Michael J. Totten: Bushs War

there is no such thing as a rationale for war. war is an irrational act borne of an imperfect and irrational species.

saddam hussein has been in power for over 20 years now. he, like so many other fascists and dictators, got to where he is because of US 'endorsement' and support...he's been butchering his people for many many many years, but the US turned a blind eye because he was crucial to the middle east's precious crude oil. then, saddam decided to rebel against the US, and now we are after him...he is no longer in our good graces because he won't give us what we want any more.

i most certainly agree that he and those loyal to his regime need to be brought down, but even a first grader realises that dropping bombs on the country of Iraq will not bring this about: Saddam and his people have money, connections and plenty of hiding places...meanwhile, the people of Iraq (not all, but many) are poor and do not have bomb shelters in their homes- therefore, THEY will be the victims when the bombs are dropped.

Aside from that, our actions will only further alienate the rest of the Middle East. The imperialistic and arrogant gesture of our going into a country so foreign from our own to remove their leader will make diplomacy (real diplomacy, not forced or coerced compliance) practically impossible.

Some of the actions that our government has already taken among people of the middle east that reside in our country have been quite appalling, and have only worked to further the resentment that middle easterners have against america. actions in Iraq will only do the same. Bush and his cabinet realise this. The rest of the world realises this as well.

And as for the distinction between democrats, republicans, liberals, and conservatives, that is quite laughable: it is all just different sides of the same dice...most politcians are after the same thing, only they seek different ends to try to obtain it.






[Edited on Jan 19, 2003 by Alpha_Male]

Michael's piece is an articulate statement upon political conformity. However, his own writing seems to have to stay within that say realm and unable to step out of his own box. When one argues from within on semantics, the case can be built with ease, when one shines light from the outside, unwilling to even address the establishment new paradigms are born. The irony is that Monday this nation attempts to honor MLK. Jr. what was his paradigm? Kill to remove the killer? No, Ghandi's notion of attacking the oppressor, utter submission through peaceful action, both mindful and spiritual in its impact. No, Bush's war is not one of liberation for how many oppressed exist because of this nations corporate greed, no his liberation is one of "moral superiority." There are despots all around, so what is it when one attacks another, is that the action of peacemakers or violent men? Step out of the box, and you see what we are missing is ourselves not out political moralities.

With due respect, I doubt this site has a pro-war bias, and there's been lots of postings of 'liberal liberals' and 'conservative conservatives.' But if you were looking for a right-wing argument against the war, it does mention the rather prolific Brent Snowcroft--you could search for him.

What was nice about this article was the destruction of straw men. Anyone who read Chomsky's 911, or his NYTs articles about how the conflict in Afghanistan was 'going to turn out' should be ashamed to have listened to him. Similarly, he does point out one big problem that liberals have--having painted Bush as 'stupid' (which, sorry, no man who has gotten to the Presidency has been), they now can't admit to it in any situation in which he was wrong and they were right.

If Bush does badly in Iraq, he shall certainly suffer for it. But let's imagine that a war begins, and it ends with an occupation and then a democracy. Imagine a functioning, representative democracy, untainted by terror, that can look Israel in the eye and say we don't behave as badly as you do--you should be ashamed of yourselves. If that were to happen, and I find it more likely than many think, there will be a lot of folk on here who should eat their words...

That was about as convincing as Georgey's corrination. *vomits*

I saw a poster the other day. It was a mock representation of the traditional Uncle Sam "I want YOU" poster. It had Osama Bin Laden pointing outward saying "I want YOU to invade Iraq."

The idea, of course, is that invading a country of 2 million people when there are diplomatic options left to explore is going to put a lot of our lives in danger, add fervor to the terrorist cause, and - given the existence of the biochemical weapons and nuclear suitcase bombs the US and USSR created - many of which are unaccounted for, get a lot of people very much dead, very quickly.

Nevermind the fact that the people who actually blew up the trade center were from and funded by SAUDI ARABIA, not Iraq, a dictatorship that is our "ally" even though they are as bad as Iraq on human rights, particularly women's rights.

