Logic Times

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Page Three

The Disastrous Bush Plan

5: Mark Riggio

March 2, 2005 6:21am EST

Jack: nicely done, if a bit overly pessimistic in places! While I’ll readily admit my crystal ball is no more accurate than yours, let’s reexamine your points in order.

Islamic theocracy. Even conceding the point, which I do not at this date, it would not necessarily be all bad, and would be an improvement over the government and practices of Saddam. As of now, the jury is still out on Iran itself, whose government continues to face enormous dissenting pressure from its youthful, generally pro-American population, itself being born out of the clueless foreign policy of Mr. Carter. This result, which I do believe to be unlikely given the reported election results, while not being our friend, wouldn’t necessarily be our enemy.

Strong man. I don’t quite follow how this option is both a recipe for civil war while holding together a fractured society; perhaps one or the other, but not both. Short of Roman empire-like decimation, ensuring the ruling party is our friend isn’t possible, or desirable. The administration’s thesis is that by setting up conditions where the Iraqis choose their own leadership, the result will be both their choice and a leadership not dedicated to harming the US; again, improvements over the past regime. That everybody wants to distance themselves from us isn’t clear to me at all at this point.

Ethnic split. This has been a very real and worrisome concern from the outset. I don’t see how we can guarantee the rise to power of a unifying, nationalist Iraqi patriot. Our own infighting over Mr. Chalabi demonstrates our ineptness in this venue. Again, setting the conditions where the Iraqis select their own leadership and letting the chips fall where they may seems our best course of action. As an aside, stability is likely to be more achievable if Syrian and other foreign terrorists begin to lose their home county support.

I’ll take your money at 100:1 odds, provided we agree on a definition of ‘liberal democracy’! The historical references to post-WWII Japan and Germany are on target, but do not acknowledge the time compression and regional consequences that exist today. Our Japan administrator took several years, and two nuclear detonations, to replace a theocracy with a democracy. Today, sans nukes, we’re trying to plant a form of democracy in a country whose leaders didn’t humiliatingly surrender or face annihilation; no wonder the outcome seems less certain!

Competent visionary? Personally, I’ll settle for a motivated, stubborn activist in place of a kick-the-can, what-will-the-allies-think reactionary. Again, everyone’s crystal ball is a bit cloudy, but identifying and targeting evil, with real live ammunition, seems more likely to achieve an outcome we can live with as opposed to hoping for the best and obsessing over one’s legacy. With Arafat’s demise, elections of a sort in Afghanistan, the West Bank and Iraq, young Dr Assad and old Mr. Mubarak nervously assessing their tenure, and Libya crying 'no mas,' the regional picture looks more favorable now than it did in early 2001. With luck, North Korea is paying attention to all of this. As Mr. Ledeen says, faster please.

{Aslan: Thank you, Mike.  Thoughtful response.  I particularly like this observation: "...targeting evil, with real live ammunition, seems more likely to achieve an outcome we can live with as opposed to hoping for the best and obsessing over one’s legacy."  Great!}

6: Michael Miller

March 2, 2005 11:04am EST

Jack's contribution is just another iteration from "the sky is falling crowd."

Readers will recall that before we went into Iraq, these defeatists claimed that the "Arab street" would rise up throughout the region in spasms of anti-U.S. violence. Millions of heretofore peaceful Moslems would be radicalized and go off to join the jihad. Millions more refugees would swamp the ability of humanitarian organizations to care for them.

Well, the Arab "street" is rising... for FREEDOM! Millions of Iraqis with purple stained fingers cannot be dismissed as U.S. propaganda. Hundreds of thousands in Lebanon demanding an end to Syrian domination and uniting against factionalism cannot be dismissed. If you follow what news gets out of Iran, you know that the wave of freedom is stirring hope there as well.

Oh sure... there are likely to be bumps along the road; disappointments and even bloodshed. But the advocates of "stability" would enshrine genocidal dictators as the norm of their standard of "peace."

Senator Kennedy in his ill-timed speech just before the incredible Iraqi election warned us of the lessons from history. But I would remind readers that history has shown us the same shopworn defeatist rhetoric from these folks before.

Kennedy and the Dems opposed President Reagan's strong stand against soviet communism. You remember the stuff: Reagan is a warmonger.. .nuclear winter... blah, blah, blah... And after the wall fell, these same folks said: it will be a disaster, a dictatorship, no stability, blah, blah, blah.

Wrong then and wrong NOW!

I understand that to admit the wisdom of what I call President Bush's "keystone strategy" in Iraq would completely undermine those on the left who have so ingrained their ideology with perverted notions of "peace" and "evil" that they now resemble the characters in George Orwell's "1984."

