Posted on 04/23/2006 6:56:34 AM PDT by Paradox
"The invasion of Iraq was not an act of revenge or justice. (Just as the bombing of the Ploesti fields was not an act of pique at the occupied Romanians.)From the Time Traveler's perspective -- and from the Bush Administration's perspective -- the Iraq invasion is seen as the second move in a very serious chess game in which the only absolute goal is to neutralize an opponent's ability (and stated goal) to acquire and deliver weapons of mass destruction more devastating than fully fueled Boeing 737's."
......
" The point here is that we can argue that the second move in this long and deadly chess game was the wrong one (especially in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion when the civil and political reconstruction side of things was so seriously botched), but in the light of Mr. Brandt's analysis -- and perhaps in the fictional persective of the Time Traveler's long and traumatized history -- the invasion of Iraq early in the war, in order to neutralize the one nation that had already used weapons of mass destruction, which had come close to building nuclear weapons, which had over the decades threatened and/or invaded ALL of its neighbors except Syria, which had advertised its plan to share such weapons with "common enemies of America," which had vowed to destroy Israel, and -- perhaps most importantly -- which was militarily weakened enough to be toppled without plunging the entire mid-east into a larger war -- makes at least as much strategic sense (in a Long War with Militant Islam) as did the bombing of Romanian oil fields to interdict the flow of oil to Germany".
(excerpted)
(Excerpt) Read more at forum.dansimmons.com ...
Like Orson Scott Card, Simmons gets it. He is no right-wing lunatic, like we are, either :)
Contrafactual history can be useful. If Saddam had not been deposed, there is not much doubt that he would now be building an "Arab" bomb with the support of the Saudis, who are scared to death about Iran. Of course, he could point his missles in the other direction and achieve what he could not in 1991, which is supremacy in the Gulf and the nemesis of Israel.
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