Comments on: 115,000 troops

By: Peter Murphy

Peter Murphy — Thu, 27 May 2004 05:13:37 +0000

Matthew: Think about it. If Bush had stopped with Afghanistan, and given Iraq a miss – he would currently be in the high 60’s in the polls, if not the 80s. His international reputation would be intact. Practically every important country in the World knew that Al Qaeda was a menace, and had to be stopped. You even had those perfidious Frenchies on side. :-) (As far as I know, they still have troops in the country under UN auspices.) And nobody – Kerry, Dean, or any other Democratic candidate you could name – could touch him in the 2004 election. Instead, Bush launched a pre-emptive war with dubious grounds: those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – the ones that seem to have gone missing, if they hadn’t already been destroyed. Not only that, him and his team of handlers argued that these weapons could be launched with only “minutes” of warning – not the “10-30 years” argued by yourself. In retrospect, it seems to be one big fib, with lashings of PR and spin. And to answer your question, I know what SIDE I am on. I think Western Civilization is pretty good, and I want it in good health for the next fifty years, if not the next hundred. Taken that as given, why launch a preemptive war that has fissured it down the middle, made its key player (the US) look malevolent, if not incompetent, and hobble some of the institutions like NATO that held it together. And with the current revelations concerning Mr. Chalabai, it looked like Iran played the Bush administration like a bitch. Yes, a lot of “real men” (and women, remember?) are fighting and dying at the moment. Unfortunately, they seem to be dying less for civilization that for Halliburton. And over the objections of many of their superiors in uniform. Matthew, I don’t think you know what side you are on, beyond “against leftists”. A shame, but it seems to allow you to namecall the Crooked Timber ensemble (which covers all sorts of persuasions) and Tim Cavanaugh (who is actually a libertarian) with the perjorative of “leftist”. Am I correct in thinking you assume everyone against the war is “left” (not withstanding the fact that there are many small “c” conservatives against it), and that everyone for the war is “right”? Simplistic, I know, but it seems to explain you pretty well. I just hope that you outgrow this childish “left” vs. “right” dichotomy one day. Most of us do. The problem with it is that people you assume are on YOUR side turn out to be just on THEIR side, and they’ll sell you down the river for a couple of kopeks once it is profitable. (As for Kerry: yes, he may be a jellyfish. But Bush’s record as president has been so utterly appalling that one can reason invertebrates can’t make it any worse.)

By: robbo

robbo — Thu, 27 May 2004 03:12:59 +0000

Patriotic Republicans relentlessly ridiculed and worked fetishistically to undermine just about every one of Clinton’s foreign policy decision that involved the military. The current Republican Congress goes to great lengths to shut out Democratic voices and influence. That’s why it’s amusing to see some great thinkers here suggesting that Republicans would entertain cogent arguments and workable solutions to the Middle East’s problems if only Democrats would set them on the table. You got everything you demanded concerning Iraq, before and after the invasion, and you ignored and derided our ideas when they would have mattered. The only question now is whether junior will flame out worse than his daddy did. I guess a corrollary is whether he’ll manage to take the rest of us with him as part of his Armageddon vision-quest. Glad you feel “safer” now. Rubes.

By: vernaculo

vernaculo — Wed, 26 May 2004 22:56:09 +0000

Matthew Cromer-

"The leftists don't seem to have any plan, or even to really recognize the threat and the fact that militant Islam is at war with us, has been for 25 years, and must be utterly defeated for us to be safe. If there is some other plan, if the professional complainers on the left have something to offer to make me and my family and the economy safe from nuclear attack, I'd be glad to listen."

This may astonish you, but I am an American, and by my own lights a Christian, and I am not at war with militant Islam, nor do I consider militant Islam to be at war with me. Militant Islam is at war with you, sir, you and your band of cowardly thugs, and you're hiding behind the rest of us, pretending we're all in this together. Which, because of your cowardice and treachery, we are. Like in a bar fight, where the instigating drunk retreats to the safety of his companions. I'd also remind you that there's more at risk here than you, your family, and the economy. There is, for instance, my family. You are the cause of your own peril, and ours. And in order for us to be truly safe, and retain our integrity, it's you and your blindly selfish ilk that must be stopped. As far as solutions, the first and most important is to remove the duplicitous and incompetent scum from the wheelhouse while we still have a chance to, and then to as rationally and humanely as possible, with strength and honesty, address the real issues here. Which are not the reactions of pain-crazed Islamic fundamentalists, but the arrogant sociopathy of Judeo-Christian fundamentalists and Godless capitalists. Cowardly bleating will not suffice, and treachery is always error. The solution I'd put forward, and many other Christian Americans would also, is to stop allowing delusional villains to pretend they speak for the rest of us; and then to begin the most difficult labor of forgiveness and acceptance, a tradition that supersedes the current bastardizations of both Jewish and Christian religious practice.

