Laci

Pessimistic Liberalism

[Removed for reasons of copyright]

ohwilleke

Query who are you quoting, for it reads like a quote with the last updated part.

I think that liberals are rightfully irked that the President's justification for this war was meager. To ask the U.N. for permission and use its resolutions as a basis, and then deny that you need it's blessing. To rely on a weapon of mass destruction argument when there are none. In fact, the President needed a war and wanted to finish his father's business.

Liberals are rightly irked at Democratic members of Congress who quickly gave Bush the authority to make war with little debate, and conservatives are rightly irked at Democrats who voted to allow Bush to make war without the U.N. and then complained when he did it.

We did win easily, and were not prepared for occupation to take place as quickly as it did, causing things like looting. The military performed very well, overall. I think that the U.S. properly does take some blame for looting, since we are the ones who killed the Sheriff who had been imposing order and had a responsiblity to impose order in the vacuum. But, now that its done, it is just a lesson for next time.

I think liberals need to recognize that the wars in Afganistan and Iraq have brought about positive regime change at a far low military cost than anyone would have dreamed. Liberal objectives have been served better in these nations by violent military overthrow than anything that could have come from incremental change in decades. (Something I don't think is true in Iran which is on the verge of transforming itself into a more Democratic country).

Time will tell what the new regimes will look like.

Laci

That was written up in the WSJ.

Laci

It was written in the WSJ.

To rely on a weapon of mass destruction argument when there are none. In fact, the President needed a war and wanted to finish his father's business.

You mean we haven't found them yet. We will. And maybe some of it was wanting to finish his father's business. Didn't Saddam try to have Bush Senior killed?


[b/Time will tell what the new regimes will look like.[/b]

I think our presence in the mideast is a good thing. And after seeing Saddam's arsenal hidden in schools, hospitals, mosques, I realized how much the Iraqi people needed to become liberated.

I think perhaps later on down the road, you might take a different view of our being in the mideast and recognize how us taking such drastic action had to be done sometime.

We could not continue to allow a dictator like Saddam to continue to harbor terrorists. And the Iraqi people deserved freedom. But it's all new now and complicated. I hope it will straighten itself out.

ShabbyChick

I believe that it's a copyright violation to post a piece in its entirety without permission.
Which terrorists was he harboring exactly? Surely you know that both American and British intelligence agencies have stated that there was no credible link between Iraq and Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, don't you?

ohwilleke

You are forgiven as a new user, but ettiquette on IIdb is to post a link (admittedly problematic with the WSJ site which is not open access) and then quote selectively with attribution of a source.

One of the other problems, which my wife posed repeatedly while the build up was taking place was the haboring of terrorists thing. The reality is that Iraq was not some terrorist nerve center. That was Afganistan. And Saudi Arabia. Iraq had nothing to do with al-Queda. The Iraq invasion didn' t really have any basis in anything Iraq did in relation to terrorism.

Has Iraq expressed support for the Palestinians. Sure? Who in the Islamic world hasn't? This does not make them a center for terrorism, any more than the U.S. is terrorist sponsor because some individual Americans send checks to the Irish Republican Army. Certainly the U.S. Government has supported more rebel movements (Nicaragua, for example), than Iraq ever has.

No WMD. Certainly no WMD worth invading over. No harboring of terrorists. No link to al-Queda.

Iraq was on the radar screen because Bush Sr. started a war, and Bush Jr. wanted to finish it, and in between the U.S. military had spent a decade of lukewarm conflict enforcing the no fly zone.

John Hancock

Don't know what the article said but.....

ohwilleke
_________________________________________
I think liberals need to recognize that the wars in Afganistan and Iraq have brought about positive regime change at a far low military cost than anyone would have dreamed. Liberal objectives have been served better in these nations by violent military overthrow than anything that could have come from incremental change in decades. (Something I don't think is true in Iran which is on the verge of transforming itself into a more Democratic country).
_______________________________________-More eggs then chickens (and some of those eggs don't smell well).

Martin