Dan Minette wrote:
That may have been a pre war misconception, but it doesn't have anything to do with the misconceptions that many people in this country _continue to hold_ in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, which is really what we are discussing.What anti war misconceptions are we talking about? I'm sure that there
must be some, but I can't say that I've heard of any in the news or
otherwise.
1) There war would result in an increase in the misery in Iraq. I've seen on anti-war.com quotes of >100,000 casualties. I've seen arguments from many anti-war folks that the battle for Baghdad must, of necessity, either be bloody street fighting with massive civilian casualties or a long siege that would result in horrendous numbers of death from disease.
This comes close to qualifying as a belief that many people presently hold. Weather or not BuchCo has (or had; in the face of their current problems, the success of their endeavor is in grave doubt) designs on the wealth of the middle east is not easily ruled out. Certainly, the sweetheart deals for companies such as Halburton create some doubt. The question isn't as easily answered as the ones about WMDs or Hussain's ties to al Quida.
2) The US would take the wealth of Iraq, the war was for oil. Its clear that the war itself was relatively cheap; but that the work of nation building is going to cost the US hundreds of billions.
This may be true, but if the idea is to alleviate suffering, there are places in the world that, dollar for dollar, we could help many more people, so as a primary objective, this doesn't hold water.
There was an interesting article in the NY Times a bit back on the reasons for going to war in Iraq. There were three listed (although a nuance argument broadens the points):
1) Improving the conditions the people of Iraq live under This argument, as the article states, has been fully supported after the war. The wholesale killing and torture by Hussein and his supporters have been well documented. It is probably fair to say that, if anything, things were worse than they were thought to be.
You mean supported, I presume?
2) Hussein's development of WMD required immediate action This is has not been born out by observations after the war. There was no argument, even with the French, that Hussein had programs for WMD, including nuclear weapons. The inspectors found these during the '90s, including a nuclear program. The worry about these programs was bipartisan; Clinton made a strong case in '98.
The problem with what Bush said to build support for the war in Iraq is fairly subtle. Everyone with ties to various Western intelligence thought that the WMD programs of Hussein were ongoing. Indeed, the most likely source for the "the British know" statement by Bush in the State of the Union address was French intelligence, who gave this piece of information a very strong rating.
Bush jumped from a nuance argument for a strong case to a statement of near certainty. Given the inherent uncertainties in the intelligence, the US intelligence community was not happy with Bush's statements of certainty. Bush was sure that, after the war, the massive amounts of evidence that could be shown to the world would have validated his certainty.
Instead, the evidence was below the lower limit of most people's expectations, even those who were opposed to the war. As a result, people
As we see in the news (though Blair is denying it as his career is on the line) that the Blair did not believe that Iraq posed a real threat to his country despite his public statements to the contrary. The weapons report from earlier this week however Bush want to spin it made the conclusion that any nuclear program that Iraq had was at best in its infancy and certainly not the kind of threat that the administration terrorized us all with. And we see also that the intelligence reports we did have did not support the claims that the administration was making about the immediate threat that Iraq posed. You say Bush was _sure_, but I think _hopefull_ is more accurate considering the lack of solid evidence.are questioning him. It is clear that he did not have good but sensitive intelligence that provided him with the certainty.
The jury is still hearing evidence and hasn't started it's deliberations yet. I think the problems we're facing over there - not just in Iraq but in Afghanistan and in Israel are much more complex than those we faced after W.W.II. Our cultural differences provide a daunting barrier to success. I think the situation in Israel is as bad or worse than it has ever been.
The third reason was to transform the nature of the Middle East. We do not need a full fledged representative democracy to do this. I think that Gautam was right that, if the result was a country rather like Jordan, with a rule of law and some representation of the interests of the people, it would have the potential for being the catalyst for tremendous change.
The jury is still out on this. I think it is fair to say that this is a much harder problem than the administration thought. But, I do think that the examples of the problems the US had in Germany after 6 months do lend weight to the argument that it is too soon to consider this a failure.
If we expect help from the rest of the world - those that were against the war from the start, we should expect to eat some humble pie and make the compromises necessary to bring them on board. If we are not willing to do this, I think we can expect to have to go it alone with miserable failure as a distinct possibility. I think that the Bush administration would probably choose to fail rather than eat humble pie. I think some of the economic interests discussed earlier come into play here as well..
As a side note, its interesting to see which countries are actively working to ensure that the efforts of the US in post war Iraq is a failure.
I'm pointing this out because those folks who are interested in lessons learned more than finger pointing should be interested in how what happened differed from their expectations, and what we can learn together from this difference. I know I was surprised by the lack of MWD, as were most people. Those that weren't, also tended to think that there would be zillions of casualties in the war, which didn't pan out...so few were totally right or near totally right in their predictions.
Doug
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