{"id":929,"date":"2005-12-04T19:08:20","date_gmt":"2005-12-04T19:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:28","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:28","slug":"why_not_iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=929","title":{"rendered":"Why Not Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went through the points raised in the comments to the post on “Why Not Iraq<\/a>” below, and boiled them down to the list of ones I feel were the strongest (i.e. the ones that I felt had to be addressed to maintain my position). <\/p>\n

# The war is unwinnable, because the insurgency is too powerful politically and militarily to be defeated within the time material resources and political will allow for the U.S. presence.<\/p>\n

# The war is unwinnable because the Administration has no coherent plan.<\/p>\n

# The war was a distraction from the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the fight against terrorism.<\/p>\n

# We are creating Islamist terrorists throughout the Middle East by occupying Iraq.<\/p>\n

# The war used up money and manpower which could\/should have been used to secure our borders, airports, and ports.<\/p>\n

# The war has cost us allies in Europe and the Middle East, and damaged our standing and ability to lead in the world.<\/p>\n

# Saddam was deterrable, and so controllable, unlike the Islamist fanatics likely to replace him.<\/p>\n

# Containment was working, and so there was no need to invade.<\/p>\n

# America’s image is not that of a country that launches preemptive wars.<\/p>\n

# Going to war was a violation of the UN Charter, and the US conduct of the war has been a violation of the laws of war.<\/p>\n

# The Administration’s case for the war was selective, inaccurate, and based more in supporting the Administration’s already-made decision than in guiding it. <\/p>\n

# The pre-war planning ignored virtually all post-war issues, from the military to the political to the economic to the humanitarian.<\/p>\n

I’ll plead bias, even though I did the best I could, and am open to ways that this list should be edited or changed. Take a look at them, and over the week, I’ll start responding to them one or two at a time, and a discussion will hopefully break out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal sums up the arguments posted against the war in Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}