Recently in War in Iraq (Gulf War II) Category

The debates are so tame and managed. I would like to see a real dialog. Jim Lehrer should get a buzzer so he can buzz when neither candidates answer.

I wandered across this post recently, on September 11th, where some party goers toast Death to the Wahhabbis! A more ambitious explanation of this line of thinking was offered by Monica of th'inkwell.

Monica's line of thinking is something that I am not entirely opposed to. I support a muscular foreign policy. I don't need to "understand" why fanatics kill children on purpose.

However, in the back of my mind I hear this jewish fellow saying something like "Love your neighbor, that's easy to do, try loving your enemy."

What does that look like in the context of someone who is willing to murder you to make a political point?

I'm not sure. It reminds me a of a prayer I wrote out some time ago as a way of dealing with the uncertainty of living life in the post-September-11 world. The prayer below is targeted specifically at the terrorists and those who support them.

The Terrorist's Blessing

May all your plans be thwarted,
May your comrades, aquaintances, wives,
    children, fathers and mothers become informants,
May your luck run out at the worst possible time,
May your opponents hearts, plans, pursuits be pure,
May your banks transfer your money 
    to the victims of your terror,
May your shoe bombs, suicide belts,
    and devices of destruction utterly fail
    wounding only the bombmakers,
May the police and intelligence organizations
    have the lucky breaks and may they act on them,
May the aim of those hunting you be true,
May your fellow airline, train, and bus passengers
    be composed of brave, strong NFL lineman
    and angry rugby players,
May you die of old age,
May all your enemies die of natural causes
    in extreme old age,
May your minds change,
May your women and children be educated and wiser than you,
May your conspirators be brought to justice,
May you see justice running down like a mighty river,
May your countries be filled with freedom of thought,
    conscience, and belief for all,
May your grandchildren's peace and prosperity
    eclipse your imagination,
May you shake your white head in disbelief
    at the lies you once preached and believed,
May you experience peace both now 
    and when you meet your maker.

Contradictory? I know.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
--Walt Whitman

Althought much has been happening in Iraq, I haven't been writing about it.

I thought I would spend a few minutes reflecting on the whole thing.

Seems like our pre-war intelligence on WMD was cooked up. Everyone suddenly admits that the Iraqi expatriots were willing to 'sex up' the data in order to manipulate the U.S. into invading. While I have no love for the former regime, no WMD, means low urgency in Iraq. If Iraqi dissidents and exiles cooked this whole thing up, can we send them a bill or at least charge them with fraud?

Perhaps our real goal was to destabilize Iraq.

An Iraqi civil could certainly mean an Iraq unable to threaten it's neighbors. This might be useful, but it seems likely to create a haven for anti-western forces and could create a hard line Iran theocracy.

A stable Iraq, if one appears, could mean a spread of free market and democratic liberalization in the Middle East, but this just seems so unlikely.

I always supposed that the rush to Iraq was part of a larger strategy or a result of intelligence information which wasn't being shared. Since neither of those seem to be true, I don't know what rational explanations I have left. It's so inconvenient that Iraq is situated on so much of our oil.

The world is better off without Saddam. But are we simply on a mission to rid the world of leaders who are oppressive murderers? Who's next and when do we stop?

Did the Bush administration lie about WMD, or were they misled? If they lied, why did they? I want proof one way or the other.

Speaking of the Middle East ...

What about the Saudi's? Something seems to blow up there weekly. Each time the perpetrators narrowly escape, leading me to believe the police are either incompetent keystone cops or somehow collaborating. If this keeps building it will become a civil war. (BTW, my favorite blog on Saudi Arabia is http://muttawa.blogspot.com/ )

I haven't had many Iraq entries since the the Bush administration declared an end to major combat operations. Here are a few thoughts.

Still there have been no weapons of mass destruction found. This wouldn't be an issue at this point if the Bush administration had not made WMD the centerpiece of it's justification for going to war. Since weapons have not yet been found, I am left with three possible conclusions.

Weapons will be found. This would be the best case for the Bush administration and probably for the U.S. standing in the world community. I personally, don't think this will happen at this point, but I didn't think that they would get Saddam either.

Weapons will not be found. In this scenario, weapons are not found and the Bush administration knowingly lied about WMD. This is the worst case in my mind. Not only would this negatively affect our standing in the world, but it would be another example of the folks in government not trusting the governed enough to tell the truth, giving more reason for distrust and apathy towards government. (As one commenter noted, this could mean they were shipped to a third nation or hidden for a much later day.)

Weapons will not be found. In this scenario the Bush administration was misled by intelligence and genuinely thought they were there. In this scenario the intel was faulty or the intel was manipulated by Iraq expats. At this moment this seems the most likely scenario. The question that would remain is whether their was incompetence by any of the players.

As my High School history teacher used to say. "Time heals all wounds and time wounds all heels." Eventually, we'll know the truth. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll know much before the 2004 election.

One other lingering question. Is the mess in Iraq a remnant of colonization or the cold war? Are we cleaning up from the British Empire or repairing the issues left in the cold wars proxy nations?

If you look back through the archives there are numerous entries concerning the war in Irag, GWII, I guess it's being called.

I haven't written much about it lately. It seems like the worst of it is over for now. That's easy for me to say since I am not there.