By: Phill

Phill — Wed, 26 May 2004 22:46:29 +0000

Mr Crommer, You appear to be unaware that the allegations concerning the UN food for oil program came exclusively from Mr Chalabai. He has repeatedly refused to allow even the US to examine the evidence he claims to have found. In other words your attempt to present yourself as an expert in this area and left wingers as ignorant results in you repeating yet another line from Chalabai. Given that you are parroting Chalabai propaganda even after he has been exposed as an Iranian agent it is clear you have not got a clue where the information you rely on comes from. Like Bush you fail to distinguish between Saddam’s use of terrorism tactics and support for Al Qaeda. This is ignorant and deceptive. Bin Laden is a religious Sunni nut, as such he regards Saddam as an appostate. The fact is that as Richard Clarke observes, Saddam abandonded use of terrorist tactics after Clinton launched missile strikes in 1993. The other claims you make are completely unsubstantiated with the sole exception of ‘harboring’ Abu Nidal. You fail to mention that Saddam had Abu Nidal liquidated shortly after 9/11

By: jdw

jdw — Wed, 26 May 2004 22:25:28 +0000

I guess my confusion is twofold: why would you use the military to expand the ranks of postal inspectors, border guards, etc., and why would anyone think that a conscript army makes aggressive war less likely? Using the military for non-military purposes seems inefficient—do we really want a box-checking brigade, rather than more box-checkers? And the idea that making the military larger and more powerful will somehow make the government less willing to embark on adventures abroad just seems so willfully insensible that I don’t understand how anyone could believe it. Military families are not generally pacifists. If you want to make the government less likely to wage war—I’m thinking outside the box, here—you shrink the military. If you want it to wage more war, you grow it. How the hell did we reach the point where that needs to be said?

By: mccoll

mccoll — Wed, 26 May 2004 22:01:59 +0000

Yep, put ‘em all in boats. Seriously, jdw, the example of the Coast Guard is one of many possible that illustrates that the desire to have a strong military does not equal imperialist goals. One major weakness in the defense of our borders is the fact that shipping containers entering the U.S. are not regularly inspected. Pirates and legitimate companies both routinely break international maritime shipping laws, but the U.S. is not yet capable of addressing the dangers this widely known fact poses. You can laugh about the fantasy of terrorists poling up Ol’ Man River on rafts, but the issue of port security is a real one. Imagine what you could fit in a steel-box cargo container measuring 8’ x 20’, a standard size. People of both parties are advocating military conscription for many reasons. One is that it’s not so easy to send military forces into a sovereign country for dubious reasons if those forces are made up in part by the sons and daughters of the wealthy and powerful.

By: jdw

jdw — Wed, 26 May 2004 21:23:21 +0000

mccoll: You want to bring back the draft to fill Coast Guard boats? I’m dumbfounded. Al Qaeda is not waiting with troop transports at the mouth of the Mississippi. Expanding the Coast Guard is one thing, but it seems to me what you’re advocating is very different. If we need appreciably more people in the military, it can only be to wage war—it’s not like we’re 100,000 men short of guarding our ports. I guess I’m mostly confused by the apparent eagerness to bring back the draft, particularly among Democrats. I’m not sure if it’s a scare tactic, or a desire to move to the right of Bush, but it looks like a death-wish.

By: mccoll

mccoll — Wed, 26 May 2004 20:48:10 +0000

An addendum: to learn more about the vulnerability of America’s ports, see William Langewiesche’s article “Anarchy at Sea” in the September 2003 Atlantic Monthly.

By: mccoll

mccoll — Wed, 26 May 2004 20:41:04 +0000

To respond to jdw: Conquest is not the solution to terrorism, yet there are other reasons to have a strong military. It is not the case that the only use for a strong military is conquest. For example, two of the main missions of the Coast Guard is to provide national defense and maritime security. I’d like a stronger Coast Guard. I honestly don’t believe that we can create a stable, relatively liberal government in Iraq, and I think that American efforts to do so are not worth the likely outcome. To try to create democracy in Iraq is to divert finite resources away from the U.S.’s more important concern: the safety of Americans at home.