Women in Saudi Arabia who walk unaccompanied, or are in the company of a man who is neither their husband nor a close relative, are at risk of arrest on suspicion of prostitution or other “moral” offenses. (read: http://www.amnesty.ca/SaudiArabia/5.htm)

All moral ramifications aside, invading Iraq is simply piss poor military strategy. The idea that the Iraqi soldiers will defect and flock to the streets to welcome the US death squads is a liberal wetdream that shows a distinct break from reality and a harsh misunderstanding of Hussein's popularity in Iraq (a result of brutal sanctions allowing him to play the martyr role in the region) and customary military protocol which dictates:

1.) If you disobey orders, you will be shot.
2) If you defect, you will be shot.

Given the choice of definitely being shot by a superior officer or *possibly* getting shot by a US death squad, young men fighting for their lives on that side will not be given the option of throwing a fucking party for the arrival of the US death squads.

There is no international support for the attack. There is not even significant domestic support for the attack. Bush, Cheney, Ari "People need to watch what they say" Fleischer, Rumsfield, and Ashcroft are all either silver spoon draft dodger CHICKEN HAWKS or in Bush's case, men (read: boys) who have never been in a war but maybe showed up for national guard duty once in a while when not snorting coke or getting fraternity ass brandings.

How much control have the corporations gained when the average person is no longer sure whether or not we are at war, or if so, against whom?

I haven't the time to deconstruct Mr. Totten's high fallutin' recyclings of FoxNews "expert" analysis right now, but for more informed, rational and balanced takes on Bush's war hard-on, please check out Gore Vidals "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" or Jello Biafra's new spoken word disc, "Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand."

I am truly impressed by the ability of the Bush regime and the media to construct propaganda not only fit for the rank and file, but for self-proclaimed "writers" and academics like Mr. Totten.

They have done their job well, marketing the horrors of war to all segments of the populace. Sympathy for such insidious designs, I'd like to think, is usually not so easily won.

Congratulations Michael for not eating the bait while swallowing the hook. You come off as most smug in your deftness.

PS - By the way, radicals are so much sexier then liberals. I mean, seriously.

- No more politics, it's time to watch some quality championship football on my friendly television propaganda machine box. = )

Fuck, I didn't read the description. I was hoping Saddam had finally become a Suicide Girl. One day I will see that man naked.

I understand that this argument is about Iraq, But I find it hard to listen to someone who can lay our attack on Afghanistan down to three words: "They attacked us." ? Maybe that was the catalyst and justification, but the political and economic, not to mention egotistical reasons are pretty obvious too.
As far as Iraq, it is a political move, made by politicians against politicians. It's not about rights or weapons, it's about power.

-those who refuse to remember the past are doomed to repeat it.- george santayana

despite the relative cliche of the former quote, the fact remains - should the world continue to turn a blind eye towards the actions of madmen, we endanger ourselves and our future. while it is simple to admonish the masses to believe that war is irrational and its justification is impossible, what becomes more difficult in this modern world is the justification of action.

by my own admission i refused to vote in the last election. gore was and still is a fool and bush was and still is a puppet of forces beyond the reckoning of any but the most jaded of conspiracy theorists. however, on september 11, 2001, i found myself relieved that our country had elected a leader willing to take action in the defense of the defenseless. i shudder to think what the aftermath of that day would have been should gore have held the reigns. would there have been months of needless debate? would he have sued for peace with a culture bent on the destruction of the west? (hold your tongue - i don't include the entire middle-east or all the islamic world in the term culture - only those bent on terror)

regardless of our outlashings and tossing about of terms like leftist and right-wing, liberal and conservative, the fact remains that this situation is larger than our egotistical socio-political jargon. during the 'gulf crisis' i was most assuredly appalled by a war on iraq for what seemed the larger benefits were yielded only for shell, exxon, and bp, but what seemed to be overshadowed by our finger pointing and outrage at being the world's police force was the larger picture - an insignificant nation, unable to defend itself against an antagonistic force. was it our place to step in? maybe not, but if not us who, and when?

