Hi guys:)

This encapsulates so much of what I have been thinking and feeling about the war and how it's wrapping up.

Love,
Terri

Unsettled
Victory in the war is not victory in the argument about the war.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Thursday, April 10, 2003, at 11:12 AM PT
from: Slate's Commentary - April 10

So, we've won, or just about. There is no quagmire. Saddam is dead, or as good as, along with his sons. It was all fairly painless—at least for most Americans sitting at home watching it on television. Those who opposed the war look like fools. They are thoroughly discredited and, if they happen to be Democratic presidential candidates (and who isn't these days?), they might as well withdraw and nurse their shame somewhere off the public stage. The debate over Gulf War II is as over as the war itself soon will be, and the anti's were defeated as thoroughly as Saddam Hussein.


Right? No, not at all.

To start with an obvious point that may get buried in the confetti of the victory parade, the debate was not about whether America would win a war against Iraq if we chose to start one. No sane person doubted that the mighty United States military machine could defeat and conquer a country with a tiny fraction of its population and an even tinier fraction of its wealth—a country suffering from over a decade of economic strangulation by the rest of the world.

Oh, sure, there was a tepid public discussion of how long victory might take to achieve, in which pro's and anti's were represented across the spectrum of opinion. And the first law of journalistic dynamics—The Story Has To Change—inevitably produced a couple of comic days last week when the media and their rent-a-generals were peddling the Q-word. No doubt there are some unreflective peaceniks still mentally trapped in Vietnam, or grasping at any available argument, who are still talking quagmire. But the serious case against this war was never that we might actually lose it militarily.

The serious case involved questions that are still unresolved. Factual questions: Is there a connection between Iraq and the perpetrators of 9/11? Is that connection really bigger than that of all the countries we're not invading? Does Iraq really have or almost have weapons of mass destruction that threaten the United States? Predictive questions: What will toppling Saddam ultimately cost in dollars and in lives (American, Iraqi, others)? Will the result be a stable Iraq and a blossoming of democracy in the Middle East or something less attractive? How many young Muslims and others will be turned against the United States, and what will they do about it?

Political questions: Should we be doing this despite the opposition of most of our traditional allies? Without the approval of the United Nations? Moral questions: Is it justified to make "pre-emptive" war on nations that may threaten us in the future? When do internal human rights, or the lack of them, justify a war? Is there a policy about pre-emption and human rights that we are prepared to apply consistently? Does consistency matter? Even etiquette questions: Before Bush begins trying to create a civil society in Iraq, wouldn't it be nice if he apologized to Bill Clinton and Al Gore for all the nasty, dismissive things he said about "nation-building" in the 2000 campaign?

Some of these questions will be answered shortly, and some will be debated forever. This doesn't mean history will never render a judgment. History's judgment doesn't require unanimity or total certainty. But that judgment is not in yet. Supporters of this war who are in the mood for an ideological pogrom should chill out for a while, and opponents need not fold into permanent cringe position.

Of course opponents have been on the defensive since the day the fighting started, forced to repeat the mantra that we "oppose the war but support the troops." Critics mock this formula as psychologically implausible if not outright dishonest, but it's not even difficult or complicated. Most of the common reasons for opposing this war get more severe as the war grows longer. Above all is the cost in human lives, especially the lives of American soldiers. (And most American war opponents share with American war supporters—with most human beings, for that matter—an instinctively greater concern for the lives of fellow nationals, however illogical or deplorable that might be.) Unlike Vietnam, where opposition barely existed until the war had been going on for several years, this is a war in which calling for a pullout short of victory would be silly. So, once the war has started, no disingenuousness is required for opponents to hope for victory, the quicker the better.

What is an honest opponent of a war supposed to do? Since even the end of this war won't settle most of the important arguments about it, dropping all opposition at the beginning of the war would surely be more intellectually suspicious than maintaining your doubts while sincerely hoping for victory. Inevitably, more than one supporter of this war has taunted its opponents with Orwell's famous observation in 1942 that pacifists—the few who opposed a military response to Hitler—were "objectively pro-fascist." The suggestion is that opposing this war makes you objectively pro-Saddam. In an oddly less famous passage two years later, Orwell recanted that "objectively" formula and called it "dishonest." Which it is.

