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<< Fleecing Grandma | Main | Bush Record on Health Care >> May 10, 2004Sully and Antiwar ArgumentsAndrew Sullivan is almost ready to admit that the war was a mistake, not because he thinks the goal was wrong but because the Bushies were the wrong people to execute it: The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong. I sensed the hubris of this administration after the fall of Baghdad, but I didn't sense how they would grotesquely under-man the post-war occupation, bungle the maintenance of security, short-change an absolutely vital mission, dismiss constructive criticism, ignore even their allies (like the Brits), and fail to shift swiftly enough when events span out of control.Add in an assumption of basic malfeasance and corporate cronyism making a lie of the stated Bush goals and this was my position on the war, and on the war in Afghanistan. As I said in March 2003, my opposition to war in Iraq was opposition to Bush personally, not to the idea that evil people like Saddam might need to be taken out by military means at times. I supported the war in Kosovo on that exact basis, but that was because I believed the Clinton administration would actually act competently and with some degree of good faith in building the needed international support: Contrast that with Afghanistan where power was turned over to an ex-oil executive backed (or subverted) by non-elected warlords around the country. Maybe elections will happen in 2004 as promised but with the population terrorized by warlords, who can take them too seriously?At the time, I despaired that the peace movement was failing to raise these kinds of concerns, that would have appealed to the undecided folks. Unfortunately, the Bush incompetents faced off against an anti-war opposition that had its own nasty underbelly of malfeasance/incompetence in the form of the ANSWER sectarians, a point I elaborated on in this post. I wish we could have prevented the hell of this war, for both the Iraqi people and our own soldiers dying by the day, and pursued a multilateral strategy to push change in the country. It would have been slower, but at this point it's hard to argue that the Iraqi people have benefited from Bush's arrogance and incompetence versus a slower, steadier approach to democratization in Iraq. Posted by Nathan at May 10, 2004 08:25 AM Related posts:
Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsSo, AS feels betrayed by his GOP "pals" on same-sex marriage, and considers them too "incompetent and arrogant" to succeed in the major project (to him) of our time. So why won't he just denounce them across the board? I'd also mention that, from a personal perspective, you'd think he'd take Bush's anti-intellectualism personally, too. I know it's a lot for the neo-con cheering section to handle, seeing that their big heroes are a bunch of dingbats after all, but if THESE guys (sorry Condi, you're included here, too) don't have the grey matter and mettle to run this war, who the hell does AS think SHOULD be running it? The foreign policy folks here are a rogues gallery all-star team of the AEI, PNAC, Heritage, et al. They're supposed to be the new best and brightest. My question is, could things be worse if the 2nd and 3rd string neo-cons were in power? Maybe Bush will give us a chance to find out. Posted by: Nick at May 10, 2004 07:52 PM Where is the anti-War movement now? We need to get out into the streets in vast numbers and demonstrate to the Iraqi people and to the world that We, the American People, will not permit this terrorism against the Iraqi people to go on for a minute longer. We must demand the immediate resignations of Pres. Bush, Vice Pres. Cheney, Sec of Def Rumsfeld, Condi, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Feith, Negroponte, Bremer, and all who are in leadership positions in this administration who have aide and abetted and continue to aid and abet these atrocities, these war crimes, these crimes against humanity. The Terror must stop! Posted by: Barry Freed at May 10, 2004 08:11 PM Whatever the shortcomings of the anti-war movement and the obstructions to its effectiveness put up by ANSWER and other such sectatian groups, I don't think it can be blamed for the failure to stop this war. Remember something like 10 million people world-wide marched against this war, maybe .15% of the entire population of the world, and Bush' response was to dismiss the protests as a mere "focus group". The continuous exorbitant accumulation of military means, at the expense of domestic needs, combined with the ease with which democratic accountability is usurped or evaded within our governmental system, (at, least, in the short term), made the drive for war virtually unstoppable. Consider how much valid information was publicly available before the war that counted squarely against the official case and showed forth its deceptions and misconceptions, but how little public impact such information had. The point Barry Freed raises is the right one. What must we do now to bring to bear on the public the actual purport of this war and to bring about a reversal from its disasterous course and consequences? Posted by: john c. halasz at May 11, 2004 10:21 PM Mr. Newman's constant harping re: ANSWER is typical of Liberal sectarianism to maintain the status quo and by creating division among the left. In any democracy there will be division of approaches and tacits but the real enemy is U.S. and western imperialism. The Liberal sect unfortunately continues to support Western imperialism, racism and capitalism. As Mr. Newman himself admits, he supports the illegal overthrow of the Hussein regime and therefore supported the sanction policy that led to the death and hardship of millions of Iraqi citizens -- the 'slower' approach to the overthrow of Hussein. In addition the Liberal sectarian, Mr. Newman, supported the use of force that led to the destruction of Yugoslavia - and the illegal bombing of their citizens by the Clinton administration. Thus the Liberal sect continue to ignore their own disruptive and contradictory behavior and advocacy that purpetuate U.S. global domination and racism. WB Posted by: Wilson Barber at May 12, 2004 10:09 AM Wilson-- Lot of socialists supported the Kosovo intervention, including the present mayor of London, "Red Ken" Livingstone. Supporting democracy around the world is not anti-socialist or racist. In fact, those like ANSWER and yourself, who think dictators like Milosevic or Hussein have the right to rule their people because they have more guns are little different from the Bushies who think because the US has more guns, it has the right to rule the world. Real progressives oppose domination due to superior military power, whether it's a local dictatorship or US hegemony. That's why progressives could support a multilateral intervention in Kosovo where the Kosovo people and the world community overwhelmingly supported that intervention. Posted by: Nathan Newman at May 12, 2004 10:24 AM Post a comment
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