Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq The very rationale I've used in opposition to this war since the first neo-con floated the idea. What's the next failed attempt at justifying our national interest going to be?
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq "Realism" is often just another excuse for fatalism. I for one hate the thought of the U.S. having to "contain" Iraq led by Saddam and/or his sons for another two or three decades.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq the alternative is looking like having to babysit a nascent kurdish state and deal with an expanded sphere of iranian and saudi influence. i'll take contained secular nutjobs over uncontained religious nutjobs and a brewing turk/kurd war any day of the week. the short term gain of taking sadaam out of the game is increasingly looking like a long-term loss for the US.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq Containing Sodamn Insane would have been a lot easier, cheaper, and far less inflammatory than the current situation. I've said it before: there were ways of containing and controlling him without putting the first boot on the ground and without resulting in chaos among the civilian populace. For instance: Saddam had acquired a fair amount of wealth. Money talks, and Saddam is a greedy sumbitch. He had stashed a fair amount of his wealth in all those palaces. So, you send him a message by bombing a palace and threatening to bomb the rest within x number of minutes or hours unless he complies. Fer cryin' out loud, we had total air supremacy over the place. Patrol the palaces with tactical bombers until the deadline. If trucks start backing up to the palace doors, bomb the living shit out of them. If he had wanted to maintain his wealth and status, he would have complied.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq We bombed Iraq off and on for TWELVE years. I doubt targeting a few palaces would've made difference. And the bad publicity from attacking civilians targets would've been a problem. Why did Osama Bin Laden target the U.S. anyway? Because we had forces stationed in Saudi Arabia. Why did we have forces stationed in Saudi Arabia? To contain Saddam Hussein.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq So Osama should be happy, now that we've moved from Saudi Arabia to Iraq?
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq Yeah, but we didn't have strategery. My plan has strategery. Ah, but that's the beauty of the Muad Dib Doctrine: You're not really bombing civilian targets. You're attacking Saddam on a personal level. Those were his palaces. He's another dumbass fundie. Yep! Yep! Which doesn't excuse Osama. But, Osama and Saddam were 2 different people and 2 different situations. Frankly, we sacrificed the hunt for Osama to take out Saddam.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq I'd have taken option #3. Ignore Iraq, withdraw all US military assets from the middle east, accept that both the UN and it's resolutions are meaningless and impotent, and keep that in mind the next time the rest of the world asks us for something.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq Never bought the bullshit, as it didn't matter. Nor do I call it an invasion per se, as that suggests that the US started the war.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq thats the ideal, but the problem there is that the US has a double dependancy on oil, and the ME has a big say on that even though the US doesn't get most if its oil from there. if OPEC opted to dump the dollar for oil trading, the effect on the US dollar would be disasterous, whilst any major price inflation would cripple western productivity. simply exiting the ME isn't an option until the US government discovers fiscal responsibility and a replacement for oil.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq ecky, you operate under the assumption that I think the US government should be using the military to ensure easy prosperity for it's citizens. I do not. Whether or not we should blow the fuck out of another country should not be determined by our economic desires. And we should've been off petroleum decades ago. I don't think it's gonna happen as long as fossil fuels are so easily available. In that light, an international oil trade move that's unfriendly to the US could be a good thing in the long run. If the transition is painful, so fucking be it.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq Bumper sticker thinking as usual. Get that out of your latest copy of Armchair General?
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq well, no, i'm undergoing the assumption you wouldn't want to live in a nation whose economy suddenly resembles post-glasnost russia's, where a loaf of bread will cost a weeks wage... hyperbole, but only just. i know your feelings on this, i just wanted to point out why the government wouldn't take option 3. in the long run it'd be good, but if OPEC dumped from dollars to euro's without the world moving away from oil, the EU would adopt the US's global dominance as it would have the economic muscle to do so. not rightly sure i'd be happy in a world where the french and germans had that much sway...
