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Mike Miller wrote:
On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
I think that this is a good example of a situation where one wonders
if anyone else could have done any better.
There was no provocation and therefore no need to rush into it. Of
course anyone could have done better. One way to do better would be
to do nothing.
And I think that many other people would have thought the same way as
you. That is why I am prepared to put up with many of Bush's faults,
because he was one of the few who thought it was a good idea to go in,
and was willing to buck all kinds of internal and external pressures
in doing so.
Why then? What was his motivation? It was extremely ill-timed as it
came right after a weapons inspection that showed Saddam was clean.
Bush was thumbing his nose at the UN and most nations and he ended up
looking like a complete ass when he was unable to support his claims.
You can say it is a humanitarian effort, but it was not, as Jon pointed
out, at all well planned. If Bush was motivated by a wish to help the
Iraqi people (even at a great cost in American lives and about $177
million per day of our money), why didn't he take a little time to plan
it? The reason of course, is that this was not his motivation and it
was not his stated motivation. His stated motivation was based on lies
and misinformation. His real motivation remains uncertain.
My answer (so I'm not talking for Bush) is that if I am going to invade
Saddam Hussein for purely huminatarian reasons, I simply am not going to
get the UN to play along. For example, nations like China are going to
object on principal - the reasons they would state would be stuff like
soverienty of nations and blah blah, but the real reason is probably
because they are scared that someone might decide to invade China for
huminatarian reasons.
There is also the issue of national security. Even though it turned out
that Saddam didn't have WMD, it is clear that he wanted them. The only
reason that the weapons inspectinos could be even properly performed was
because the American Army was sitting on Iraq's doorstep. It seemed
clear to me that Saddam's strategy was to wear out the international
community, perhaps wait until America was lead by a less single minded
leader, and then maybe ten years later really develop WMD. Since so
many smoke screens will by then have been created, and Iraq would have
developed a precedent for being mildly but not totally obstructionist,
Saddam could then secretly develop WMD with relative impunity.
Thus the only option other than invading, where weapons inspections
would continue to be effective for years to come, would be to
continually keep a large army on Iraq's doorsteps, not only present, but
with a real threat that an invasion could come any time that Saddam
started to develop WMD.
Furthermore, this constant state of bluffing on Saddam's part, where he
seems to outwit the international community - while to us it seemed
rather childish, to many in the Middle East it was interpreted as a sign
of strength on Saddam's part.
In short, it seemed to me that there were only two options. Either let
Saddam get away with slowly weakening the power of the weapons
inspections (and at the same time flout "oil for food" sanctions, which
it now seems its only real effect was to cause the local population to
starve), or to say "enough is enough" and go in with all guns blazing.
I greatly prefered the second option, and I am glad that we had one of
the few people as president who could actually have done this. Maybe he
didn't get everything right, but as my Father told me - a job worth
doing is worth doing badly. Maybe someone else could have planned it
better, but I think that this same person actually wouldn't have done
it, and the problem would have been passed down to future presidents.
Indeed, had Britain and France invaded Nazi Germany in 1935/6, there is
no doubt that much of that war would have been poorly planned, and the
history books might even have written it up as something of a fiasco.
But with hindsight we can see that such an invasion would have been
exactly the right thing to have done, and it would have been better to
have done it poorly than not at all.
--
Stephen Montgomery-Smith
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://www.math.missouri.edu/~stephen
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