Voters have no choice on Iraq :ANDREW GREELEY

[jbfam4]

Voters have no choice on Iraq

September 10, 2004

BY ANDREW GREELEY
http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel10.html

It would appear that the Vietnam War is an issue in the current election, but the Iraq war is not. Sen. John Kerry's service in Vietnam is subject to debate, though the lack of service of the president and the vice president apparently is not. But the ongoing war in Iraq has been ruled out of bounds.
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In fact, the war has been a catastrophe -- and not the catastrophic success that the president, in a curious turn of phrase, calls it. It was ill conceived, badly executed and disastrously followed up. The neo-conservative intellectuals who had determined on the war before the World Trade Center attack had argued that the seizure of Iraq would change the balance of power in the Middle East, end the crisis in Palestine and frighten off the terrorists. Indeed, immediately after the attack on the WTC, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz tried to use it as an excuse for an Iraq invasion. The former was convinced that the war could be won with a relatively small number of troops. The commanders who wanted twice the number were shouted down and dismissed.


No one among the brilliant intellectuals (Wolfowitz, etc.) seems to have known enough about the history of Iraq to have predicted that the various factions would immediately start fighting one another. No one understood that if the United States destroyed order, security, industry, fuel, water and food supplies, the Iraqis, ill at ease with a foreign occupying power, would quickly grow restless and rise up against us -- which they did a year ago. Both Shiites and the Sunnis want us out of their country. They don't trust Americans to respond to the chaos they created, and on the basis of the facts of the situation, they have no reason to.

''Hey, we got rid of Saddam Hussein for them, didn't we?'' pro-war Americans shout. ''Aren't they grateful for that?'' Indeed they are, but they are not grateful for the chaos in their country. Most Iraqis were better off under Saddam. They had jobs, food, water, electricity, stability and order in the streets. They blame the chaos on the United States -- and with good reason. They wish we would go home and mind our own business -- a not unreasonable demand.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. Kick

Please read this!

[donco6]

2. How can this be?

"No one among the brilliant intellectuals (Wolfowitz, etc.) seems to have known enough about the history of Iraq to have predicted that the various factions would immediately start fighting one another."

Now, I'm no "brilliant intellectual" but *I* could have predicted the outcome of the vacuum of power. It's the same outcome you get with ANY power vacuum - all the little players start killing each other. Happens all the time. Look at Yugoslavia. Hell, you can go all the way back to the Ptolomies and see it. What the hell were they thinking?

[wellstone dem]

3. kick nt

[Catfight]

4. The point is, they are WORSE off with Bush in charge, we feel their pain.