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq When did you stop beating your wife? Dobbs' question is loaded with the "to pursue obviously failed strategies" constraint. No one has any interest in failure. There is, however, a compelling national interest in the Middle East. True, but Saddam didn't do much to clarify that, did he? Clearly, it was not expected that such a vigorous insurgency would arise post-Saddam. And, I'm sure, you can show that you thought those estimates were wrong at the time they were made, right, Lou? A mischaracterization of what Wolfowitz said. Wolfowitz said that Iraq's oil assets could finance the reconstruction (which remains true), not that they would be used to cover the cost of the war. Stiglitz is a well-known critic of the Administration and made no attempt to calculate benefits. Democratization wasn't a rationalization; that was the intent. And it still may happen. Yep. And U.S. military power will be used to ensure that the EU (and our other trading partners) have access to oil. Uh, quite a few European nations did join the coalition of the willing. France is not Europe. But the EU has no power to challenge Islamic radicalism in the region. They could, but only at the expense of harming their own economies. And running the risk of a U.S. intervention. YOU MUST ACT NOW! TIME IS RUNNING OUT! SMALL WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY! Says who? If the government were to invest heavily in (and therefore all but mandate) an alternative energy scheme now, who's to say a much better one wouldn't emerge later? And is Dobbs really so dense as to think that even if alternatives did arrive on the market that oil dependence would go away entirely? Or that Western nations could then just ignore the Middle East? Would it have bought everyone who owns an internal combustion engine a new one as well? That's fantasy to think that even several hundred billion dollars could make so radical a transformation. Dobbs talks about "economic realities" in this piece quite a bit, but doesn't seem to understand them. There is no magic oil alternative that will materialize as soon as a government check is written. This same silly argument was made during the first Gulf War in 1991 and it was as poorly reasoned then as it is now. That said, if energy independence is your goal, we could tap our known domestic oil reserves (ANWR, off-shore, etc.) for relatively low cost and diminish our share of imported oil. Ready to support that, Lou? Dobbs is a soft-headed populist and his arguments are facile. While he claims that his political opponents are the ones ducking reality, he serves up a steaming pile of fantasy.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq I keep seeing the "national interest" angle pop up. It seems to me that, when alternate forms of energy are within the realm of possibility, and we can do things on our own real-estate to fight terrorism if we'd just stop worrying about hurting anyone's feelings, "national interest" by itself is insufficient for invading Iraq.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq Alternatives are possible. But none of them are as cost-effective as what we have. And all of them require HUGE investments in order to make them feasible. I have no doubt we'll eventually move past oil. But even if people started buying alternatives today (difficult, since few are on the market), the vast majority will still run on oil for many, many years. It's fantasy to think that we would just all switch right away, even if oil-based alternatives were taken off the market completely (which, in itself, would be devastating to the economy). There's another reason besides oil that we can't ignore the Middle East: Islamic radicalism. It isn't going away; in fact, it continues to gather strength. And the destruction it brings won't be limited to the Middle East if it is ignored.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq Yeah, let's see us sit idly by and let them elect someone who tells us to fuck off.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq I have a hard time seeing that as anything more than "But that'll cut into our profits! " or "But I don't wanna pay that much to fill the suburban! " Why should I have a problem with that? I don't. But it shouldn't be the job of the government to control prices and protect profits. I'm not convinced we need to solve that problem for everyone else in order to deal with it here at home. And I still see buying less oil as a way of defanging Islamic radicalism.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq What do you suppose would happen if they did just that? Answer: we'd fuck off. We'd have to. If we overthrew a democratically-elected leader who demanded it--in a country where we've staked our reputation on establishing democracy--we'd be hypocrites. No one would take us at our word ever again. And it would be tough--especially in light of ongoing violence--for an American President to keep support for keeping troops in a country to support a people who did not want them there.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq My point is it wouldn't. We'd make sure of it. Whether it's from a do-gooder impulse to over-tinker, or an outright bloodless realpolitic agenda, "our boy", gets put in that seat either way.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq People want transportation. They have a desire to fulfill that want as cost-effectively as possible. They're free to accept or reject alternatives on the market. But get government involved, and that freedom suddenly disappears. If government invests hundreds of billions of dollars in an alternative, do you think they're going to leave the success of that alternative to chance? To the whim of the market? To individual choice? No way in hell. The day the U.S. decides to invest heavily in alternatives will be the day they hobble the competition with extra taxes or regulation. They shouldn't be interfering in the economy PERIOD. Unless you're an isolationist, you're still going to have your trading partners and their supply chains to worry about. If you're an isolationist, you'll have to explain how to sever all of our international economic ties without coercion. Oil is fungible. It doesn't matter where we buy it from (and, in fact, we buy very little from the Middle East) the point is this: someone somewhere IS going to buy it. And I'm not sure increased poverty in the Islamic countries (by diminishing their chief source of revenue) is going to defang radicalism. It's more likely to promote it.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq If the people truly demanded it, I don't see how we could stop them. We're promoting democracy and have aided the formation of a government along that principle. It stands to reason that anyone who is elected on a democratic basis probably shares our democratic values and will be amenable to us; they will also likely favor us since we're a force to uphold their newborn democracy. In that sense, yes, they're likely to be "our boys." That does not mean they're our puppets. And it does not mean that we prevent politicians with other views from arising. If dissatisfaction in Iraq grew deep enough, it's possible the people could elect a new leader who favored an immediate U.S. withdrawl. Not likely, but it could happen.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq Well, let's just hope we actually learned something from the whole Shah business.
Re: Lou Dobbs: Our leaders are ducking reality on Iraq Our overthrow of Mossadegh happened in a completely different context: Cold War, nationalization of western oil assets, etc. Even if there were a modern Iraqi equivalent to the Shah, we could not overthrow the government in Iraq to bring him to power without looking like complete hypocrites.
