Dick Cheney in 1994: Invading Iraq Would Create Quagmire
WOW.
He made the exact same arguments the Dems made. He couldn’t have been more right.
I wonder what caused his 180 degree turn after he became CEO of Halliburton then VP….
Category: Foreign Policy
Iraqi Jewish Woman Very Angry At War
Posted by – July 12, 2007
I found this on YouTube. It is testimony from Dahlia Wasfi, a physician with a Jewish mother (who fled the Nazis) and an Iraqi father, and she has done two long visits to Iraq recently to help during the war.
This testimony is riveting. She is very angry, screen-melting angry, about America invading her country. She is furious at the chaos, lack of water, and the WMD that the U.S. is using in Iraq (depleted uranium, napalm, white phosphorous). It’s such an inflammatory speech, I was initially reticent to post it here, but it is so compelling I had to. I consider her viewpoint unassailable, since she saw what’s happening in Iraq with her own eyes and we didn’t.
She says the Jewish motto “NEVER AGAIN” (never again should a people be destroyed) must extend to Iraqis too. I think this is the only moral approach.
If we’re in Iraq (supposedly for humanitarian purposes) without Iraq’s consent, isn’t that like rape, and doomed to fail?
Nick
Giving Your Money to Evil, Saddam-style Dictators
Posted by – June 24, 2007
I’ve been increasingly angry lately (nothing new) about how the Republicans want to slash aid to poor and disabled Americans because “we can’t afford it” but have no qualms whatsoever about funneling BILLIONS of our money to the worst evil dictators imaginable.
Did you know we prop up the evil dictator in Ethiopia to the tune of $500 million a year? The New York Times did some stunning boots-on-the ground reporting last week on what the Ethiopian regime is doing to repress a rebellion in its Somali province–torturing women with pliers, etc.
Ethiopian-Americans are writing Congress and saying please stop funding this tyrant, Meles Zenawi (here is a YouTube video about this, it is awesome that dissidents are using the web to get the truth out). Expatriate dissident bloggers say the foreign aid only benefits Meles’ Cayman Island bankers. But Bush insists Ethiopia is an important ally in the “war on terra.”
Did you know we’re sending $120 million of taxpayer dollars to the government of Uzbekistan, that is universally regarded as one of the most corrupt, repressive regimes on Earth? To call these regimes EVIL is no exaggeration. Uzbekistan’s Saddam-style tyrant, Islom Karimov, is infamous for boiling dissidents alive, but we prop him up because he is “tough on terror.”
This is Uzbekistan dictator Islom Karimov. He enjoys counting foreign aid money, long walks on the beach, and boiling opponents alive.
Bush has increased U.S. foreign aid by $5 billion, with the Democrats giving him standing ovations.
Don’t get me wrong, the Dems are not exempt from my ire. Clinton was just as bad about funding tyrannical regimes, and there are some liberals right now begging for more aid to authoritarian dystopias like Zimbabwe, and those people need to check themselves.
There seems to be a strange unanimity on both sides of the aisle that propping up “pro-American regimes” is “in U.S. interests,” no matter how brutally repressive their governments are. I would argue that letting one dime from the U.S. treasury assist despots who torture their own people is extremely damaging to American interests, and proves our rhetoric about “making the world safe for democracy” is crap.
Here’s what sparked my interest in this topic: on Bill Moyers Journal Friday, they had an incredible exposé about how DC lobbyists are perfectly willing to aid and abet evil dictatorships. Harper’s magazine investigative journalist, Ken Silverstein, posed as a representative of Turkmenistan, one of the most notorious Stalinist regimes ever, and talked to two major lobbying firms. These firms bent over backwards to get multi-million dollar contracts to do PR, damage control and lobbying for Turkmenistan. They said they work through fake front groups and set up phony events.
Watch and listen to this report
“Although there are distinct limits to what they can achieve, lobbyists are the crucial conduit through which pariah regimes advance their interests in Washington.” — Ken Silverstein
Advance their interests in Washington–i.e. legally bribe public officials to get huge aid packages of OUR MONEY for dictators.
Are American lobbying firms like the ones described in this story responsible for the millions in aid to these regimes? According to what Silverstein is reporting, yes.
We are a nation founded on the idea of destroying tyranny, not helping it.
Where the hell are the candidates running on a platform of “NO MONEY FOR TYRANTS!!” ???
I see no candidate stepping up to the plate.
This should make everyone FURIOUS!
And I don’t want to hear another word from politicians talking about “cost-cutting” and “unsustainable” social programs (Dems too) unless every single despotic scumbag is cut off the dole FIRST! Yes Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, this means you.
What happened to our own people mattering most? what happened to “America First?”
what about priorities?
Services and infrastructure for Americans is being cut to the bone, while we buy new palaces for dozens of new Saddams.
I AM OUTRAGED!
Nick
Why The Global Shortage of Good Leaders?
Posted by – June 7, 2007
There is a very disturbing worldwide trend going on.
In 1957 our president was Eisenhower and Israel’s PM was David Ben-Gurion. Say what you will about them, but they were competent. They weren’t bumblers or fools.
In 2007 Israel is headed by the failed mayor of Jerusalem and the U.S. is run by the Clown Car Administration. The Bushies could hardly govern their way out of a paper bag, much less effectively manage the myriad of complex crises we’re facing.
And this isn’t just an issue for the U.S. and its allies. There is a worldwide crisis of leadership now.
Europe has largely been led by various ineffective center-left or center-right coalitions that haven’t led their countries to greatness (i.e. where’s your cure for cancer, bitches? where’s your extraterrestrial colonization?)
Asia and Africa are largely ruled by regimes similar to that Uzbekistan dictator who boils dissidents alive. Russia is going fascist. Where is Iraq’s Thomas Jefferson? Al-Maliki was the best they could do?
