re: #117 stabby

I greatly regret letting my grief and emotions after the 9/11 attacks blind me to a lesson I had already learned: that right wing administrations can and will capitalize on anger and fear to advance their agenda. That’s a mistake I’ll never make again.)

It wasn’t a right wing administration that lied to get us into Vietnam.

I’m not entirely sure WHY Bush wanted to take out Saddam - I hope not for the reasons they gave publicly. And the experts I respect the most, people who’ve been to Iraq a lot aren’t sure whether the war did more good than harm, so I can’t be sure either. Even if you ask did it do US more harm than good the answer is murky.

What I’m saying is:
we’ve learned lessons, certainly we know now that we can’t afford another war like Iraq. Whatever we make of Iran, we can’t make war and rebuild the country - we can’t afford to even attempt that.
But it’s not cut and dried either. The administration lied, but it was also surrounded by people giving other reasons for the war, ones that you could never sell at the UN, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone here that the reasons given publicly weren’t serious.

In the end wasn’t really the question:
Can we do anything to stop the will to jihad?
And there was no prudent plan whose answer was “yes” so Bush went with the dreamers. That’s not necessarily bad.

The reason the GWB Administration went to war wasn’t because Iraq was dangerous, but because it wasn’t. They knew that after over a decade of sanctions the Iraq armed forces were nearly helpless. They knew that with the exception of the Republican Guard a lot of the armed forces wouldn’t fight hard for Saddam.

So it was perfect for the purpose of sending this message to the world: We are now in charge. This is what happens to people who get in our way. You may hate us as long as you fear us as well.

But how a country with four percent of the world’s population and twenty per cent of the world’s economy was going to rule the world wasn’t a question they entertained.