Zar

Hehe, Martin Buber. Well, I was just trying to think outside the box, even if I had to pretend it wasn't there.

Ruy Lopez

From Vorkosigan;
A chilling scenario you raise, Ruy.

I hope it does not happen. Only the US gov't can really make a judgment call since they know the tacit or secret agreements with Russia. For us it's very speculative but still cannot be ruled out. They (US) must think it's not a problem; they seem to be proceeding.

A bet that I made

Might as well use this opportunity rather than create a new thread to spill out what's in my mind. It's related to the thread.

I have a nagging doubt that although the US wants very badly to take charge of or control Iraq, they do not want a war as much as possible. All these daily posturing at the White House, the UN and the media coverage of 250,000 troops are intended to provoke a decisive event inside Iraq, the ouster, assassination or resignation of Saddam.

1)George B. would look infinitely greater to Americans and to the world if he could force a bloodless decision. It was Sun Tzu who said " supreme excellence consists of defeating the enemy without firing a shot." Bush's chances of re-election would be much greater and he could laugh at the French, Germans, Russians and Chinese.

2)US stature and reputation would receive an immeasurable boost prolonging its world hegemony.

The two above are enough more than enough reason. to threaten war but not to actually do it. YOU SEE MY POINT?

The US has a real live chance right now to enhance immensely its power and influence without shedding blood. It is for this reason that I made a bet to buy dinner for my 3 close friends that invasion would not take place before April 15. If I am wrong I pay.

I am banking on rational thinking on the part of even the hawkiest US leaders to overcome their fanaticism and greed in favor of clear thinking.

War would be settling sadly for a greatly inferior alternative; one can even call it a major setback, a defeat. It would be like a brilliant diamond turning to dirty stone.

Zar

Too bad Saddam won't give up until he's dead. Miscalculation there, and it shows that Saddam has a lot of guts to some people. Also, this gambit may be backfiring because not only is Saddam good at surviving internally, and has the advantage in a weakened Iraq, but The U.S. is feeding buckets full of juicy propaganda fodder for the enemy to use in the form of nasty behavior and dire war plans that may provide little incentive to those on the ground in Iraq. Also, past deception by American's may be as much of a hindrance here as past deceptions by Saddam. People refuse to put this into their calculations. Based on some scattered reporting, some of the citizens may even be gathering themselves to fight a Somalia-style street battle with the Americans, not to kill Saddam. ((cite)

leonarde

Why "too bad"? If he's gotta go, he's gotta go.Don't think so: we have Hitler and other examples of I'd-rather-die-than-give-up attitude. It's taken as at least one likely outcome (Hussein's death ending Ba'ath rule in Iraq).It does. And many wouldn't mind seeing him go out in this noble way.

Cheers!

capsaicin67

In the interest of exploring all the possibilities, and trying to figure this mess out, I think it totally appropriate to try and conceive of all the possible outcomes. And all any of us can do is guess. So I think it as good a question as any. I'm not sure that the implication, if I read it correctly, that there is consensus that this is "pre-emptive" or or "unjustified" is accurate, and I think they load your question [IMHO]. But here goes........

Allow me to preface my contribution with the disclaimer of sorts that I don't find the overall campaign to remove Saddam to be clearly wrong [just that the current approach lacking a UN mandate should be avoided ], but that I think that the way that Bush mishandled his opening moves, plus other domestic policies, and his retrograde diplomacy with the intl community in general, to be significantly awful. Thus, I am left hoping that the current crisis is resolved in a manner that is successful for the U.S. as a country, but also left hoping that Bush does not look too successful nor has his pumped approval ratings from the recent past come election time. I fantasize about a "no-confidence vote", which of course, cannot happen until the actual election time. Then again, the field of Democratic candidates running against him do little to inspire me, too. So it's all kinda grim right now as far as "best case" scenarios go. It could flat out suck how all this goes and I have minimal confidence in GWB's wisdom or his survey of historical precedent. He's a chimp with a red phone, but hopefully his handlers, as gross as they are, will nudge him in the right directions the scareder they get[?]. But wisdom and humility and insight into how the masses think may be colors they have never seen.

