Fair Enough
George Will writes about the lag time between observing a problem and acknowledging a problem in Iraq.
The administration was/is too focused and counted too heavily on the best case scenario, ignoring the worst case of invasion. And of course, we find ourselves much closer to the worst case than the best.
But what I still don't like is this notion that doing nothing about Iraq, and continuing inspections, or going along the pre-9/11 path of containment was some sort of neutral policy. This position, which was tested for 12 years, was not working. Now the clearest argument, I think, is that while the pre-Bush policy was not working in Iraq, Bush's policy is NOT WORKING WORSE.
Look, Clinton appeased the North Koreans and it kept them without nukes. Clinton, through the UN, did sanctions on Iraq and it inflamed anger across the Muslim world. Were these smart policies that contained truly ugly problems? Or were were kicking the can down the road and racking up credit card debt for later generations to deal with? Honestly, I don't know.
Are we right now, making the tough sacrifices so that future generations can be safe? Or are we creating a massive new problem that will cause nightmares for the future? I don't know either.
History will tell.
2 comments:
Talking about pre-Iraq War methods of inspecting and sanctioning, you say: "This position, which was tested for 12 years, was not working."
Now I'm not sure what constitutes the broad sense of working or not working, but it did keep Iraq from having weapons of mass destruction, which seems to me like it passes the test.
Maybe diplomacy was doomed to fail in the long term, but is going to war all the time a better long-term solution?
good point. i'd say it wasn't working because a) the sanctions were not eroding the power of saddam's regime b)not making saddam work better with the international community c) starving iraqi citizens d) angering the muslim world e) proving saddam didn't have wmds
in hindsight, yes, it looks like he did not have wmds. if he did, they were not plenty enough to be dangerous OR they haven't been found yet anyway and are still dangerous, despite invading. of course, we only know this as a result of invading, so it's a rather weird conundrum. is it better to know at a high cost, or not know at no cost?
but the mess in iraq right now isn't all about wmds. say, saddam DID have wmds. the mess would still be the same. and say we didn't invade, this mess probably was going to happen down the line...perhaps we wouldn't have been in the crossfire...but who knows?
i think it's been proven pretty clearly that going to war all the time is not a better long term solution. in fact, it hasn't been proven that going to war at anytime in the modern middle east is ever a good short term solution.
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