The psychological challenge of opposing a war like this after it has started isn't supporting the American troops, but hoping to be proven wrong. That, though, is the burden of pessimism on all subjects. As a skeptic, at the least, about Gulf War II, I do hope to be proven wrong. But it hasn't happened yet.

Quote:

---

tinier fraction of its wealth—a country suffering from over a decade of economic strangulation by the rest of the world.

---

Does that include Hussiens yacht? Which I might add is told to be the most expensive one in the world? If you read up on the Oil Food Program you will realize that the only "bad" economic sanctions were the ones that Hussien imposed on his own people. http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/

As for the above article...I believe its filled with an awful lot of "what ifs".

Hey Lastchild

I think the author was talking about the life of the average Iraqi, and not Saddam Hussien - whose wealth was disgusting, considering the plight of his people, and ocnsidering he got so much of it by robbing the Oil for Food program. I know about that - and I know how he abused and misused the sanction program. I don't think that was really the point the author was trying to make.

And yes, it IS alot of "what-ifs" - most opinion pieces are, and the article isn't pretending to be anything but that. It is an opinion I share though, and my feeling is that there is about as much "what-ifs" in stating a case that war was / will be good....

Love,
Terri

Air Force 1 is the most expensive plane in the world.
The military budget of the US is greater than most Nations combined GNP.
The US government accounts for 38-40% of all spending yet earns no money and has no worth.
The US prints money that is backed soely and only by future taxes. The US is bankrupt. The Social Security Trust Fund does not exist. Taxes are 65% higher than they need to be. The government perpetual expands by using deceptive accounding that has built in percentage increases. When an increase in the budget is requested it is over the already automatic increase. When they say they reduce the budget, they menan they settle for less of an increase.
State goverments are going broke. Cities are on the edge of colasp.
There is nothing within the federal government but retoric and coruption. It serves an elite populas of approximatly 15% of Americans.
Security is an illision and the younger people will grow up as socilists just like Europe.
Europe will become the power broker of the econonmy followed by China.
These two giants of culture differences will will clash in the greatest war of all and almost ever living thing on earth will die.

Yup, war is fantastic.
Lets all go down to the bar and celebrate.

Two or three or four stuborn personalities doesn't change a thing one way or the other.

To have war on this earth at this time is to defy God.
An it is still going on and should stop.
Period.

Hi Terri......thanks for sharing that....

Micheal Kinsley has expressed my feelings EXACTLY....

....which anyone can see if they look at the thread I started titled I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND......

Do these pro war people actually think that those of us who opposed the war..... should now feel like fools and be discredited, just because their war is obviously being won by them..........do they really, really believe our reasons for opposing this horrible war, was out of fear of losing???? Or toppling Saddam???

For God's sake....they're not giving us much credit, are they????

On the contrary......the slaughter of all the soldiers on both sides, as well as the slaughter of all the innocent civilians..women and children among them, has only strengthened my anti war convictions!

...Oh yes, rather than feeling the need to eat humble pie, and apologize for my anti war feelings, they have only been reaffirmed!

....and I think I can safely speak for all of us who oppose this war .....why should we change our minds???.... when nothing has happened to change them???...

Luv,
Rainbow

Darwin....were you trying to make a point? I missed it. Or possibly it was that the United States was bankrupt? Or that our government is stealing from us? Haahaahaahaaa. At least we aren't tortured and starving. In fact last week my childern WERE NOT thrown in jail. Lets see, I still have all of my fingers, jeez I even have an education! Yes, I consider myself very lucky.

Hi Last

Actually, Darwin's right about the money system. The Federal Government currently owes just under six and a half trillion dollars to the international banks, and every penny the government spends -- whether on the war and military budget or everything else -- comes from new loans, so the debt is increasing by over $1.25 billion per day! With 290 million citizens, that means each and every one of us would have to cough up over $25,000 to pay it off, including newborn babies, welfare recipients, the homeless and disabled ... So you get the picture, it's not getting paid off! Even with 100% of our income taxes going to service this debt, it is still growing faster than we can pay it off.

