Say what you will about Dubya. He spent like a lib, after all.
And say whatever you’d like about Iraq. Well-advised? Perhaps not, in retrospect.
But when we went to war with Iraq, we did it with 40 other nations and the UN.
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…and Congress
Not the UN.
“Not the UN”
Well, yes, more or less.
I believe that much of the controversy about the Iraq War is Colin Powell’s fault.
Hear me out.
Powell was the only adviser W had that had actually managed a war — and won. Powell was obsessed with the idea of getting the UN’s okey-dokey before going to war.
But the UN doesn’t like 1st world countries invading 3rd world countries. It really hates wars that cross borders and can be construed in any way as wars of conquest.
But there is a loophole. For historical reasons, the UN considers the presence of WMD’s an acceptable casus belli under nearly any circumstances.
Hence the unnecessary and obsessive reliance on Saddam’s WMD’s in arguments made to the UNSC and general assembly.
As evidence to support my thesis, we have the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ243/html/PLAW-107publ243.htm
Note that in this US document WMD’s are just one of many casus belli mentioned, and are mentioned almost exclusively in the past-tense. The arguments for war made at the UN were not the same as the arguments made by the US Congress.
Obama had better have a very clear objective and a very clear exit plan. I think the US has learned its lesson. So at least we don’t have a Manichean worldview driving our intervention. At the same time, it’s not very clear who we’re retaliating against, who it would help, and what we’re trying to prevent. This isn’t like Iraq, or even like Libya.
At the beginning of this comment I noted that we needed clear objectives and a clear exit strategy. The more I think about it, the more clear it is that we have neither. I thought we learned this lesson 30 years ago in Lebanon.
Actually, Emery, we have a perfectly clear objective: to provide some small evidence that Dear Leader has any credibility whatsoever.
There’s a bigger picture to consider here. The cold war is over, and the idea of deterrence through mutually assured destruction needs to be remodeled for the 21st century. There will be many countries (and perhaps non-state actors) who will possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. They will, on occasion, be used, as they have here. The rest of the world has a stake in dissuading the use of weapons of mass destruction, but what form will the deterrence take? How do we calculate the correct proportionality? Do we strike at military targets, civilian, or both? Is there a point when we should invade and topple a state?
The fact that we don’t have answers to those questions greatly lessens the deterrent effect. President Obama gave a vaguely worded threat about WMDs and red lines, but his lack of precision and the lack of a precedent have persuaded Assad that the red line can be ignored. The next leader who considers using a WMD, be it Assad or whoever is next, will look upon the precedent that will be set in the next several weeks. The Assad regime must be hurt to the point where they regret their use of WMDs, a future potential users must see the heavy cost.
Beyond that, the UN, NATO, and many other countries need to start preparing for this situation to re-occur, as it most certainly will. Somebody someday is going to use a nuclear weapon, more likely against a rebellious city than a neighboring country. What will we do then? What is the punishment for killing 100,000 people with a nuclear weapon in the 21st century? Because the punishment is undefined, the deterrence is minimal. The countries of the world which wish to forestall the use of WMDs must set some precedents and make some rules, or the next Assad is not going to believe there is a too-heavy cost to using their WMDs.
Mitch:
I think you owe George an apology here.
If he spent like a liberal he would’ve spent more than $3 trillion a year (actually lets call it $4 trillion) and he actually spent a whole lot of it on defense.
And Obama if he had his way will spend a whole lot more.
In eight years he ran up just $5 trillion in deficits. Obama needed just four years to do that. And if Obama had his way he would spend a whole lot more.
So how can George Bush spend like a liberal when the evidence shows how a liberal actually spends money that he hasn’t?
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN