I have listened to Dubyah
I have listened to Dubyah, to find his most recent defense of the War in Iraq (go here).
His attempts to gloss over his failures of leadership do not sway me. His strongest arguments only point me towards blowing holes in his arguments. Every argument he makes in favor of this war can be blown through as easily as a knife cuts through butter. He tries to take many "strong defenses" of weak decisions with one sentence points.
I will only address a couple of points he tried to make.
- First: "We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator; it is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in its place."
Let me get this straight George, you are in favor of America invading every country where democracy is not the way the people choose to govern themselves? What happens if the Iraqi people choose a "benevolent dictator" through democracy and this dictator (or royalty) asks us very politely to leave? Are we going to insist this is not "good enough" because it does not fit the terms of victory you have defined in your speech? Are you going to lead American Troops helter skelter around every corner of the earth where our idea of democracy is not the rule of law and attempt to force feed that which they do not want down their throats because it is for their own good?
If this was your only goal, why did you pick Iraq to start this noble endeavor? While the people of Iraq might have been suffering I am sure that numerous examples of more extreme suffering can be found. At least Saddam was providing the majority of the people with sustenance through the "oil for food" program. (There were weaknesses in the program, but the program could have been corrected without invading Iraq.) I am not saying the people of Iraq did not suffer, but why when you threw your dart at the map of the world did your dart end up striking in Iraq? Chances are other, more deserving targets could have been struck.
Truth is you scared many of the American people into supporting your leadership because you scared them with WMDs. Even then you did not win majority support, but many of the minority that did support you only supported you because you scared them into it.
- Second: "In the war on terror, Iraq is now the central front..."
Well Dubyah is telling the truth here. The War in Iraq is now the central front, or at least it shares this status with Afghanistan. But did it have to be? Would we not have been wiser to keeping the "front lines" in the "war on terror" in Afghanistan instead of opening up a new front in Iraq?
Don't get me wrong. It is my opinion that if we had not opened the "second front" in Iraq things in Afghanistan would be a whole lot messier then they are now. But keeping the "central front" confined to Afghanistan would have been a whole lot wiser. At least in Afghanistan we enjoyed almost universal support for our actions, so we could have counted on strong support. In Afghanistan (if we had stuck with this alone) we could have made a statement of steel. Afghanistan is almost as remote a corner of the earth as you can get. It was surrounded by nations who had no natural inclination to support America. If we could have just stuck with proving that NOWHERE on earth is safe for you to hide when we choose to strike, the point we would have made would have been powerful. We would have enjoyed almost universal backing as we made the point.
Instead we are distracted in Iraq where we have to damn near do it all by ourselves. Why we attacked Afghanistan was clear to anyone who thought about it. Anyone, in most of the world, who tried to argue against it would have been shouted down. Even in France, the leftist French newspaper Le Monde screamed in bold headlines "WE ARE ALL AMERICANS". All this support and good will for us was squandered when we pushed things into invading Iraq.
In conclusion I will say that history will speak of the War in Iraq as being Bush's Folly. At a time bold and strong leadership was required Dubyah led us on a fool's errand. We might be forced to try and stick things out in Iraq because Dubyah led us into making a mess, but we could have more easily and effectively achieved our aims by limiting the front lines to Afghanistan.
His attempts to gloss over his failures of leadership do not sway me. His strongest arguments only point me towards blowing holes in his arguments. Every argument he makes in favor of this war can be blown through as easily as a knife cuts through butter. He tries to take many "strong defenses" of weak decisions with one sentence points.
I will only address a couple of points he tried to make.
- First: "We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator; it is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in its place."
Let me get this straight George, you are in favor of America invading every country where democracy is not the way the people choose to govern themselves? What happens if the Iraqi people choose a "benevolent dictator" through democracy and this dictator (or royalty) asks us very politely to leave? Are we going to insist this is not "good enough" because it does not fit the terms of victory you have defined in your speech? Are you going to lead American Troops helter skelter around every corner of the earth where our idea of democracy is not the rule of law and attempt to force feed that which they do not want down their throats because it is for their own good?
If this was your only goal, why did you pick Iraq to start this noble endeavor? While the people of Iraq might have been suffering I am sure that numerous examples of more extreme suffering can be found. At least Saddam was providing the majority of the people with sustenance through the "oil for food" program. (There were weaknesses in the program, but the program could have been corrected without invading Iraq.) I am not saying the people of Iraq did not suffer, but why when you threw your dart at the map of the world did your dart end up striking in Iraq? Chances are other, more deserving targets could have been struck.
Truth is you scared many of the American people into supporting your leadership because you scared them with WMDs. Even then you did not win majority support, but many of the minority that did support you only supported you because you scared them into it.
- Second: "In the war on terror, Iraq is now the central front..."
Well Dubyah is telling the truth here. The War in Iraq is now the central front, or at least it shares this status with Afghanistan. But did it have to be? Would we not have been wiser to keeping the "front lines" in the "war on terror" in Afghanistan instead of opening up a new front in Iraq?
Don't get me wrong. It is my opinion that if we had not opened the "second front" in Iraq things in Afghanistan would be a whole lot messier then they are now. But keeping the "central front" confined to Afghanistan would have been a whole lot wiser. At least in Afghanistan we enjoyed almost universal support for our actions, so we could have counted on strong support. In Afghanistan (if we had stuck with this alone) we could have made a statement of steel. Afghanistan is almost as remote a corner of the earth as you can get. It was surrounded by nations who had no natural inclination to support America. If we could have just stuck with proving that NOWHERE on earth is safe for you to hide when we choose to strike, the point we would have made would have been powerful. We would have enjoyed almost universal backing as we made the point.
Instead we are distracted in Iraq where we have to damn near do it all by ourselves. Why we attacked Afghanistan was clear to anyone who thought about it. Anyone, in most of the world, who tried to argue against it would have been shouted down. Even in France, the leftist French newspaper Le Monde screamed in bold headlines "WE ARE ALL AMERICANS". All this support and good will for us was squandered when we pushed things into invading Iraq.
In conclusion I will say that history will speak of the War in Iraq as being Bush's Folly. At a time bold and strong leadership was required Dubyah led us on a fool's errand. We might be forced to try and stick things out in Iraq because Dubyah led us into making a mess, but we could have more easily and effectively achieved our aims by limiting the front lines to Afghanistan.
posted by Little David at 12/15/2005 11:39:00 AM
2 Comments:
As a post script I will add this:
Dubyah actually did a pretty good job in the initial engagement in Afghanistan. While he gave us wise, reasoned leadership at that time I was screaming for blood.
His way of doing things might have been better then doing things my way. My way involved making a big show of it. Getting the whole world involved to prove a point. I guess I would have invaded Afghanistan like Dubyah's Daddy kicked Saddam out of Kuwait. I would have made a big show of world support even if it fell to American forces to do the heavy lifting.
But this only exposes my own viewpoint. I do not think Dubyah is half the man his Daddy was.
As a post post script I will add this:
I am sorry I am trying to fight the war on terrorism on a budget.
In Afghanistan we could have sucked some help with the funding from throughout the world. In Iraq we have to nearly pay for the effort all by ourselves.
It is my understanding that already approved, or soon to be approved, funding for the war will come to 1/2 a trillion dollars.
Sorry. But I do not want to fight the war with the charge card. Dubyah's leading us into ruin on the economic front (go ask Greenspan for his opinion) even if he was leading us to victory on the battlefield (which is questionable) does not lead us to final victory. It only leads us to defeat via a different route.
Them damn Republicans are just as bad as them damn Democrats!
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