That being said, I think there may be another 2 possible endgames [though the repercussions of this game are going to be payed out and speculated upon for many, many years to come and it will probably be difficult to score it objectively] which may leave Bush looking ok and could be deemed successful. Again, I wish the election were tomorrow, but I'm trying to answer the OP.

One, would be that during the course of the clean-up in Baghdad and the Saddam-controlled periphery they actually do find significant evidence of WMD and visually compelling evidence, or at least a great amount of testimony, demonstrating human rights atrocities. Now I know, I know, this can be part of totally fabricated U.S. propaganda----but it wouldn't stretch
my imagination to consider that it might be genuine, either. And of course the adminsitration is going to jump all over it and promote it to the public. This would be a huge "I told you so". Frankly, I think that Saddam would be going to enormous lengths right now behind the scenes to cover his tracks, but then again I would have thought that the Nazis would have done that too.
That scenario would reinstate a large portion of our "moral" authority, the UN would have to eat some crow, and it would offer the US the opportunity to remedy some of it's prior arrogance by graciously not rubbing it in, and allowing them to save some face-----in short, we could kiss and make up, and work "more closely in the future".

Two, it could simply be that the bulk of Iraqi's might surprise us by actually being far more relieved than some would anticipate. It won't be universal mind you, but we're doing a thought experiment and I think it an alternate possibility. Again, yes, the media and administration will pushily emphasize satisfaction over dissent, thus making it hard for us armchair QB's to know for certain what's what for a while. But I have a heck of a lot more confidence that we'll find out their real sentiments over time from one source or another and the general proportions of same than I do now when I see prorgams interviewing teenagers and children and families in Baghdad [MTV?] that purport to be allowing us to really get to know what folks are thinking there. It's a hostage situation! I think it's fine to ask and do interviews, but it is irresponsible to pretend that people there are not under threat of harm to themselves and their families if they are assertively critical of the regime. That's as wrong as pretending that oil is not a factor.

Three it's possible that over the next few years this administration actually gets wise and adapts and patches things up somehow with the world community and actually does right by Iraq in some big way that ultimately, and clearly, leads to a prosperous and open society. I think that this, minus one of the prior 2 dynamics being in place also, is the least likely of all, the biggest longshot----but we're thought experimenting here. This leaves the "how" of reframing the relevancy of the UN still unresolved, but I think that could happen with a few bumps along the way as I describe in the first scenario.

The whole mess that this has turned into is because we are in a serious geopolitical paradigm shift and the next 50-100 years are going to be impacted greatly by the decisions made especially at this juncture. In some way, 9/11 was, perhaps, an "assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand moment". So I'm not optimistic about smooth sailing on any front. But things were not, and still are not, going to be the same no matter what is decided. [I know, duh?] But I think the paradigm shift is about a lot more variables than the oil though that's part of it and I think that the balance of power in the world is going to go through some seismic changes that are not necessarily going to leave the disempowered better off, generally, if the U.S. goes into serious decline and some other countries get to try their hand at choosing to be, or not to be, hegemonous? From my experiences with human behavior, I will be pleasantly "shocked and awed" if other nations take a higher road than the US has. Please, world, shame us by being better than we are-----not worse----should we fail.

Thanks for posting the question, it was good to think about.....

p.s.- I think that Ruy's scenario is exactly what the govt fears, and are up against no matter what path we take. There are a lot of petty, ruthless, greedy, govts and interests in the world and they hate and envy the US's power and wealth, and resent the instances where we have used it in a manner that was not genuinely about "freedom" and human rights [and there are plenty of examples of this, plenty, I know]. Saddam has a special hard-on for the Bush family [and vice versa], and the US generally. I think there are numerous interests in the world right now that would not mind seeing the US devastated and knocked into a certain amount of economic atrophy that such a disaster would cause. But at this point, can we act "right" enough to prevent that from happening even if we back-off on Iraq? But I digress........

Zar

leonarde, you missed my point, which was a reponse to Ruy Lopez. If the Americans thought they could scare Saddam from the throne for one thing, this is why it is too bad he won't leave until he's dead. You seemed to assume I felt sorry for Saddam or something.

leonarde

Zar, I think we are talking PROBABILITIES here (unless you are claiming to be psychic) and so the "miscalculation" has yet to be proved. But even if there's only a 1 per cent chance of his going into exile (ie a peaceful regime change)that is worth the effort to effect it.

