War of liberation? What ever happened to the war for WMD?

Coming this week to a theater near you. Some interesting "Smoking gun" sites still being looked at, one a possible nuclear facility.



Last edited by Colin at Apr 9 2003, 04:05 PM

The rationale for this war does seem to shift and change every now and again. I've heard enough arguments for it that I am reminded of the old military saying, "run it up the flag pole and see who salutes."

I wonder who came up with the name "Operation Iraqi Freedom". What a stroke of genius.

I really dont think it will matter. a few more tours of prisons, of torture facilities, a few uncovered mass graves... endless testimonies of those whos family members were executed and dissapeared, interviews with scientists about secret weapons facilities and programs and more videos of people dancing in the street while spitting on images of Saddam etc etc etc... we are going to be bombarded by it all. people will forget quickly how and why it all happened. I think we are going to be bombarded with so much imagery and horror stories of the past, that people will feel ashamed of themselves to ask about WMD.

I am sure that WMD stuff will be presented. probably as before the war, it will be 90% circumstantial evidence and 10% substance. but even that won't matter.

The UN, France, Russia, China, Germany is not focused on it. No one is making an issue of it... its not in anyones interest to do so now. They are all breathing a deep sigh of relief in private while trying to save face at home by showing some support of "post Saddam Iraq" and focusing on the newer issues of rebuilding, humanitarian issues etc.

I am very impressed with this whole thing. I am impressed with the execution of the war. amazing. no Arab country thought that Saddam and his murder crew could be out of a job, just 21 days after saying "fuck you"

I am impressed that one of the most brutal regimes on the planet was just wiped off the face of the earth with such minimal loss.

I am not a flag waiver. i am not one of the "my country, right or wrong" crowd. i am probably far from being patriotic as most would define it because i am just too cynical....

but i am very confident that the world will be a better place for what just happened.

JR,

I'm very IMPRESSED and very HAPPY. Throwing Saddam to the lions makes the world a safer place.

BUT .. unless the action is turned into a world more determined to stop proliferation of weapons, we haven't done anything in the grand scale of things.

How can Bush and Co. turn this into a long-tem policy of the US, the UN, or any other body? How could the other security council members be convinced that this is an issue worth fighting for? What will the world be like if dozens of countries have nuclear weapons? Bush will only be president for four or eight years. It is not likely that the next president will be as resolute as he is on this issue. Assuming WMD's are found, can this success be turned into some long-term policy view?

How much will it matter if Saddam is overthrown and NK gets nuclear weapons? [I bet they don't have them yet, BTW]. They don't seem to be shy about selling their weapons either.

i dont think it can happen. or will happen.

that involves:

a common understanding
a common perspective
common interests politically and economically
decisive action
confrontation
the needed determination and resolve to enforce decisions

The UN Security Council has never shown any of these qualities when it came to making the tough decisions towards prevention and taking action towards enforcing its will.

The UN Security Council is a world theater where every actor is greedily trying to steal the political spotlight. It has proven to be pretty indifferent to how many casualties that struggle causes. even when they number in the millions. even in the face of unimagined suffering, brutality and imminent threats. if the UN is going to be the main policing body and guarantor of world security, then it needs to be reformed and it needs to get serious about doing the job it should be doing.

I have little faith that much change will happen in the way it behaves.

JR,

Do you think it is possible that nonproliferation, even at the risk of force, could become US policy and applied consistently from administration to administration ?

If not, what do we really gain from throwing Saddam out of Baghdad if countries like NK, Iran, and maybe eventually Syria have nuclear weapons?



Last edited by Colin at Apr 10 2003, 05:13 AM

Colin you bring up a very good point and i dint know the answer to that, but clearly UN is becoming more irrelevant everyday. Look at this UN cant even get together and agree to condemn NK's for pulling out of the nonproliferation treaty. In this case China and Russia are the ones apposed to such a move.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2928095.stm

Turn the table and put Iran or Syria in place of NK's and we'll have Russia and probably France apposing such movies.

Slav,

Totally true. Completely agree with you. Countries are putting their political alliances ahead of the general principle of nonproliferation. Weapons that can be easily used against civilian populations are becoming difficult to contain.

Getting five countries [just to begin with] to come to a general consensus regarding nonproliferation seems impossible.

North Korea. China certainly doesn't want to see US hegemony increasing in Asia - and rightly so, from their point of view. They have to balance that against the threat of them being used against them.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a large segment of the world is unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to stop proliferation.

Interesting times.

I don't vote very often but if Bush can solve the NK nuclear crisis he will most likely get my vote in the next election.

we're heading into a bixing match for now with US, UK, Japan on one side and France, China and Russia on the other side.