Although, I didn't really believe that WMD were the key reason we were going to war, I am surprised none have been found. I know it's a big country, but if they were there, wouldn't someone want to step forward and point them out. I believe there would be significant financial incentive to do just that. Even if they were spirited out of the country you would think there would still be supply chain kind of evidence.

Now if WMD are never found, someone has to answer. I wonder if this will turn up as an election year question for 2004?

At this point it looks more the the Defense folks took the word of Iraqi dissidents too seriously. The question is did the U.S. ignore credible evidence to the contrary? Did we cook the books because some nation had to pay and Iraq was the simplest choice. I hope not.

I wonder if the phenomena of blogging will quiet down as a result of warbloggers having less to blog about?

The $64K question is where is Saddam? Will we hear from him again, or is he gone like Dr. Evil?

I have noticed many anti-war bloggers who point towards a conspiracy in the defense establishment, who orchestrated the war in Iraq. Some bloggers barely skirt calling it a jewish conspiracy. Here is an article refuting this thoughtfully.

Why is is that most conspiracy theories end at a dark place where either jews or aliens control the world? I mean I like a good conspiracy as much as anyone else, but I have never been able to make the leap to actually believing in one. I am even less likely to believe in one where an ethnic/religious group controls the world.

One other thing that always stops me from believing in vast government conspiracies.

Competence. At it's core conspiracy implies a certain competence. The cabal can create a plan, carry it out effectively, and most importantly keep it a secret perfectly. While some people are conpetent, most big conspiracies would require hundreds of people to participate, many of whom would be government workers not reknowned for competence, imagination, or creativity.

Interesting article suggesting that those opposed to war under any circumstance come face to face with the mind numbing reality of how opposing war in all circumstances has the effect of allowing cruel dictatorships to continue brutal oppression.

While sometimes I still can't fully grasp the rationale for the war in Iraq. I am glad the people have been "liberated" from Saddam, but the reason we went in there still seems muddy to me.

Even as much as I don't like the inhumanity of war sometimes it the only thing that can stop greater inhumanity. I believe this is sympathetic to "just war" theology.

Personally, I wish that people living in countries run by third world thugs would overthrow their own dictatorships on their own, without the loss of U.S. service people.

Of course, the John Stewart Mill quote was talking about slavery in the U.S. That's a case where I wonder if there were any routes other than war to have accomplished the end of slavery. After all many nations gave up human slavery without civil war. In these cases the slave owners were compensated for there losses.

The interesting bit about that is that we, the U.S. enabled Iraq in the early 80's by befriending the enemy of our enemy.

As of today, I am the number one entry on google for the term "militant wilsonianism", if you quote the words.

To celebrate I thought I would list a few links, that discuss this concept also known as "hard wilsonianism" or "neo wilsonianism."

• Nickels worth of free advice
• Good Definition
• Conservatism, Labels, and American Foreign Policy, Part II -- adds term "hard wilsonian"
• What the Heck Is a 'Neocon'? -- much ballyhooed Max Boot op-ed piece
• principled pragmatism -- adds the term neo-wilsonian

My favorite, albeit broad, definition is this one.

The neocons, in the famous formulation of one of their leaders, Irving Kristol, were "liberals mugged by reality."

Collection of other Irving Kristol quotations. One of my favorites is this one.

"[Conservatism] Our revolutionary message ... is that a self-disciplined people can create a political community in which an ordered liberty will promote both economic prosperity and political participation."

... followed by ...

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."

I saw the above op-ed piece written by Eason Jordan. It was a stunning indictment of the brutal torture used by the former Iraqi regime to keep it's people in line. It was also a confession that CNN had purposely censored the news, so that it could protect people on the ground. While it is possible that their motives were simply to protect people on the ground, it is also true they were complicit in creating a view of the regime that didn't include the brutal acts outlined in the op-ed piece.

Then the Washington Post reports that there may have been a lot more complicity going on behind the scenes.

" The day after one such meeting, I was on the roof of the Ministry of Information, preparing for my first "live shot" on CNN. A producer came up and handed me a sheet of paper with handwritten notes. "Tom Johnson wants you to read this on camera," he said. I glanced at the paper. It was an item-by-item summary of points made by Information Minister Latif Jassim in an interview that morning with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan.

The list was so long that there was no time during the live shot to provide context. I read the information minister's points verbatim. Moments later, I was downstairs in the newsroom on the first floor of the Information Ministry. Mr. Johnson approached, having seen my performance on a TV monitor. "You were a bit flat there, Peter," he said. Again, I was astonished. The president of CNN was telling me I seemed less-than-enthusiastic reading Saddam Hussein's propaganda."

The accusation is that CNN bought access by broadcasting the regimes message and by censoring anti-regime information. I can't wait to see how this plays out.

Anyone who thinks media presents an unbiased view of the world needs their head examined.

Militant Wilsonianism

I am always on the lookout for interesting word combinations and changes in language. I ran across this phrase today in an review written by Ian Buruma about the book "Terror and Liberalism", written by Paul Berman.

The phrase implies to me that a "Militant Wilsonian" would go to war to end wars. That one could have a bloody revolution in world affairs in order to bring about a more peaceful world. Interesting notion. It seems to be the meme of the day.

Here is a good history lesson about Woodron Wilson and what Wilsonianism might represent.