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I think this post misses Rall’s point. If our reasoning to “liberate” Iraq was to bring Democracy to a troubled nation (and not because they were a grave and gathering threat). Then there are alot more trouble spots throughout the world that would need our attention. I think his sarcasm was missed.

I’m gonna agree with Al Maline and say you missed the sarcasm.

Rall’s pointing out that there are plenty of deserving candidates for “liberation” that we’re ignoring. The reasons for the ignoring are left up to the reader, but the usual implications are that it’s due to them being politically friendly to the Bush Administration whilst oppressing their people.

I think he’s criticizing this administration’s neo-con philosophy towards spreading democracy. As well he should. While improvements can be made in certain areas as far as the condition of people, no country can possible eradicate the tyranny of the entire world. That’s just a utopian, Neo-Con illusion. History is not inherently progressive, though things can improve over time. It is subject to the effects of human failings. If we try and force the world to change, we may very well end up destroyed by the unintended consequences of it, either as a democracy, or as a nation.

I agree that Rall’s premise is faulty. His assumptions (that we have to liberate every autocratic country, and we have to do it now) are faulty because he missed the crucial point to our current policy: to eliminate threats to the United States.

Hmmm, maybe he’s just scared that he’s next on the list!

You would think that all of the exclamation points in Rall’s essay would give people a clue that he was being blatantly sarcastic. His absurd references to violence and casually-voiced descriptions of American troop allocations should have been a clue too.

But wait… if you read enough right-wing newspapers, books, and web sites you will grow accustomed to exactly this kind of insane language. Flippant and reckless calls to war - and ejaculatory exclamation points at the slightest mention of imagined American victories - are commonplace on Fox news and other right-leaning news outlets. We on the left recognize that this kind of talk is absolutely ridiculous, but to neo-cons, dittoheads, and Bush supporters, this kind of talk seems to be the stuff of serious policymaking.

-Cf

The key point being missed in my opinion is, if Bush had asked Congress and the People for 150 Billion dollars to rescue an oppressed people in Iraq, we would not be in Iraq, today.

Rall’s point is, we cannot afford to go around the globe rescuing oppressed people from themselves. Let us not forget, we began and won our Revolutionary War against the British on our own initiative. Yes, we got some help from the French, but we initiated and bore the brunt of the cost of freedom.

We tax payers seeking jobs cannot afford to liberate billions of oppressed people in the world on our own initiative. We can assist, when oppressed people initiate the struggle for freedom and have demonstrated their willingness to bear the cost of freedom.

Freedom paid for dearly is protected dearly. Freedom freely given is spoiled and unappreciated, and soon lost.

Why should he offer any solutions. These are not our problems. There are no solutions. Its not our job to free anyone from anyone unless it implicates our own security, which, I think it is now safe to say, Iraq positively did not. I could not care less whether the Iraqis or any other people is free, oppressed, or anything in between. Democracy is not exportable like McDonalds or Starbucks.

“We tax payers seeking jobs cannot afford to liberate billions of oppressed people in the world on our own initiative. We can assist, when oppressed people initiate the struggle for freedom and have demonstrated their willingness to bear the cost of freedom.”

Exactly.

Hell, the Republicans talk all about personal responsibility as a reason to cut socially progressive programs that would truly help needy people here in the US. Why are they so gung-ho on doing the opposite abroad?

The problem isn’t that his sarcasm is difficult to observe. Rather the problem is that his sarcasm makes no sense. If I was working on the Unified Field Theory would it be a valid complaint that I had yet to fully explain all the inner workings of DNA? If I make substantial progress in curing one colon cancer is it a good argument to complain that I haven’t yet tackled brain cancer? Clearly no, especially if the techniques for colon cancer have some tranferability to brain cancer.

Sebastian, that’s what Bush did. He said we were going in there to defend ourselves against a man with stockpiles of Chem and Bio-Weapons, who was actively working on a nuke. But now that no stockpiles have shown up, and it looks like Little Timmy in first grade would have built a nuke before Saddam did.

So guess what? We liberated Iraq! Hooray! Oh, wait, we’re stilling having problems with that- oh, no bother, we’re trapping the terrorists, pulling them in!

Really, this guy is just playing on one of many of the alternate explanations for just what we’re supposed to believe Bush has us doing in Iraq. If Bush were more consistent, well, maybe this poor fellow wouldn’t have been so confused.

Bush pulled a bait and switch on the American people, if not at the point of sale, then sometime along the way. He decided his chances for reelection would be better if he never acknowledged that we’d gone to war over a discredited threat. Instead, he takes the military victories, significant as they are, and uses them as a smokescreen for his incompetent decision to go to war.

Sebastian holsclaw said:

“Rather the problem is that his sarcasm makes no sense. If I was working on the Unified Field Theory would it be a valid complaint that I had yet to fully explain all the inner workings of DNA? If I make substantial progress in curing one colon cancer is it a good argument to complain that I haven’t yet tackled brain cancer? Clearly no, especially if the techniques for colon cancer have some tranferability to brain cancer.”

Ah, but that’s a poor analogy.

What Bush is doing is comparable to stating “I am going to work against all disease because it’s bad”, curing a skin rash, then sitting back and saying “okay, all done” whilst AIDS and cancer are still around. AIDS and cancer also happen to be allowing Bush’s friends to drill for oil on their territory during this.

See the difference? ;-)

The reason that we are in Iraq and not in other countries with autocratic regimes, is that Iraq, and in a larger context the Middle East, is where terrorism springs from. The short term Iraqi goal was to take out Saddam Hussein and his suspected WMD. No country stepped forth to say he did not have WMD, they just argued against a pre-emptive war. The long term goal is to establish democracy in the Middle East. Working through the UN to confront terrorism does not reduce the threat posed to the US.