By: jdw

jdw — Wed, 26 May 2004 19:17:06 +0000

mccoll— Why would you advocate withdrawing from Iraq and expanding the military? Either the solution to terrorism is conquest and nation building, or it isn’t; if it is, then we ought to do Iraq up right rather than any sort of withdrawal, no matter how orderly—unless the plan is to prompt a civil war there to keep the terrorists occupied for the next years or decade (which actually almost makes a perverse kind of sense). If we want a stable, relatively liberal government in Iraq, I don’t see how we could have it without maintaining a military presence to guarantee it, for at least the next several years. In any case, there’s no one to deter, so the only use for a large military is to use it—would the point be to pull out of Iraq and give this thing another try somewhere else? If we practice enough, we might get good at it. And if conquest isn’t the way to end terrorism, there’s no reason to have a large military at all.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Wed, 26 May 2004 18:42:58 +0000

I would also respectfully suggest that if we were in a war to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb in the US, we would have not have sat on our hands ignoring N. Korea’s plutonium processing activities for the past few years. I don’t think there was any satisfactory solution—my favored one was basically appeasement—but the fact that N. Korea has now apparently finished processing enough plutonium for six to eight bombs, and was apparently able to ship uranium to Libya undetected, indicates that there are much bigger threats from there than anything Saddam could’ve dreamed of in this time frame.

By: mccoll

mccoll — Wed, 26 May 2004 18:05:07 +0000

Polemicists participate in lefty and righty blogs all over the internet. For starters, let’s stop pretending about that little strawdog, shall we? My plan for addressing the terrorist threat would begin with an orderly withdrawal from Iraq. The billions of dollars now being spent in that [q-word] could then be redirected to 1. Our large cities and ports of entry, which right now do not have anywhere near adequate funding to protect those living in and around those areas (e.g., Baltimore has received only a portion of what was promised by state and federal agencies) 2. Programs directly related to ensuring that all containers entering the U.S. are secure. Right now, approximately 3% of shipping containers entering our country are examined. 3. The rebuilding of our military infrastructure and the institution of a draft so that we can have the military might to respond to international terrorist threats. Right now our military is stretched so thin that I shudder to think of what would happen should another major attack happen on U.S. soil. This is is just a beginning. We can point fingers all day about how we got here. It is clear from recent reports about the strength of Al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations around the world that attempts to stop terrorism at the source has been less than effective. What I want from my leaders right now is a set of strong security measures that make Americans safer now, not some distant world revision that may or may not blow up directly in our faces.

By: Nat Whilk

Nat Whilk — Wed, 26 May 2004 17:55:11 +0000

Pepi wrote: “When did people start forgetting about that the solving part is the job of the people who are in charge, while the “criticising” part – or just, you know, critically evaluating how that job gets done – is the job of the opposition, and more in general, of the whole voting public?” I never started forgetting that because I never accepted it in the first place. Who says that those out of power oughtn’t present affirmative alternatives to policies they detest? Some of those out of power are asking us to put them in power. Shouldn’t we know what they’re for and not just what they’re against?

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 26 May 2004 16:52:58 +0000

it’s called transformation of the ME. That’d be swell if A) the Middle East can be transformed, B) we don’t fuck up the attempt, and C) the attempt doesn’t bankrupt the US; (nevermind D) does “transformation” make us safer and more secure?) Now A) is far from universally accepted as true while B) looks increasingly true everyday. The jury’s still on C, but only a fanatic would dispute the possiblity. And since there isn’t a plan for this transformation—just hope that after we bust Iraq in the nuts the rest of the region will shape up—D can only be guessed at. This administration’s plan is to repeat “transformation” over and over while engaging in reckless and ill-advised military adventures, Keystone Kop-stylee. Mr. Cromer’s plan is to write angry comments on blogs (though some grief counseling might be a plan for him, too). My plan is to fire the current CEO and bring in a new one.

By: pepi

pepi — Wed, 26 May 2004 16:25:30 +0000

“They do nothing except point fingers, cast blame, look for things to criticize, while never offering a solution to the problem.” This is the second time I read this today. When did people start forgetting about that the solving part is the job of the people who are in charge, while the “criticising” part – or just, you know, critically evaluating how that job gets done – is the job of the opposition, and more in general, of the whole voting public? When did the concept of accountability start to become “pointing fingers”?