No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

Why did we invade Iraq? Tell me again?

I have had some real questions about why we were going into Iraq in the first place. It was obvious to almost everyone that we were going to go in since last Fall. I am not sure exactly when Bush made up his mind to do it, but I doubt it was after August 2002. The real problem for me has been - why?

The shifting stories from the administration were a dead giveaway. First it was because of 9/11 and Saddam's terrorist connections. That died rather quickly. Saddam had no known connection to 9/11 and every possible terrorist connection that was floated disappeared quickly. Then came the Weapons of Mass Destruction. Saddam had them, and is/was insane. Can he be trusted not to give them to terrorists? The very best discussion of that view was Colin Powell's presentation to the UN. He seems to be the most trustworthy member of the Bush administration, and he seemed to have the goods on the Iraqis. But if he really had a solid case, then the administration would have followed up with a full court press, and they didn't. I kept waiting for the followup, and there was .... nothing.

Then the UN (Blix, wasn't it?) announced that the documents showing that Iraq had been buying nuclear material in Africa were faked. The press, living on government handouts as usual, confirmed this. Now, five weeks after the start of the war and two weeks after its end, there are no WMD's found, and the administration is beginning to say that they may not find any.

So now, no WMDs. Why did we invade Iraq?

Sure Saddam was evil. He was absolute slime. But so was Idi Amin in Uganda. Mugabe in Zimbabwe isn't very nice, either. Castro is presently proving what a really rotten dictator he is. Kim Jung Il of North Korea isn't a nice person. We didn't stop the Killing Fields in Cambodia run by Pol Pat (The North Vietnamese did, as I recall. I was delighted that they did it.) Milosevic and his ethnic cleansing and anti-ethnic propaganda in the remains of Yugoslavia was extremely bad, but that wasn't enough for us to go after him. We Went after Milosevic because of the danger to NATO Europe resulting from the refugees and the spill-over violence of his ethnic cleansing. The US was involved as the leading member of NATO. There was no equivalent reason for going after Saddam.

Yet there had to be a reason. Bush called up the Reserves and sent about 300,000 troops into Kuwait, then Iraq. If none of the reasons offered were enough, then what was the real reason?

A couple of weeks ago Josh Marshall published an article that seemed to answer that question in Washington Monthly. But I thought that Colin Powell had answered the questions, too, and then nothing confirmed his excellent presentation.

ABC News has confirmed most of what Josh Marshall wrote. The administration has come clean. Here it is. ABC News. At last. A reasonable reason for the Bush administration to send 300,000 troops into Iraq and get about 50 of them killed. They are coming clean. They didn't really lie to us. They just didn't tell us the Truth.

Some administration officials "privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy."

You will note that Rumsfield is now explaining that we might not find weapons of mass destruction - but listen to the really horrible stories of how the Iraqis were treated by the Iraqi Security Services.

OK. I'm retired military. I clearly recall a Regular Army Officer aviator friend of mine stating that Viet Nam was a really rotten little war, but it was the only one we had. When you are career, you have a somewhat different view of war. I'm too old, but I'd love to be in Iraq right now. But at the same time, we were lied to, and not for any reason other than to get the current administration reelected in 2004.

Since I AM retired, I am not subject to Article 88 of the UCMJ. I can tell you this. This pResident is incompetent. He hasn't a clue about America, Economics, or the use of the military. The military itself is better than it has ever been, and they have bailed him out of his idiocy - so far. Unfortunately, military solutions are short term solutions. The real question is going to be whether the middle east becomes our enemy in general, or whether the middle east begins to break loose from the past and starts to actually consider a reasonable solution to the Israel/Palestine problem and begins to change to a set of societies less likely to create terrorists.

I am hoping for the second, but I really don't think that the education level of the average Neocon is up to the challenge. They are going to have to treat the leaders of the middle eastern nations as educated, civilized people with long and powerful traditions rather than as ignorant savages who simply fail to recognize that the world had a tectonic change in 1789 when the US Constitution was approved.

Read both articles. And if you don't normally, read Josh Marshall's Blog. If there is a better Blog out there, I haven't found it.



posted by Richard at 6:36 PM