"We" do recognize that. Bush does, I'm sure. You think he doesn't? Based on what, exactly? This is that haughty ignorant arrogance I keep talking about. You, to Bush, on the internet: "You don't have a plan!!!!" Laugh-out-loud funny.
War needs to be avoided for the simple reason that it has unpredictable consequences.
Quite the turnaround in the span of one message. The previous sentence contains: "I didn't say we had to predict them or plan for them all before we could start a war". But now, in this sentence, it turns out that we can't start the war after all ("war needs to be avoided") precisely because "it has unpredictable consequences".
This is exactly what I was talking about. Hate to break it to you, but all wars have unpredictable consequences. In fact all human endeavors have unpredictable consequences. That's life. Yours is an argument for never, ever starting any wars. You either don't know it or you're trying to pretend otherwise.
Boxing Saddam in with sanctions has drawbacks, but it doesn't add wildcards.
Because the sanctions work, and actually prevent him from making WMDs? Uh, Saddam possessing WMDs is a "wildcard". It's the one we'd like to avoid, thanks very much.
I've been trying to tell you that. And you keep saying that Bush has a plan to deal with unpredictable consequences which is impossible. You need to look up the definition of unpredictable.
I never said we shouldn't start wars, we just need to realize that unpredictable consequences make wars much more risky than other courses of action (e.g. boxing Saddam in, encouraging opposition, etc). You think that risk is outweighed by the benefits of successful war and nation building. I'm not too worried about the war, but I am worried about another futile exercise in nation-building similar to Bosnia. At best we might find some third party to take our place preventing civil war, but more likely we will be stuck doing that ourselves.