On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 08:16:12PM -0400, JDG wrote: > I think that you utterly missed Gautam's point. At least one > Brin-L'er has already called this "the other shoe" - i.e. that this > was at least partially our fault. Thus, it seem clear that at least > one goal of these murderer's is to weaken American resolve by causing > some subset of Americans to believe that we have brought this horrible > death of an American upon ourselves, and that as such our cause > is no longer worthy, and that as such our troops should come home > immediately.
Or perhaps YOU totally missed Dan's point. It seems to me that the Bush "human-rights violations 'R' us" administration has so completely bungled everything in Iraq after the shock and awe part that they have made it (arguably) strategically correct for al Qaeda to do barbaric things to win over more Islamic (esp. Iraqi) support to their cause. Making a strategic mistake isn't the same thing as causing something to happen, but the responsibility for the mistake is clear. The Bush administration made a clear pattern of infringing human rights ever since 9/11, and it was bound to catch up to them sooner or later. When mistakes are paid, people pay the consequences. The hell of it is that the people most responsible, Bush and Rumsfeld, appear to be getting away with it. They may say they take responsibility, but it is really others who are paying the price for their mistakes. I originally supported overthrowing Saddam for humanitarian reasons, but it was a close decision and I had expected Colin Powell and the State department to play a big role in Iraq after the initial military push. If I had known that Bush and Rumsfeld would be overseeing post-war Iraq while marginalizing the State department, I would not have supported the invasion. While the Iraqis are probably better off now, the costs were too high. It is becoming increasingly clear that we should have followed Dan's plan of delaying the invasion until the time was right (which increasingly looks like it would not have been until a competent administration took over the White House...) -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/
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