Bush's Iraq War and My Iraq War

Nate makes an interesting comment that me and Chris Hitchens are supporting a fundamentally different war than Bush sold to the American people. I've never thought Bush articulated the reasons for the Iraq war well, I found Tony Blair's arguments much more persuasive.

What I appreciate about Nate's POV on this topic is that despite going back and forth on "support" for the war, he goes back and forth for legitimate reasons, adjusting his position based upon research and reading and the situation as he understands it.

That being said, I support the Iraq war for different reasons than Bush has articulated - but those reasons are not SO different, that I cannot support the mission as it is being handled (versus, says, how I would've handled it if I were president - now that's a really scary thought!)

The whole WMD thang. From the beginning, I think this was an overemphasized claim - not because I didn't think Saddam had weapons - I thought he did (as did, incidentally, most anti-war folks) - but because it was what I call a "fear tactic." Bush tried to scare the American public into think we needed to go into war. I think this was the wrong approach. I think the war was the right strategic, geo-polical move for the US, not something we HAD to do, or else NYC was going to get nuked by terrorists. I'm not sure how popular such an argument would have been accepted, especially in the short term, but I think a good president would have argued this position and taken the country to war EVEN if it didn't have popular support - and run risk losing the reelection. That what Presidents are elected to do - make decisions on the Federal level for the rest of us. But, back to the WMD thang, just because we didn't find any weapons, doesn't mean we didn't succeed. To me, the evidence was clear, Saddam had tried many times to get weapons in the past - and we never had good intelligence on it. After Gulf War I, we discovered he was a lot closer to developing nukes than we thought. Where were all the cries about intelligence reform and not trusting our government back then? Why do people comfortably say "Bush lied" when he was wrong about Saddam in Gulf War II, but no one seems to claim Bush I lied with respect to our intelligence on Saddam being shoddy before Gulf War I?

My point is similar to one Chris Hitchens made in his debate against Galloway - it is not the "pro-war" position who should have to explain why deposing a mad tyrant like Saddam is desirable or beneficial to America and the rest of the world in a post-9/11 world. It is, in fact, the "anti-war" position that should describe why allowing a psychotic thug who runs a terrorized country, with a desire to acquire WMDs, who frolicks with terrorist organizations, hates the United States, and is centered in a region that has become a cesspool of murderous anti-semitism and anti-Western sentiment, should be allowed to carry on, when we have the means to get rid of him.

I think the whole WMD thing was the only argument Bush thought he could use to win support from the UN - and perhaps that was correct thinking, because I'm convinced France and Germany decided on their own that they were happy with the status quo and weren't willing to see the US get rid of Saddam. The argument didn't work and so we went in anyway, replaying the scenario of Gary Cooper in High Noon, a film that I thought was okay. Incidentally, Howard Hawks found Cooper's character in High Noon unbelievable, saying, if he could do the job all by himself, all along, why did he ask for any help to begin with....hence Rio Bravo, for me, a much better film. So maybe, what we should have done, is never asked the UN for help at all, just gone ahead and done the right thing because we thought it was the right thing to do and let the chips fall as they may. Maybe that is the lesson to learn from all this.

As for all the post-war follies....I have trouble differentiating inevitable fucks ups versus preventable fuck ups. Most who cites "no post war plan," as far as I can tell, really mean, "I never supported this war in the first place, and see how it's going to fail." In short, I don't trust their analysis.

And I think we forget that our foe is pretty fucking brutal, and militarily has learned some lessons about how to fight the US. After Gulf War I, the entire world realized we cannot be defeated conventionally. No army will ever fight the US conventionally again. But terrorism, urban warfare, and civilian attacks work against the US. How did they learn this - by experience - WTC in 1993, Cole Bombings, Somolia, 9/11, and what is going on in Iraq now. We need to figure out how to fight these urban conflicts, because this is how war is going to be until we learn to defeat it.

Anyhow, those are enough thoughts for now. To be continued.