Posted on 10/29/2003 7:13:43 AM PST by churchillbuff
It is no small irony that the neocons who denounced this magazine as “isolationist” when we argued against invading and occupying Iraq have left America more isolated than ever before in its history.
We are virtually friendless in Baghdad. Our NATO allies, Brits and Poles excepted, have left us to stew in our own juice. Russia will not help. Japan will not help. The president’s UN address, sandwiched as it was between speeches by Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac, earned perfunctory applause, while they received ovations.
Were it not for our contributions that subsidize the salaries, expense accounts, and pensions of UN employees, America would be as isolated in the “international community” as Ariel Sharon.
Congressional Democrats and their national candidates have begun to scourge the president for Iraq and will extract a pound of flesh before granting his request for $20 billion to rebuild it.
Why are they doing this? First, because voters do not want to spend billions rebuilding Iraq when our states are cutting services and raising taxes. Second, because Democrats are full of bitterness toward President Bush for stampeding them into voting for a war in which they never truly believed. Ashamed of their own cowardice, they intend to punish him for having “misled” them.
Yet, how do they answer this question: if Senators Kennedy and Byrd and Representative Kucinich and Governor Dean could stand up to the heat and say no to war in October 2002, why couldn’t you?
The isolation of America, brought on by Bush’s succumbing to the whispers of neocon tempters about Churchillian immortality has narrowed his choices now to the same three that were left to LBJ and Nixon, once we had committed ourselves to Vietnam.
He can opt for the Aiken Solution, “Declare victory and get out.” He can pursue his “Bring ’em on!” policy and fight the Iraqi guerrillas into a second term. Or he can escalate, attacking what the neocons call the “terror masters” in their privileged sanctuaries: Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Each option entails great risks.
If he follows the mood and mindset of his countrymen and pulls U.S. troops out too rapidly, he risks a collapse into chaos and civil war, which could leave Iraq a haven of terrorists that it never was under Saddam and invite intervention by Turkey or Iran.
If he commits to winning the war and building a democracy, no matter the cost in blood and money, he imperils his presidency. For America never signed on for a postwar war. Moreover, Bush risks ultimate defeat. For there is no sign of a slackening of interest among the Islamic young for a jihad to drive the Americans from Iraq.
What of the third option: escalate and expand the war? If the president intends to pacify the Sunni Triangle and seal the roads to Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, he will need far more than the 130,000 U.S. troops currently in country. A U.S. war on Syria would also inflame the Arab world and be supported by no nation save Israel. And what would the overthrow of President Assad’s regime accomplish, other than to give us 17 million sullen Syrian adoptees to go with our 50 million Iraqis and Afghans, the cost of whose day care is constantly rising?
Faced with the three options, each of which entails risks, the president appears to have decided—not to decide.
While understandable, this does not solve his problem, which is this: his present policy is unsustainable. Public support is declining, congressional support is declining, and his poll ratings are declining. If the president intends to fight this war to victory, he must begin to speak and act like a war leader, demanding sacrifices of us all, telling us how and when we can look forward to a triumphal end to the conflict. This President Bush has conspicuously failed to do.
Indeed, his actions—going back, hat in hand, to a UN he called “irrelevant” to ask for help in reconstituting Iraq, going to allies he and Rumsfeld dismissed as “Old Europe” to ask for troops, telling the nation we will transfer power to Iraqis as soon as possible—all point to the Nixonian solution of Iraqization and withdrawal. Back out of the bar with both guns blazing.
In Kevin Costner’s “Thirteen Days” about the Cuban missile crisis, Gen. Curtis LeMay says to JFK, as word comes the missiles are going operational, “Mr. President, you’ve got a problem.”
“No, General,” Kennedy retorts, “We have a problem.”
The president’s problem in Iraq is the result of an unnecessary war. But it is our problem now. Solution: admit the mistake, turn around, get out with all deliberate speed. We liberated Iraq from Saddam, but the future of Iraq is for them to decide, not us.
What threat? That's what I want to know. Freepers scorned Blix when he said give him more time to search for WMDs -- but now our own inspectors say the same thing - they need more time. WMDs was the reason, we were told, that we had to go in. Yet there wasn't any evidence of them. And there isn't now. So I ask, What threat? Please don't tell me we had to go in because Saddam was a murdering tyrant - because by that reasoning we'd have to invade many countries in the world, and I'm not up for a return to the draft. No, it WMDs that was the "threat" , and our people are having as much difficulty finding them as Hans Blix had.
Mad Dawgg asks: "Is Pat off his meds... again?"
Extremely tenuous - - Bush himself said, the other day, there aren't connections. But answer the question: WHERE ARE THE WMDs? Fortunately, we don't have a MEMORY HOLE in this country, so you can look up the news articles from last year and last spring - - it was WMDs that everyone was talking about. It was WMDs that made an invasion necessary. But we didn't have evidence of them, then, and we don't have evidence of them now. We couldn't wait to give Blix more time - - the threat was too great!!! But now our own people need "more time". Please, if Clinton were pulling this, you'd admit it's a load of snafus. Don't let the fact it's a Republican enterprise blind you to the truth that it's a mistake.
"Virtually?" I guess the Iraqis [virtually all of them] want us out and by force of logic a return to status quo ante.
Right.
We should remember that:
"Somalia was a sign to bin Laden. The US was weak. In August 1993, after a series of bloody attacks on U.N. peacekeepers in Somalia, President Clinton launched a mission: he sent in a force of Rangers and Special Forces units to capture the brutal warlord Mohammad Farrah Aidid and restore order. In the ensuing urban gun battle, 18 American soldiers were killed and another 73 injured. On the Somali side there were 1,500 casualties. The Clinton administration began withdrawal of US forces in October, 1993. This told bin Laden that the US had no stomach for war casualties.
bin laden 1st fatwah 1996
"But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where- after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order- you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge , but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the "heart" of every Muslim and a remedy to the "chests" of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut , Aden and Mogadishu.
Al Qaeda saw US withdrawal from Somalia, as a sign of weakness
He never called the UN irrelevant. Pat's a liar.
I missed that part. Transcript?
Sure, Saddam is bad. So is Mugabe. Do you want us to send 100,000 troops into Zimbabwe? And the list of tyrants just starts there. I grew up believing we send our young people into harm's way when our own national security is threatened - - not to liberate every country in the world that's under the heel of a dictator, when there's no clear threat to us. We were told that the threat from Saddam was spelled WMD - - but Blix couldn't find them, and now we can't either.
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