I hope that end of the day I don't need a North Korean geography lesson.

i think that is really unlikely to happen due to the nature of politics, especially in a two party system... permanence cannot really happen in terms of government policy because the next party will try to discredit the policies of the previous just as one party will discredit the other today.

i think its important because many loud messages were sent through this:

1) "you cannot find refuge forever, snuggled comfortably under the arms of the ineptitude of the UN"

2) "even if world opinion is against it and the UN is against it, you are still at risk in your behavior"

3) "people in the middle east dont want to be oppressed any more than people do anywhere else"

4) "popular opinion and 20 year old protestors are not always right and are certainly not always a deterrence... so dont count on this as a deterrence"

5) "just because you manage to put monuments, signs, sculptures and statues everywhere and terrorize people into cheering for you... it does not mean they support you and will not necessarily fight for you"

6) "dictatorships are quickly going out of fashion - and you too, could be 21 days from being out of a job"

7) "cruise missiles and tomohahk missiles can be launched from subs and warships hundreds of miles away and take out your bunker with pin-point accuracy while you are eating breakfast or sleeping"

8) "bunkers dont keep you safe"

9) "elite troops wont keep you safe"

10) "hey man, get your shit together and stop fucking around"

11) "Iran, Syria, N. Korea and others... please pay attention to this like you have never before paid attention to anything in your life"

So if we can't get an official US policy out of this that transcends administrations and the UN is doomed to be a failure on the issue of nonproliferation. If countries like NK and Iran don't "learn a lesson"* from the swift demolition of the Iraqi army and will continue headstrong down the path to being nuclear states, is our victory only a pyrrhic one?

* My guess. They didn't.

yes, i dont think there will be policy that will make a lasting impact.

i think the only way to make diminish the threat both now and in the future is to take them out right now, or to eliminate the threat. i

i think todays victory is important today. i dont think it will mean much over time if remaining governments like NK, Iran etc are not reformed or their behavior is not modified.

lifes a bitch, then you turn radical, then you radicalize others, then you take over a government, then you continue being a prick, then you oppress and brutalize people, then you die.

lifes not fair.

Damn, JR ... I thought liberals had the market on naive locked up. So next on our agenda is a number of countries in the "Coalition of the willing (to suck off Uncle Sam's teat?)"?

Are you saying that the Bush Administration would come down hard in defense of Chavez and democracy should the Venezuelan military stage a coup tomorrow?

[quote]"Do you think it is possible that nonproliferation, even at the risk of force, could become US policy and applied consistently from administration to administration?"

"I think that is really unlikely to happen due to the nature of politics, especially in a two party system... permanence cannot really happen in terms of government policy because the next party will try to discredit the policies of the previous just as one party will discredit the other today."
[quote]

I'm not so sure about that particular arguement. In spite of the historical revisionist screeching of the uberpatriots we stayed pretty consistent throughout the Cold War.

I think it more likely that one party or another would begin to apply the policy selectively. Just off the top of my head, Japan or Australia could build very logical and persuasive arguements for the need of a nuclear deterent against China and Indonesia respectively.

So what do you think, PD?

Should the US just mind it's own business?

BTW .. I think JR's enumerations were at least partly in jest. #10 was my first clue. You know how JR is. :okthumb:

I agree with PD that a basic policy regarding nonproliferation can transcend administrations. If "the people" want it, they can get it. It might very well be that people don't and that we'll have to take a dozen nukes someday before we try and remake the world in our image.

Simply put, I think the ONLY way to accomplish nonproliferation is through the United Nations or something like it.

A unilateral policy of enforced nonproliferation will never work, unless "the people" want to go back to the arms races of the 50s - 70s. I doubt very seriously that countries like China or Russia would view the policy as anything other than an effort to increase American influence. Ultimately such a policy would cause large portions of the world to view the United States as the country that's "out of control." How many countries do you think we could attempt to "remake ... in our image" before we convince them that THEY are threatened?

We've already seen traditional friends of the United States (please note - friends aren't always lackeys) question the policy with regards to Iraq, and not all of those concerns are simply over commercial interests (o matter how often you repeat it amongst yourselves)

I suspect that you will see even the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" fall apart should there be an effort to take the war beyond Iraq into Syria or Iran (if it doesn't fall apart during the occupaton of Iraq). Syria's role in international terrorism has decreased significantly over the last ten or twelve years, and Iran is teetering on the brink of democracy. I doubt very seriously you could build a case that an attack on either country at this point would be in the national interests of the United States, let alone the world.

PD,

I'd LOVE to see that but if each violator gets a dozen years and a dozen and a half resolutions, I think we can safely say we'll be talking a good game but walking with a languid limp.

