I wanted to share a reply I made to a friend elsewhere, who said the US is committed now, and has to consummate the war. Her comments are in italics.
Pete and other prog-bloggers, please note-this kind of broad brush (”To me, Wolfowitz is as bad as Saddam”) is guaranteed to make readers lose sight of every other point you make.
Thanks. Although for me, that’s pretty close to the only point I want to make: that the Administration is a bunch of self-interested gangsters, and they’re either stupid or evil enough to harm world peace and America herself to get their way. This benefits a few rich people, and hurts everyone else.
A week after the world-wide protests I remain unswayed by the anti-war folk. I’m for the war I guess. Not because Powell convinced me with his recycled, stretchy evidence or British intelligence’s plagiarized reports but because Washington cannot lose credibility at this stage.
I think Washington has already lost a huge amount of credibility. And doing the right thing (which may be war, if it’s fighting alongside the UN, instead of against it) would increase its credibility, not decrease it.
“If the United States marches 200,000 troops into the region and then marches them back out . . . the credibility of American power . . . will be gravely, perhaps irreparably impaired.” – Henry Kissinger.
The credibility of the Administration will be gravely impaired; I think that’s significantly different than the credibility of American power.
The Bush Administration has no one to blame for that loss of credibility than themselves. American credibility is increased if we oust Bush, not if we play along.
The world cannot afford this. So I hold my nose and say yay for war (not that anyone asked me).
I can’t see this as any differently than “He made me put a gun to his head. And now if I don’t pull the trigger, I’ll look like a fool.”
The foolish action was the Administration wedging itself into that dilemma in the first place.
So what’s the right thing to do now? Pull the trigger, and look like a murdering bully to the rest of the world? Or holster the gun and look like a conflicted bully with maybe a conscience? Or at least wait until a couple other people point their guns at Saddam’s head, too?
If you really say the right thing to do is to pull the trigger, I hope you also say that when the credibility of American power is safe again, the idiots who forced that Hobson’s choice must be removed from power, instead of being empowered to do it again.
Also, there’s every possibility that the Iraqi army will fall quickly and Saddam will be ousted easily.
Sure, the Iraqi army will fall quickly, probably at the cost of thousands of direct civilian casualties, and tens or hundreds of thousands of indirect ones. Maybe that’s a hard choice we should make, if we’re really earnest about rebuilding Iraq afterwards, instead of leaving it as a destitute hellhole the way we did last time.
Saddam? How will he be ousted? How will we kill him? He is so entrenched, I find it hard to believe we’ll catch him. Likely he’ll turn into another Osama bin Laden, slipped through the fingers of “American power,” damaging its credibility in subtle yet powerful ways. Not that Washington will acknowledge it.
So I hope for that and cast my lot with Wolfy.
Good luck. I will when the Security Council does. Not because the Security Council is right, but because that’s how a civil society works, by making it look like it’s following its own rules (however that works out behind closed doors).
anyhow best to hope for now is a quick end to the war and easy ouster of Saddam.
I’d love to see Saddam smoked out. And if that happens without a shot fired, I’ll be happy to call Bush a genius of brinkmanship.