Cheers!

Zar

leonarde,

What are we talking about? I'm not completely sure anymore. We get into this dance where it isn't clear if any communication is really going on...

Let's see if we're still communicating.

From the conventional perspective, I think anyone can see that Saddam simply folding under pressure and leaving the country would be a great outcome for Washington. As you yourself said, though, this is very unlikely. The facts about the man and his history confirm this unlikelihood. I don't think we have really disagreed on this, then. In my opinion, this is so unlikely that it would be folly to base a whole policy on it, epsecially handled like it has been with the fallout it has generated.

I truth, I really don't think many see this as the outcome counted on by Washington. It has been pretty clear for a long time that war, deposing Saddam and occupation has been their goal. What they are stumbling on is that many can only go with disarmament at this point. This is why Washington tries so hard to say that disarmament cannot happen unless Saddam is gone. From this view, regime change should have happened without any inspections, because none were needed. Indeed, every gesture from Washington to ridicule, belittle and derail this process confirms this. It should be obvious. So, I don't think the "Saddam takes a ride into the sunset" scenario deserves very much more consideration.

From the less conventional perspective, a war of conquest would be preferable to a peaceful resolution, because if they think the war will be relatively easy, then a permanent American military presence can remain. A show of military strength doesn't hurt either, in the planners' eyes. This serves the regional- and world-dominating purposes I've been declaring high and low on these boards, and that you should be well aware of by now if you have been reading. I will not recount them here.

If you take this view a bit further, it even can explain why, in the very beginning, the Bush Administration wanted to go ahead despite the cautions of senior figures and diplomats inside America, including members of the administration like Colin Powell. If you recall, going to the U.N. was not originally the plan. Bush was persuaded only after some very tense lobbying by domestic doves and foreign diplomats. A need or a policy predicated on America dominating the region by and large would naturally disclude allies from undue involvement. This is especially true under the assumption that this killing is couched as being about America's imminent danger and vital self defense, which is the case Washington has tried to make.

leonarde

Partial post by Zar:You say "at this point". But what point (in time) are we in? We are 12 years down the road from a ceasefire in which Iraq agreed to give up the WMDs. We are 12 years down the road from the time UN resolution 687 called upon Iraq to give up the same WMDs immediately and unconditionally.
In all, there have been something like 17 UN resolutions by the UN on Iraq since its invasion of Kuwait. A lot of those resolutions said, in effect, "We see that Iraq has blown off a previous resolution, so we call once again for Iraq to cooperate on WMD destruction".

Again, what point in time are we in? Four (4) full
years since Iraq ceased all cooperation with the first UN inspections team (UNSCOM). Three (3) full years since the NEW inspections team (UNMOVIC) was called into being. Yet in all of 2000, 2001, and the first 8 months of 2002 there was no inspecting going on! Only after Bush made his threat in September was there the slightest bit of move toward having an inspection team that truly inspects/looks for WMDs in Iraq. Institutionally the UN, and many of the "moderates" on Iraq (France, Russia) haven't minded in the slightest that there were no inspections......until the prospect of a US/UK invasion loomed.

So when "Washington.... say(s) that that disarmament cannot happen unless Saddam is gone" it is merely being clear-eyed about the facts of the last 12 years. Saddam has been the only real constant in the equation (there were/are 3 different head of inspection teams); furthermore he had intense interest in nuclear arms since the 1970s (ie while Vice President).

Cheers!

Zar

leonarde,

I sense we are going off the rails now. I've heard all that stuff before, and it has been discussed at length in many other theads. This discussion seems to be expanding into the realm of the repetitive, beyond its original bounds.

As the topic starter, I thought this thread was about "what if Bush is right?" and about strategy in general, and what you've said seems mainly about justifying the Iraqi invasion specifically in legalistic or moralistic terms without too much of a view toward these other things (and I'm not really sure what you said in your last post necessarily conflicts with anything I've said anyway, since it was so generalized.) We started this on a small misunderstanding about some small matter that we probably actually agree on and is probably moot anyway. It keeps spiraling from there, and nothing else seems to make this sidetrack go away, so I'm just going to decline to answer your last post and let it stand.