in 1938, neville chamberlain - then prime minister of the united kingdom - met in munich with leaders of the soviet union, germany, italy, and others to discuss the german aggression towards czechoslovakia. hitler convinced the world that should he be allowed to cede regions of czechoslovakia he currently held, he could be trusted to quash all further actions.

mind you, germany had already broken several tenets of the treaty of versailles by increasing their military force and entering the anschluss (the annexation of austria), but because the world was so frightened of war (following the end of the first world war) it did nothing. the u.s., fully entrenched in 'dealing with its own problems, seemed to care little what was happening. meanwhile, Joseph Kennedy (the patriach of the greatest 'liberal' family in our history) very vocally supported the nazi regime in germany.

in essence the world did nothing. without belaboring the point, the inaction of the world led to the needless death of millions of innocents, soliders, and others. i for one would sooner accept the label of right-wing conservative than see the genesis of such an event. should we as a nation refuse to act now, we give tacit consent to what happens next.

now, i'm not so disillusioned to believe that something of the scale of wwii or the holocaust will happen if we don't act, but there is indeed a justification for war. in fact, there have been many. but as near as i can remember, this is the first time the innocent citizens of our nation have been murdered in premeditated attack of such a scale. we are justified in response. what makes the response so difficult to understand is the nebulous nature of the enemy by whom we were attacked and the nature of the attack itself. we were not attacked by a nation. we were not attacked for our land or our resources. we were attacked by an entity who attacked our very way of life - the very way of life that allows us to question and criticize the manner in which our elected leaders chose to avenge it.

to my thinking that justifies our defense wherever the path may lead.

I find it interesting that you referred to Orwell when Cheering for George Bush and his wars.
I don’t know if Orwell would have liked Bush, but Bush is obviously a big fan of Orwell.

War Is Peace:
Is the constant refrain in every one of Bushes speeches on the subject. We are starting a war to protect peace, we are bombing people in order to help them, and we are invading a country to show that aggression is wrong.

Freedom is Slavery:
As John Ashcroft constantly reminds us, we must gut our constitutional freedoms in order to protect our freedom. This is a war for our democratic way of life, after all, and people who try to discuss this openly are only helping our enemies.

Ignorance is Strength:
Bush is a good leader because he’s “unsophisticated”, which I take as a polite way of calling him an idiot. That makes him a decisive leader, unburdened by the nuances that might, say, prevent him from provoking a nuclear confrontation with N Korea, or something.
Whatever you do, try to stay away from those messy facts that might get in the way of your cause, and stick to empty rhetoric.

Hating Saddam Hussein is easy.
He is a sadistic ruler, who has killed thousands.

Explaining why we supported him for so long is difficult. Why did we supply him with chemical weapons and teach him how to use them? Why did we stand by and actively help him as he created his police state. And why now should we trust some of the very people who held his hand through his most vile acts, when they say that it is time to go to war against him?

And what effect have our actions against him had on these victims in whose names we claim to act? We claim to want to liberate the Iraqi people, but the bombings and the sanctions have, according to Unicef, killed over 500,000 children. How does this figure into your argument? Will the Iraqis who survive the carpet bombing really rush out and thank us for taking the trouble to kill them?

Arguing in support this war, as this article does, without addressing this is dishonest.

Alpha Male said:
"saddam hussein has been in power for over 20 years now. he, like so many other fascists and dictators, got to where he is because of US 'endorsement' and support...he's been butchering his people for many many many years, but the US turned a blind eye because he was crucial to the middle east's precious crude oil. then, saddam decided to rebel against the US, and now we are after him...he is no longer in our good graces because he won't give us what we want any more. "

good point.

we've seen examples of what the US does as soon as foriegn powers arent willing to cooperate, especially when those powers hold something we want. example being Chile 1973, Marxist president Allende planned to nationalize businesses in chile, therefore taking precious metal factories out of US hands and into chile's. The US didnt like this and instigated a coup with chile's right wing to take down Allende, murdering him in cold blood, telling the press it was a suicide, and installing dictator Pinochet who's regime violated more human rights laws than any other in Chile's history. and his regime lasted something like 30 years. But hey, he gave the US the goods we wanted, so what do we care how many generations of people were brutally torchered and killed by somebody we brought to power?
and now, all the sudden, we care about human rights?
i dont think so.