I'll just leave you with a quote from Edmund Burke: "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing." If we follow Jack's advice... evil WILL triumph.

{Aslan: Great, Michael!  Everyone please take notice of the optimism of Michael's comments vs. the pessimism of Jack's comments.  Optimism vs. pessimism.  Conservatism vs. liberalism.  Visit Mike's site at Mike's America; he has an excellent post about liberal pessimism.}

7: William

March 3, 2005 12:11am EST

Jack Jack Jack..

When I read...

"He and his cronies were looking at Iraq long before 9/11. That just served as their pretext. Oil and ego are much more reasonable explanations for going into Iraq,"

...I realized what we are dealing with here. As soon as the personal hate Bush verbiage spews forth, the possibility for rational debate ends.  Help is available - but it could require years of therapy.

But hold it. A response may not be necessary.  Others before me responded well!

I especially had to applaud James' comment: "Suicide bombers only get one run and recruiting is going to get harder."  LOL.  How true. They may feel the need to keep going until they quite literally "bang themselves out". Self - extermination. Tens of thousands may be saved elsewhere.  Please send them all.  Thank you very much!

{Aslan: Unless it happens to be a gutless suicide "bomber" like Zacarias Moussaoui, then you get a lawyer, the ACLU and probably Anthony Kennedy freeing him on appeal based upon an unsigned UN treaty with Greenpeace.}

8: Jack Stafurik

March 3, 2005 6:13pm EST

OK. Here are my responses to the comments

Wow – I don’t know where to start here. These comments go in a lot of different directions, so I’ll try to respond to the various points made. Sorry if I ramble a bit and don’t cover all the responding points – I still have to make a living, no matter how interesting this forum may be!

• I haven’t suggested we get out of Iraq. We broke it – we bought it. I desperately hope we can find a way to finish this successfully, because the costs to us if we don’t (military, political, economic, social, terrorism, etc.) will be much worse than most people imagine. Unfortunately, I don’t think Bush and his cronies have the ability needed to pull this off. So far, they have shown a phenomenal lack of judgment. They were wrong about weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al-Qaeda, they still haven’t captured bin Laden, Afghanistan is struggling (it is now the major source of opium/heroin in the world), they never planned effectively for the aftermath in either country, our major allies were antagonized, billions of dollars have probably been lost to corruption, etc., etc.
• The administration originally objected to having the Iraqi elections when they did, preferring to do it after several years of occupation. I actually agreed with that – elections would have been much more effective had we had the time to repair the infrastructure, restart the economy, and allow political parties to gel. But Sistani forced the Americans to back down and have the elections much earlier than Bush wanted. We didn’t have enough force nor support nor moral authority to resist him on this. We lost face throughout the world.
• And the election itself is unfortunately a mixed bag. For security reasons, the identities of the candidates were hidden, so voters didn’t know who they were actually voting for. And while the turnout was high, that may have been due in part to tying the ration cards to voting, rather than showing a functioning democratic infrastructure. The real judgment will be several years down the road. Don't forget the rallying cry in Algeria when they expected the Islamists to win the election: "One man, one vote, one time!"
• While Sistani does not support a formal sharia legal structure, what is likely to come in is a “sharia – lite” which I am sure none of us would be happy living under. What this eventually will evolve into is not clear, but I bet they are far more likely to be pro-Iran than pro-Israel! As for al-Sadr, while he may now be only a thorn, such thorns have risen to take over governments before (the Baathists in Iraq, the Communists in Russia, the Nazis in Germany, etc.).
• Larry mentioned that Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the US would not stand for a Shiite takeover. If the Shiites are freely elected, how would we justify not letting that happen? Where is our commitment to democracy?
• The new probable prime minister, al-Jafaari, is head of the Iranian-oriented al-Dawa political party. He spent years in Iran opposing Saddam, and will likely have very close ties to Iran and sympathy for their international political goals.
• When the issue of the cost of the war to the American taxpayer came up at the beginning of the war, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, and many other key administration officials said repeatedly to Congress and the public that there would be little or no cost, since Iraqi oil revenues would fund the reconstruction. The head of the US Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios, who was nominally in charge of the Iraqi reconstruction effort, said on ABC’s Nightline “$1.7 billion is the limit.” The problem here is that other administration officials warned at the time that the costs would be much higher. Larry Lindsey, Bush’s chief economic advisor, said the costs would be $100 – 200 billion. A few months later, he was out of a job. Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki warned that several hundred thousand troops would be needed for the occupation, and a few months later he was squeezed aside. This administration has repeatedly been way off base in their estimates of the resources needed. Good results in Iraq need good decisions. You won’t get those if you punish the smart competent people who tell you the unpleasant facts (and are right), and who hopefully can come up with creative approaches to get us out of this mess.

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