Any other ideas?

PD,

I'd LOVE to see that but if each violator gets a dozen years and a dozen and a half resolutions, I think we can safely say we'll be talking a good game but walking with a languid limp.

Any other ideas?[/b][/quote]
Sure.

* Reinstitute the draft (including women this time)
* Rebuild the military to 1960s levels
* Increase the military drain on the budget to 1950s levels
* Start building personal bomb shelters again

its not that i dont think that doing everything through the UN or "something like it" is a bad idea. i think its an unrealistic idea because it has not worked very well to date. Just like terrorism right now. its no longer a 1960's idea of a crazy guy running into a cafe with a machine gun... its about detonating a dirty nuclear bomb in NY, releasing chemical weapons or biological weapons on millions. its not about killing 5 guys with a pistol in the subway. Its about those same people NOW having the capability to kill millions.

its a brave new world out there. i would hesitate to apply the logic of the middle of the last century to todays "Jihadis" with nuclear weapons.

I agree with you PD. i dont think that unilateralism is the *best* answer. I just dont see an organization like the UN Security Council protecting the USA either. I am just a little more cynical than you are. i think that unilateralism (though its not really unilateralist when 50 countries support you as with Iraq) is the best solution to protect the interests of the USA. I think its safe to say that China, Syria, Russia and France cant be relyed on to do so.

there is not a perfect answer. the problem that i see is the same problem that led up to 9/11. The threat was always known. The threat continued to grow. Then he began to attack US targets for almost 10 years. He trained terrorists for almost 10 years to kill Americans. We all knew about it. like everything else, we cannot agree to act BEFORE a 9/11 happens - we can only agree AFTER the tragedy.

But what will the next attack be? Will it be North Korea launching 400 nuclear ICBM's at the USA? probably not. i dont think North Korea is much of a threat or even has enough money for gas to become a threat. people who want to live never are. Iran? i dont know... people who want to die and are trying to go nuclear scare me. Do we argue and debate until a know radical fundamentalist government, who we know would destroy the US if it was within its power to do so aquires nuclear weapons? DO we allow a government who is a know sponsor of terrorist organizations aquire nuclear weapons? Do they still have their big banner in their central mosque saying "death to america"? are those people that should have nuclear weapons? can it be argued that it will not be a serious threat to the US and its allies? i dont think so.

How would the USA vs Soviet Union apply to Iran (Islam) vs The Western World? i dont see a comparison.

the only thing i feel 100% sure of ... is that once these people cross the line and go nuclear, the "problem" grows exponentially and can no longer be contained.

Whos interest will it serve to have Iran have Nuclear weapons and be able to bring that to the negotiating table with them? no one i can think of.

the USA and Soviet Union were not unstable, autocratic, religious dictatorships teaching people that to die while trying to destroy the USA is the only way to go. Can that argument apply to the Middle East? to Iran, to Pakistan? Pakistan could launch its arsenal anytime. Mushariff, though a seemingly nice guy, barely has control of the country and Pakistan is "jihad central"

would we have been better off making sure that Pakistan NEVER had nuclear weapons in the first place that trying to rely on "peace and optimism" in a fundamentalist society plagued by revolution after revolution and coup after coup?

i think so.

did the UN do its job and make sure they DID NOT AQUIRE nuclear weapons? no. The UN continually allows these known, potential threats come to fluition. thats a problem in my mind.

Terrorism works. I think Osama got exactly what he wanted out of this. Probably more. The non-Arab world divided.

i think that if Chavez was threatening the United States that we will all die in a "sea of fire", exited the 1994 agreement, pulled out of the non-proliferation treaty and actively pursued a nuclear weapons program while threatening the US... he would be found dead, shot in the face, lying in a drainage ditch by the roadside and the world would not lose a moments sleep for it and it would not even make the front page.



Last edited by -= JR =- at Apr 10 2003, 10:41 AM

Don't doubt your scenario for a moment.

Now come back to the question I asked. Assume that the Venezuelan military stage a coup tomorrow and installed what they would consider a friendlier government - are you confident that the current administration's commitment to democracy result in more than the murmur of platitudes necessary to present an appearance of disapproval?



Last edited by PornoDoggy at Apr 10 2003, 11:00 AM

i dont think the current adminstration is committed to democracy as much as like most governments, its committed to protecting its own interests. if the US had no direct interest in venezuala (who has no terrorists chanting "die americans die" and are not pursuing nuclear weapons programs while being extremely hostile to the US) then you are probably right in that there would be some brief "Congratulations... blah blah,... now if you will excuse me, i am late for a round of golf" type of speech.