That is the strangest excuse for the Invasion of Iraq I've ever heard. One, we are going broke in wars in afghanistan and Iraq and ,as a result, being laughed at by Iran and the rest of the world. We aren't making "threats" we're carrying them out and failing at it, particularly in Iraq.
Also,the iraq war has demonstrated that all you have to do is launch a terorist attack in america and america will freak out and lose all composure. sowe're not a paper tiger but a dumb tiger who is so tired he might as well be paper.
we have no threats from regimes. al queda is a very very loose network of terrorists. There are no state sponsers anymore. just rich saudis and the muslim people themselves, who are fed up with american imperialism.
as Frontline noted the other night, cheny and rumsfeld attacked Iraq because it was a state and being old and out of it and very ideological, it was the only way they could think of to deal with terrorism. so they fell right into a trap set by the neo cons and al queda. we ARE russia in afghanistan
Never said I agreed with the logic, but that appears to be a significant part of the rationale.
My biggest problem with this, as I have noted, was that we may have gained something from the swift initial occupation but we have now exposed all kinds of weakness and placed ourselves in a weaker position vis-a-vis those we wished to deter/compel.
This is right on. This book sounds like a good read. All one has to do is look at Lybia. I am against the Iraq War, but one of its effects on the international system was getting Kadafi (sp?) to give up his search for nukes. On the other hand, it probably sped up the DPRK's and Iran's drive for nukes.
This book sounds correct in its interpretation of the Bush Doctrine. It is much more than terrorism. It is a doctrine dedicated to American primacy. Thank God I'm not a primacist!
Do you think maybe you are psycho analyzing a little bit? like maybe some of this was subconscious on the part of cheney and rumsfeld? rather than part of a specific plan
On the other hand one could argue that the message for the world is 'the US is a crazy despot and it's time to start plotting against it/ time to work on deterrence against their crazy invasions". I was just reading some of the disempowerment of the EPA and how children are dying because of pollution. The destruction of this country has been deep by Bush and his delinquents.
I'm only partway into it, but I believe the same point is made in Gordon and Trainor's Cobra II.
"For the Bush administration, Iraq was an inviting target for preemption not because it was an immediate threat but because it was thought to be a prospective menace that was incapable of successfully defending itself against a U.S. invasion. For an administration that was determined to change the strategic equation in the Middle East and make Saddam an object lesson to other proliferators, Iraq was not a danger to avoid but a strategic opportunity." (pg 64)
and
"Iraq did not have the most advanced weapons programs among the countries of Bush's "axis of evil," the strongest association with terrorists, or a track record of disseminating WMD. But Iraq's truculent relationship with Washington, its failure to honor its obligations to the United Nations for more than a decade, the relative weakness of its conventional forces, and the fact that it had yet to cross the nuclear threshold defined its singularity: Iraq was a hostile but vulnerable adversary that had run afoul of its U.N. obligations. By the adminstration's calculations, of the "axis of evil," Iraq was a prime candidate for regime change. September 11 had opened in the United States a political window for action,l and Iraq's vulnerabilities now opened a strategic window." (pg 131)
While this seems like a reasonable idea of what the bushies were thinking, it doesn’t explain the complete lack of planning for the occupation or the unrealistic expectations for how quick we would be out. I would think that the creators of a cold, brutal plan would not be so frickin naïve about how to carry it out or the possible negative consequences. If this is their plan then they have shown themselves incapable of carrying it out. If you want to prove you are the toughest kid on the block then you cannot stumble into a clusterfuck and then refuse to make changes to win.
This may be their plan but somewhere in the constellation of reasons for this war has to be colossal ego and capacity for self delusion.
the title of the topic is misleading. If you are saying this is what they thought that's one thing. but it looks lke you are using suskinds book to justify the invasion of Iraq or the initial logic of it. which is your prerogitive, but is that what you are doing?
I am saying that this is why they thought the war made sense.
My own feeling is that the war was unecessary for a number reasons (which I have recounted in previous posts).
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