yes and these are just 2 examples of the many many instances where the US abuses its power to meddle in the affairs of other nations. anyone who knows the true history of this country and it's government at the thought of a war in Iraq...

eris, if you ever want to write something for us, or want to pass on an article or writer interested in writing for us, please let me or spooky know. i figure if we're going to get political in the words section, then the hippies get to speak too

i find it interesting that so many people forget...... the main reason the last world war was so bloody and went on for so long, is simply becuase of inaction, the same kind of inaction many of you now propose is the best course of action for us now. im not saying that if left unchecked mr hussein will try and take over the known world, BUT i am saying that the more we debate, and argue and what not about the course of action to take, the greater the chances are that this will not be a "lightning raid" ,if you will, like desert storm was. war with mr hussein is inevitable, sooner or later it will HAVE to happen, if not now later. why delay the inevitable.

It's unfortunate that, like Totten, many supporters of the war in Iraq attempt to justify it by repeating the list of horrible things that Saddam Hussein has done. I've yet to hear anyone deny that Saddam Hussein is a bad man -- but there's more than one way to deal with him.

What Totten doesn't mention, but is very significant, is that the Bush administration's rationale for going to war is based on unproven facts, notably: the connection between Hussein and Al-Qaida, and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. I think the real reason that many liberals refuse to side with Bush on this issue is that, as with most other issues, the rhetoric from the White House is manipulative and misleading.

If anyone thinks we have not been at war with Iraq for years already they are sadly mistaken. We have been practicing genocide to their peoples for the past decase.

Our American written (and UN sponsored) economic embargos have systematically destroyed thousands (if not millions) of innocent lives in Iraq.

Punishing children in Iraq does nothing to deter their government. According to UNICEF several thousand Iraqi children under the age of five have died every month since 1991 because of the economic embargo (and this was in 1998).

Former UN Humanitarian Coordinator said in 1998 "We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and as terrifying as that,".

To claim that we have never been at war when we are practicing oppressive genocide is ludicrous. In Jan of 2000 Bernard Sanders wrote a letter to then President Clinton asking him to lift (or at least reshape) the economic embargo because of the death rate of innocent children at the hands of Americans.

http://www.house.gov/bernie/publications/letters/2000-01-25-iraq.html

Damn. I thought this was going to be a special pictorial of the sexier side of Saddam.

:sigh:

To maintain our society we regularly force other societies to behave in ways they wouldn't on their own. America was founded in war (from the 1600's on) and has lived by it ever since.

If you truly wish to avoid responsibilty for the US's aggression, you will have to forgo the fruits of that agression.

Our lifestyle requires access to the resources of areas outside our borders. Any politician that advocates reducing our standered of living by any appreciable amount will find his or her self out of office as soon as possible.

Very few people complained when we did this before, in Panama.

I personaly believe that war with Iraq is unavoidable at this point, as much as a lot of us would like to avoid it. We have proven to too many that we are "The Great Satan." They can do nothing except oppose us now.

War and diplomacy are part of the same spectrum, manipulation of another country to get what you want. To encourage diplomacy is to accept warfare.

Innocents are killed. The "guilty" escape. Life isn't fair.

No one wants to hear this, we would all love to change it, but that's the way it is. Realpolitik is the only thing that CAN work.

To sum up:
War is bad, but it happens and there's very little we can do to change that.

Edited for typos

[Edited on Jan 19, 2003 by Historyteller]

I'm going to preface this entry by stating that I know very little about current political events, be in national or international. That being the case, I may blunder. Consider my opinion prefaced. Anyhow...