You're right though, we are very lucky to be living here, with all the blessings you counted and many, many more. Billions of folks in the world don't have enough to eat, millions starve to DEATH every year. Millions more live under repressive and/or permanently warring states where they never know for sure if they'll be alive tomorrow, let alone have all their fingers or arms or legs ... or a roof over their heads, or a blanket to keep warm. Yes, we are very lucky!

One possible conclusion from all this might be to wonder whether it's wise to continue going deeper and deeper into debt so we can build more and more weapons that don't feed anybody but do kill a lot of folks and cause a lot of misery. Maybe we should be more concerned with helping the rest of the world to be as lucky as we are, so that they, too, can wake up to breakfast and all their fingers. Maybe if there were a bit more justice and equality in the world, we wouldn't need to be so afraid of all the "have nots" who might try to take it away from us if we blink, and we wouldn't HAVE to spend our unborn childrens' incomes on so many weapons to protect ourselves from the unlucky! Just some musings.

Love,
Greg

I thought thats what we were doing in Iraq.

Yeah, some think that's what we've been doing in Iraq, while others think that what's happening there is actually more about extending the power and wealth of the already powerful and wealthy! I guess time will tell.

Love,
Greg

Good Morning Knowflakes

Like Rainbow I could say that Michael Kinsley articulated my thoughts perfectly. There are a lot of what ifs? in that article. But then, there are a lot of what ifs? in this war and it's aftermath for years to come. There are as Greg and Prox pointed out, a lot of what ifs? regarding the American economy and what our future as a country constantly at war is going to be like. Every one knows from history that a nation who pours all it's resources into the great war machine is a nation in decline. We can't use all our tax money to reconstruct Iraq and at the same time build up our own country.

As Prox pointed out, states are in dire straits as it is. In order to foot the bill for Homeland Security Detroit had to close 16 more schools in one day! Where are they closing the schools? Not in well-to-do white suburbia, but in the inner cities where the population is predominantly black. It is not the small majority of rich Americans that will suffer because of the cost of this war and reconstruction. It is the average working class family and the poor. It is not the corporations who will be raking in the dough from their newly acquired oil and the money paid out for reconstruction who will be footing the bill. It's the average working class tax payer who will be handed the bill.

So heated was the debate in Congress over next year's $2.2 trillion federal budget plan that Dick Cheney had to step in and break the deadlock. At least the Democrats got the Republicans to deal with reality to the extent that the budget was passed after the Republicans had agreed on halving the $726 billion in new tax cuts. That the vote was so close was only due to the Republican moderates who were as concerned as the Democrat Congressmen about that large of a tax cut with the cost of this war.

Right now in Iraq the liberated cities are in a state of anarchy with citizens of different factions killing each other. Incidently, Lastchild the looters stripped and burned Hussein' yacht. Something we American tax payers could have sold to help pay for this war. There were no plans laid out ahead of time by the Bush administration to provide law in order in the liberated cities. The government knew they would win this war, it was a given so it's my opinion they should have had those plans laid out well in advance before this war even started. The citizens of Baghdad, the largest city in Iraq, are angry that the U.S. is not providing the safety of law and order for them. They are complaining that the soldiers are turning their heads and letting the looting continue. The looters even stole the cables necessary to provide the residents power. Anyone would have had the foresight to realize that a people who have been oppressed for 30 years, when freed would go nuts without law and order. But not the American government. Yesterday on the news Donald Rumsfeld did what this administration always does, he denied it was as bad as the press is showing it to be, even while the images were coming up on the TV screens. He blamed the press for making more out of it than it actually was and called the anarchy taking place, "untidy." War is "messy" and the anarchy, looting and killing taking place in Baghdad and other liberated cities is "untidy." One woman on the news asked a reporter, "why did the U.S. liberate us if they do not protect us? "

The U.S. government is great at winning wars but we have yet to win the peace. So there remains a awful lot of what ifs? And you know what? The government and those who were in favor of this war are still living in denial. Give the war hawk taxpayers of America a couple of years of seeing this country go down the tubes while their tax dollars are being poured into Iraq and they are going get a severe wake up call and be the ones sqawking the loudest.

Love, Connie