The more interesting debate is whether or not our current strategy is valid. If it is not, what is a valid strategy? Something has to be done to address the fundamental issues of terrorism. Bush did not create the conditions for 9-11, but is in a position to try and reduce future threats. The big question is how to address the long term terror threats. Satirical articles like the one that started the post are offensive because they are not based in reality. The Bush Admin is clearly not interested in fighting all countries with dictators, nor should we be. The article dumbs down the larger issue of what should be done.

Rob, Afghanistan was justified. I would have sent the forces Bush wasted on Iraq through that country, and had our people claim the victories and assert the order instead of the Northern Alliance. I would send a smart bomb to knock on the doors of every country that we trace a state-supported terrorist act to.

But pre-emptive wars? If they have a camp, and we know they got some kind of weapon there, and we know they’re going to hit us, an interest or an ally, then by God we rain death and hellfire on them, and deal with the consequences.

That’s what good pre-emptive warfare is. But when you do it on unconfirmed reports of WMDs and terrorists, we have a problem, because by it’s nature, pre-emptive warfare is a risk taken based on good evidence of an imminent threat. No stockpiles, no terrorist camps of any note in Ba’athist controlled Iraq, no imminent threat.

The fundamental issue of terrorism is that they want a clash of civilizations. They want us to sink to their level, and resort to their tactics.

That’s the trouble with Israel- many of the nation’s leaders got their start as terrorists, back in the days they were trying to take their country out of British hands. When confronted with other enemies, including the Palestinian terrorists, they use the same tactics, the same sort of reprisals, in addition to the armies of a state.

Same thing as Northern Ireland. In British-controlled Northern Ireland, you have Catholic Republicans (as in those who want the counties of Northern Ireland joined to the rest of the Irish Republic), and the Protestant Loyalists, who would preserve British control.

Each side inflicts their damage on the other side, not sparing the innocent. The British Army makes it’s presence known, too, and they don’t necessarily skimp on using force. When Irish band U2 sings about Sunday, Bloody Sunday, they’re talking about an incident in 1971 where a group of British Soldiers opened fire on protesters killing thirteen.

Of course, the French had their taste of this in Algeria, where a campaign of terror ultimately succeeded because the world, and French Citizen’s couldn’t stomach the draconian measures used to fight back against the guerrilla warfare. And of course, there was this little situation in the far east, which. turned out little different. We didn’t fare better when we substituted ourselves for the French as targets and the name French Indochina was exchanged for Vietnam.

Do we need more extended conflicts of that sort? No. That’s the kind of war on terrorism we’re guaranteed to lose. No, we make them jump through the hoops, force them to radicalize their approach to the point that they lose sympathy from their supporters. We will only win this war on terror when those groups that supply the new recruits become disgusted and disillusioned with the terrorists. Until then, it will just be one more interminable cycle of violence.

Nope, I think my analogy is more accurate than someone willing to compare Iraq to a ‘skin rash’ while if you follow Rall’s article it would be Azerbaijan which you are comparing to AIDS.

Can’t buy it.

Sebastian, I’ll put it this way: Iraq was a poor place to look for terrorist, (at least before we invaded), and Saddam just one of many tyrannical leaders across the world, a good number of which show up as our allies in the Coalition of the Willing.

I think Rall’s point is that we are making grandiose claims about what we are doing, that to maintain a consistent foreign policy under Bush’s doctrines, we would have to be a lot choosier about our allies, and a great deal more extensive in our military operations, and so far we’ve been having trouble taking care of just Iraq. There are other ways of urging democracy in the world, other foreign policy approaches that Bush will not follow, due to his political and personal agendas.

In doing so, he will repeat the mistakes of the Cold War, where we proclaimed freedom and justice to the sky, but let the worst kind of dictators and zealots represent our foreign policy abroad to the citizens of the world.

The unspoken assumption behing Ted’s attack is that if something isn’t done perfectly and consistently its not worth doing.

Pointing out inconsistencies is insufficient to win the day against Bush’s balance of pragmatism and long term support of freedom. The left has to argue that:

1. A consistent pacifist/UN only approach is superior
2. A totally idealistic foreign policy is superior

If consistency alone is sufficient to rebut Bush’s foreign policy, we should take the same approach with other issues e.g. ban medicare because it doesn’t consistently protect someone throughout his whole lifetime….

Anybody using this approach is a hypocrite. If they are genuinely concerned with how slowly human rights are spreading they would support MORE funding for foreign policy/military/foreign aid so the US could have a greater impact.

By the way - has anyone realised that in the absence of perfect intelligence a strategy of prevention and/or retaliation might work pretty badly?

1. Without good intelligence you can’t squat. So if a terrorist team will eventually pull off a WMD hit on the US.

2. Without good intelligence you might not know who to hit back-meaning there is no deterrant. Especially if WMD has spread to more than 3-4 rogue nations. The only reason the US knew that 9-11 was an Al-Qaeda operation was because it was the only organisation with that kind of capability around at the time and they made the mistake of boasting about it on videotape.

Usama bin Laden Says the Al-Qa’idah Group
had Nothing to Do with the 11 September Attacks
Interview published in newspaper Ummat Karachi, 2001-09-28

Rob,

Err, OIL springs from Iraq. Terrorists spring from Saudi Arabia…

Research,

And what is exactly a “rogue nation”?

he does offer a solution, unilateral pre-emptive strike. OK well … maybe we could just sick George Soros on ‘em.