Why has no one said anything about the fact that we're all of the sudden going after Saddam again after what, a decade+ since Desert Storm, immediately following (and indeed, taking the place of) a manhunt for bin Laden that to apply the term unsuccessful would be a gross understatement? What happened? I'll be the first to admit my ignorance of global events, such as it were, but did Hussein commit some grand, heinous attack on US soil when my back was turned? Is there someone that can tell me why it shouldn't be blatantly obvious that bush is wagging the dog here? I swear, I haven't heard more than a word or two about Osama bin Laden since Saddam came into the spotlight again.

Seriously, this redirection was so sudden and so drastic that I have to ask if the general populace (to which, of course, one never includes oneself in when referencing) is that easily gulled, or am I just missing something vital?

[Edited on Jan 19, 2003 by soylentbutdeadly]

Cheers for marines? Listen, my unit just got orders to deploy to the desert. I was going to Turkey but... oh well. It's the army that will be doing the fighting here. The marines are guards and reserves a forward unit surprisingly. And Iraqi's will not be cheering, for this is NOT an intellectuals war, as you put it. We've lost the morale shift as not even our own forces want to go. And the Iraqi people are so sheltered by their dictator's skirt tails that they actually believe this war is against THEM. Baghdad itself has been transformed into one GIANT bunker for urban combat. I'm a tank driver who is now undergoing such warfare training. Ever think about a tank in a city? Not much use, unless burning your own troops alive serves some purpose in war that I cannot concieve. So steady your nationalist views, fore those who will actually be FIGHTING in the desert go for you reguardless of personal conviction. We fight to keep you safe at night, and as this war seems to be heading, we will in no way be achieving a steadier ground in this front. Maybe if we were to take more time, listen tot he assembley of nations and sway the Iraqi people's thinking before we attack their country in strength and risk further bombing catastrophy. And please always remember, you aren't the ones fighting and dying when you think war is a good idea. We are. Your very own soldiers.

As a "liberal" who strongly opposes the proposed military action against Iraq and who also supported military action in Kosovo in 1998, I wanted to take a minute to explain what I feel the difference between these two military actions are. I feel the Kosovo action was undertaken as a genuine attempt to prevent Slobodan Milosevic from carrying out a similar ethnic cleansing/geonocidal to the one carried out in Bosnia earlier in the 1990's. It was an honest attempt to make up for mistakes made by the United States and others in Bosnia which helped to contribute to the estimated 200,000 deaths at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic.
On the other hand, the proposed military action in Iraq is more motivated by the perceived economic and strategic interests of the United States in the region, concerns for human rights are of secondary importance to the administration and are being used largely for political reasons.
The "chemical attacks against his own people" which President Bush refers to in most of his speeches on Iraq were only a small part of what was known as the ANFAL campaign, which was carried out against the Kurdish population in northern Iraq in 1987 and 1988. Sadaam Hussein used allegations of Kurdish rebels working with the Iranian military to justify a massive ethnic cleansing/genocidal campaign against all of the Kurdish villages in rural northern Iraq. An estimated 100,000 Kurdish civilians were killed in this campaign. Most of these were not killed in chemical attacks, but instead were loaded onto busses, driven out into the desert, and lined up and shot with machine guns.
Sadaam Hussein was being supported by the United States before, during, and after the ANFAL campaign. The United States did not want to be seen directly selling arms to Iraq, so Hussein was instead funded indirectly through various economic aid packages which allowed Hussein to divert large amounts of money into the military spending which otherwise would have had to have been spent as part of the domestic budget. This included a $500 million per year argricultural credit program which ran from 1982-1988. In 1989, over one full year after the ANFAL campaign ended, President Georg e H.W. Bush doubled the agricultural credits to $1 billion a year.
The United States government was aware of the ANFAL campaign, by far the worst violation of human rights by Sadaam Hussein, and chose to look the other way. It was only when Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and threatened Saudi oil supplies that the United States fully broke away from support of Hussein.
I have serious doubts that the Bush administration is concerned about human rights in Iraq. If Hussein is removed, I fear Bush will not care much about the human rights policies of whatever regime replaces Hussein as long as the new regime serves Bush's perception of United States economic and strategic needs.