Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at September 30, 2006 03:06 PM | Permalink to this comment
It was all foreseeable. Point: This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism Counterpoint: No it won't
As spectators observing great events we are surely entitled to comment on them, but -- as we were talking of vanity -- we are best to remember that spectators we are, and spectators only. Zathras, you bring up an interesting thought. People talk about how to make a plan that can win in iraq, or that can successfully cut our losses. But the truth is, it doesn't make any difference what plan anybody makes up. It will be 2 years and 3 months before any new plan can be started, and by that time the situation will have changed drastically. The sort of reasonable plan that might have helped 2 years ago would be utterly irrelevant today. So there are really only two plans available. 1. Let George do it. 2. Impeach George. Unless we work toward impeachment we are only spectators, only passengers on the ship of fools. We can't do anything but observe, unless we actually get out there and start working toward a positive result.
> That's my question for the anti-war folk who did prefer genocide in Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur rather than the lesser evil of US led war.
It was communist Vietnam that stopped the genocide in Cambodia, by the way, as we should all know. As is said, the US never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to stop genocide.
> No country names of Arab democracies? I suggest you learn to use the Internet; it is a fabulous tool that a person may use and decrease their ignorance. The Palestinian Authority is a democracy that the US and Israel are trying to overthrow. Admittedly, the US is funnelling tremendous amounts of cash and weapons to Egypt, Jordan, Saudia Arabia, and Turkey, to keep any democracy out of them. In fact, the US has been pretty successful in preventing any democracy in the Arab countries. But, it is odd to quote that success in preventing democracy in the middle of an argument structured so differently. Of course the most famous middle eastern (but not Arab) democracy that the US destroyed was Iran -- I suspect that Iranian resentment for the US' destruction of their democracy (and imposition of a hated torturing dictator) still resonates and supplies popularity to any Iranian leader standing against "US tyranny".
> The historical example of Vietnam shows how terrible to leave Iraq now.
The Cambodians were only saved from the horrifying Khmer Rouge genocide because the Vietnamese Communists had defeated the US "imperialists", and were willing and able to fight another war to stop the Cambodian genocide. If the US "imperialists" hadn't been defeated yet, then noone would have stopped the Cambodian genocide. Posted by: hwj at October 2, 2006 01:41 AM | Permalink to this comment
The irony is, what other country can assume a responsible mantle of world leadership at this turbulent time, if not us? Why does the world need anyone to "assume the mantle of leadership"? Even that phrase reeks, I'm afraid, of an unreconstructed vanity. Why must there be a global leader? Why not a concert? There are only three issues which need to be dealt with globally -- policing terrorism, trade liberalization, and controlling greenhouse gas emissions (and perhaps other environmental issues). All of these are best dealt with multilaterally, rather than through unique, unilateralist "leadership." We've been down the "leadership" road, Greg, and it has failed us. "Leadership," in the sense you seem to use this phrase, is a euphemism for imperiousness, not to say imperialism. After our history over the last 108 years of hard charging, it very hard for Americans to imagine the end of the American Empire. But in fact it is possible to walk away from empire, to turn away from imperial ambition -- it has been done many times by great nations. Moreover, such a turning need not be a disaster for a country, but in fact can represent a profound internal liberation. Just ask the Germans, the Japanese, or the English. In this regard, I strongly recommend the excellent new book by Lieven and Hulsman, Ethical Realism. Posted by: Nils at October 2, 2006 06:35 PM | Permalink to this comment
The irony is, what other country can assume a responsible mantle of world leadership at this turbulent time, if not us? Why does the world need anyone to "assume the mantle of leadership"? Even that phrase reeks, I'm afraid, of an unreconstructed vanity. Why must there be a global leader? Why not a concert? There are only three issues which need to be dealt with globally -- policing terrorism, trade liberalization, and controlling greenhouse gas emissions (and perhaps other environmental issues). All of these are best dealt with multilaterally, rather than through unique, unilateralist "leadership." We've been down the "leadership" road, Greg, and it has failed us. "Leadership," in the sense you seem to use this phrase, is a euphemism for imperiousness, not to say imperialism. After our history over the last 108 years of hard charging, it very hard for Americans to imagine the end of the American Empire. But in fact it is possible to walk away from empire, to turn away from imperial ambition -- it has been done many times by great nations. Moreover, such a turning need not be a disaster for a country, but in fact can represent a profound internal liberation. Just ask the Germans, the Japanese, or the English. In this regard, I strongly recommend the excellent new book by Lieven and Hulsman, Ethical Realism. Posted by: Nils at October 2, 2006 06:37 PM | Permalink to this comment
nils, the lieven/hulsman book just came in the mail today....best,gd Posted by: greg at October 2, 2006 08:00 PM | Permalink to this comment
> it very hard for Americans to imagine the end of the American Empire. Well, with the skyrocketing indebtedness, the terrible aging demographic spiralling up, the exporting of key strategic industries (IT, manufacturing, design, research), the increasing Chinese leverage (leading to control) over the US banking industry via ownership of debt, the falling employment in every sector except the (parasitic) health care sector), the rising poverty and always world-leading incarceration rates, and the dangerous and increasing dependence on petroleum resources abroad, it seems that pretty soon they won't have to imagine it -- they will see it become real.
I think that's why there's such a push toward having an american empire now. We used to say there was no such thing, we were a democracy, we made fair trade agreements with other nations without coercing them, we regrettably needed a certain amount of use-of-force in other countries to counter the USSR trying to take over the world, but we had no intention of trying to take over the world ourselves. It's only when it's gone that we start talking about taking the gloves off and enforcing our will.
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