I just had the Valentines Dinner From Hell (not really, actually a wonderful dinner with my SO), and was confronted by bad dating habits (check out Armed Liberal for my comments and recommendations on middle-aged dating) as well as some points in opposition to the ‘Impending War on Iraq’ (we ought to just make that name official) that actually got me to think a bit, and I wanted to throw a few things out for consideration. The points are:
1) We can’t invade Iraq because we haven’t dealt with Al Qaeda; and
2) We can’t invade Iraq because we haven’t dealt with the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts.
Those are two of the more typical antiwar arguments that I hear from people who think more deeply about the subject than “war is bad”.
And last night I just realized that they are both flat wrong.
We can’t deal with Al Qaeda as long as there are states that control territory, the issuance of identification, and the import and export of weapons which actively support Al Qaeda or tacitly support them through inaction.
We can’t deal with the Palestinian’s unwillingness to make a final, binding, real, two-state deal with Israel as long as there are states that actively encourage Palestinian rage and violence with funds and weapons.
I’m thinking that both of these problems are essentially unsolvable as long as they are really ‘proxy’ conflicts with state actors.
What do you folks think?
(fixed spelling of ‘Al-Qaeda’ per Inkgrrl’s comment)
ergo- the Bush doctrine
I do believe you’ve got it …
#1: “We can’t deal with Al Quieda as long as there are states that control territory, the issuance of identification, and the import and export of weapons which actively support Al Quieda or tacitly support them through inaction.
#2: We can’t deal with the Palestinian’s unwillingness to make a final, binding, real, two-state deal with Israel as long as there are states that actively encourage Palestinian rage and violence with funds and weapons.”
You missed point #3: the group in #1 and the group in #2 are essentially the same group of states and oligarchs, whose ongoing control of billions of dollars worth of wealth is predicated on #1 and #2. Otherwise, their populations will turn on them and kill them.
Given a choice between being millionaires and either dying or living in exile, reform is to say the least unlikely unless they suddenly become even more afraid of a 3rd option from an outside force.
This is an argument that any self-respecting liberal should be able to grok immediately. Try the same argument, but applied elsewhere and phrased this way:
“Given the choice between staying in business and becoming rich while leaving people in unsafe working conditions, or having higher costs and going out of business, reform is unlikely unless a stronger outside force (widespread organized activism or preferably the government) steps in to compel fair treatment on penalty of enforced laws.”
See how congenial that is to the liberal mindset? Except that in the case of the Mideast, both the downside and rewards are even larger and so behaviours (and required remedies) are even more extreme. Otherwise, the despots will just see it as “a cost of doing business” and continue with their exploitation.
Hope this helps.
I agree with both points, but must make a nit-picky non sequitur-ish point from my tenous perch on the hairy earlobe of Arabic linguistics – al-qaeda not al-kwayeeda or al-kwayayda… unless you’re taking referring to the Spanish splinter cell sleepers. Yes, dear – that’s the only criticism I can muster ‘cuz you’re just that cool.
The other criticism you hear a lot is, “we can’t invade Iraq because we haven’t dealt with North Korea, and they’re the bigger threat.”
One point left out of your analysis is, “if we’re going to have any hope of reigning in bad actors with multi-lateral agreements, then we have to enforce the ones already in place consistently”. Instead of looking at Iraq versus N.Korea, or Iraq and the Palestinians, it makes more sense to look at the strategic global picture over the next decade.
Because of fairly predictable weakness since World War II, the U.S. doesn’t command the respect its military might deserves (yes, the Persian Gulf in 1991 wasn’t a show of weakness, at first, but we still managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory even there). The wipe-out of the Taliban in Afghanistan was a decent start to a new era, but it was nothing more than a small start.
As bad as Syria, Iran, North Korea and a few other places are, there’s no place that stands any further out of line than Iraq. And Iraq commands a critical central location in the Middle East and we can deal with the Iraqi’s without worrying about losing any major western cities (ie, Seoul).
Making mincemeat out of Saddam Hussein in Iraq will make it a bit more clear to the world that the U.S. is serious about maintaining a semblance of civilized order around the globe. And yes, after demonstrating the war-making capabilities of the U.S. military in Iraq, it will be time to start working on the very real and ugly situation in North Korea. But N.Korea will be easier to negotiate with from a position of strength after dealing harshly with Saddam. Maybe we could even get the Chinese to pressure NK if we threatened to rearm Japan to aid its self-defense . . . .
The “Bush” doctrine I’d like to see put in place would be the holding of states accountable for the actions of groups within their borders. It’s partly true that 4th generation warfare is characterized by “stateless” organizations, but in fact certain “stateless” organizations are associated with states (Hezbollah and Iran, for example). The Taliban government of Afghanistan sheltered Al-Q’aida and was held accountable. Iraq isn’t identified with a single group, but it certainly is a terrorist haven. In the Middle East, Iran and Syria should be next in line for attention after Saddam is deposed.
