Ursula: I don't watch much American news, so am occasionally
lulled into thinking that everyone disapproves of Bush and
his phony war.
From my point of view, Bush doesn't take the war seriously
enough. His ouster of Saddam was marred by corruption and
incompetence in countless ways. Bush distorted intelligence
about Iraq in order to rally public opinion behind his
invasion plan. He also shows little interest in real
homeland security, such as border control, more rapidly
securing loose nukes, etc. There are good reasons not to
trust his administration. Given the planless follow-through,
the Iraq regime change campaign was a mistake.
That said, I agree with Bill Clinton that an immediate or
premature withdrawal of troops would cause more problems
than would be caused by staying the course. And in the
larger picture of combating "terrorists of global reach," we
can't reasonably call that a "phony war," although I know
many list members see Iraq as a symbol of the entire war.
Consequently, I would rather err on the side of winning that
war than on the side of protecting the individual rights of
terror suspects. I mean, we did that in the '90s. We treated
terrorism as a criminal issue, going so far as to hamstring
FBI agents pursuing Bin Laden, thwarting CIA operatives who
had a chance to effectuate a popular revolution in Iraq, and
turning a blind eye to terror-preaching mullahs in Europe
and elsewhere. The results were that the problem just got
worse and the stakes of the attacks got higher and higher.
If we don't get this right, there will be nuclear terror
attacks in our lifetimes. Bush doesn't have it right, but
the political alternatives I see presented are practically
suicidal.
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