We ought to make it clear to the senior people in the governments running Iran, Syria, Libya etc that we consider them accountable for any acts of terrorism commited by groups organized within their boundaries. The world’s too big for the U.S. to be global terror cop, but if we’re passionately serious about holding governments accountable for terrorist activities organized within their borders, we might get a few bad actors to shape up, a little.
AL,
There appears to be a slightly different problem.
If we can take the presuption that the plans
for saddam and arafat are similar then we really should look carefully at the plans. How are the plans for Iraq at this time any different than the plans that have been used by the Israelies under Sharon with the exception that the US will try to kill saddam if they can find him.
Will the war end on favorable terms? Are the plans of the US ensuring that neither the war nor the peace terms provide the seeds of an unfavorable future conflict? (question from Atlantic Monthly article on John Boyd. )
There’s also a very good article in this week’s New Yorker:
*LeMann in New Yorker*
on what some of the Bush Administration experts have in mind for Iraq – Doug Feith, for instance.
I think, hope and pray that there are a lot of Doug Feith’s in the Administration with carefully thought out plans for not only post-war Iraq, but also post-war Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Based on the New Yorker article, it appears that there’s a lot more thought and planning going on in the Bush Administration than meets the eye – and given how sensitive the issues are it’s understandable – on the other hand, the lack of information creates a vacuum that undermines the large-scale case for war with Iraq.
It seems to me that all this talk about using Iraq as an example for the rest of the Middle East is blindly optimistic and irrational. Especially if we go to war alone (with the UK). There is one chance of things going reasonably well, with a short war and the creation of “democratic structures”. And then there are a zillion chances of things going bad.
Except for the very best case scenario, the US would be seen by Muslims everywhere as imposing a government on Iraq. How does that help the situation? And except for the best case scenario, I think Iraq ends up in chaos for a very long time.
Syria (and of course the Saudi’s) are more active supportors of terrorism than Saddam. Nobody’s talking of bombing them in a hurry.
I’m not saying no war for any reason. I still don’t see why continuing close surveillence -flyovers, more people on the ground, etc- should not continue until we have clear provocation from Iraq. I know Saddam is not fully complying and that can be considered as a provocation, but until we have better evidence- some multi purpose aluminum tubes are not good enough- then I think we should continue with what we’re doing.
I don’t agree with folks who say France and Germany will never agree to a strike. But I think it will take more than a theory of Middle East transformation to convince them.
Mike is right. Why can’t we all be friends. The US should pull back its troops from Iraq, Europe and Asia. We tell Israel to go stuff it, same with the Turks; what did they ever do for the US (ok so they bravely fought in Korea and they were a bulkwark on the southern flank of NATO, who cares, they’re not Europeans).
We let the UN and NATO do whatever they want, just no US troops and we kick the UN out of New York; let them go to Tripoli.
Then let’s see what type of vermine are spawned. Then we can have a “good” and “just” war, where everybody sacrifices, just like WW II only this time everybody has nukes.
I believe the movie that depicted the endgame of Timmy’s scenario was “Postman”.
Hey Timmy,
I spent two years in the infantry in the 60’s. Don’t tell me about “let’s just all be friends”.
Neither I nor anybody else mentioned pulling troops out of anywhere. How about actually using some thought and making a rational argument instead of sounding like a smartass high school kid.
So Mike you want a serious conversation, so be it.
Please define clear provocation for me, then give me a time line for the current situation. And given your military experience, tell me how long the US can maintain its current military presence (the 100,000 to 200,000 active deploymnet) in the Middle East without their presence being target.
Then tell me about the parameters of Resolution 1441 and Iraq’s failure to abide. I quess we should be like the French and come up with a some other meanless resolution.
We contained Iraq for eight years. Four years ago, the UN was kicked out and we lobbed some missiles over Baghdad. Does the term Paper Tiger mean anything to you.
I remember when the West didn’t want to inpose freedom on Eastern Europe. I remember Berlin; I remember Hungary (my parents were there); I remember the unification of Germany, which France was against. What do you remember?
Finally, the US is not alone, Europe is with us, expect for Germany, France and Belgium, do you know why?
Mike, by the way. I think fighting a war to setup a democratic institution. Is a good reason to go to war, even if there is only a slight chance of achieving. I think the “Founding Fathers” thought so too.
Mike, by the way. I think fighting a war to setup a democratic institution. Is a good reason to go to war, even if there is only a slight chance of achieving. I think the “Founding Fathers” thought so too.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, to take it one step further, only until we’ve brought about regime change can we begin to deal with al Qaeda and the Palestine/Israeli conflicts. Iraq is in the unfortunate position of being the low-hanging fruit of the axis of evil(seen enemy)/war on terror(unseen enemy). We need to get them out of the way in order to reallocate the resources towards other targets.