This is a real down stroke, a moment of malaise (or outright malevolence) in history.
There have been countless periods like this throughout human history, but rarely in my lifetime has it been so noticeable. I’m feeling that Jack Johnson song “Where’d All The Good People Go?”
Where is our Gandhi? Where is our Martin Luther King? Where is our John Adams? Where is our Abraham Lincoln? Where is our FDR? Hell, I’d settle for a solid President Taft at this point.
What is causing this global shortage of competent leaders?
Is it solar flares?
Worldwide conspiracy to erode government and allow more lawlessness and corporate looting?
Global warming? The lack of pirates?
A historical law of diminishing returns? (Jamie’s suggestion)
Is it covert sabotage by time traveling zombies?
What do you think is causing the global shortage of good leaders?
On the horizon I don’t see a lot of hope either. I’ve been following the presidential primaries very closely (I’m fascinated by the issues and the debates) and the reaction the candidates elicit from me range from “ok” to “meh” to “NOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
But I can still be sold.
Nick
Inexorable Cycle of History?
Posted by – May 4, 2007
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” — Ecclesiastes 1:9-14
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Are the events shaping the U.S. just a part of an inexorable repeating cycle of history?
In the 1920s the wealth inequality grew to the point where only a select few were comfortable, and then with the drought and widespread agricultural failures (and a myriad of very debatable factors), the American economy collapsed, and there was a certain natural resetting of wealth, and then the boom years following WWII created the modern middle class.
Now since the 1990s we’re experiencing a mini-Gilded Age. The Golden 300,000 control our politics lock, stock and barrel. Robber barons seem to be back, and according to all the studies wealth inequality is worse than at any time since the 1920s, and resentment of the rich and demand for change is higher than at any time since then as well (check out this new Gallup poll).
Inequality is very bad; the prophets rail against it. Inequality caused a mob of hungry French women to storm Versailles and put two Royal bodyguards’ heads on pikes. Inequality caused the bloody railroad strikes of 1877, when state troops broke the strike with bayonets and Gatling guns.
My question is: is the consolidation of wealth until the poor can no longer afford to buy products from the tycoons (though I know it’s more complex), then economic collapse results, then we restart the cycle–is this just the unstoppable track history is on?
Given this cycle of a major economic depression every 100 yeahs or so, should we expect a collapse around the 2020s? Because of the staggering level of personal debt in this country, combined with our insane trade deficits, it doesn’t exactly take Nostradamus to predict that we’re one more straw on the camel’s back (drought, terrorism, global downturn) away from falling off the economic cliff into a major collapse.
Can we ever stop this cycle?
Other things are also so similar and seem stuck on the 100 year cycle as well. The polarization, the razor-thin (possibly stolen) elections, the money dominating politics, the imperialism defining the dawn of the 20th century is eerily similar to Bush’s that defined the beginning of the 21st.
Back then they waved the bloody shirt and shouted “Remember the Maine!” to justify the Spanish-American War (which was also expansionist and directly or indirectly to benefit corporate America).
Now politicians wave the bloody shirt and yell “Remember 9/11!” and “you haven’t learned the lessons of 9/11!” to justify our current wars.
It’s so similar. We racked up just under 3,300 KIA in the Spanish-American War too. And President McKinley may’ve been motivated by religious fervor as well. And Karl Rove cited McKinley as a model to follow.
Is this just an unstoppable cycle? Can we ever jump the tracks?
Nick
A Philadelphia Press political cartoon “Ten Thousand Miles From Tip to Tip” meaning the extension of U.S. domination (symbolized by a bald eagle) from Puerto Rico to the Philippines. The cartoon contrasts this with a map of the smaller United States of 100 years earlier in 1798.
Latest From The Iraqi Front, April 2007
Posted by – April 29, 2007
I wanted to post a quick note of my thoughts on the developing (and rapidly changing) situation on the Iraqi front.
Check out this story from the AP wire, Iraqi Insurgents Now Fighting Each Other. It describes how some of the Sunni insurgents are turning against al-Qaida:
MUQDADIYAH, Iraq — At least two major insurgent groups are battling al-Qaida in provinces outside Baghdad, American military commanders said Friday, an indication of a deepening rift between Sunni guerrilla groups in Iraq.
U.S. officers say a growing number of Sunni tribes are turning against al-Qaida, repelled by the terror group’s sheer brutality and austere religious extremism. The tribes are competing with al-Qaida for influence and control over diminishing territory in the face of U.S. assaults, the officers say. The influx of Sunni fighters to areas outside the capital in advance of the security crackdown in Baghdad may have further unsettled the region.
The Iraqis are going to work it out. They will crush al-Qaida and inevitably find some stability. We can best accelerate this process if we stop kicking the hornet’s nest and get out of the way.
As this Staff Sgt. put it, “this is our generation’s Vietnam,” and they are caught in a civil war they can’t win.
Is it “supporting the troops” to keep them in such an untenable situation?
American commanders cite al-Qaida’s severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.
Such radicalism has fueled sectarian violence in Iraq and redrawn the demographics of many mixed Sunni-Shiite towns in Diyala, where tens of thousands of Shiites have been forced to flee large population centers.
These guys are CRAZAAAAY!! Fruit segregation is nowhere in the Koran, but evidently this is something extremist groups are pushing. Check out this video:
The Iraqi people aren’t buying what the al-Qaida types are selling; they have nothing to offer but neurotic religious stringency and authoritarianism, and almost no one wants to live under that. Al-Qaida is already being marginalized and would have no meaningful support at all if there were no Western “Crusaders” in the region to attack (antipathy toward Europeans from Medieval times runs so deep that some Arabs paint houses blue to ward off “the blue-eyed devils”).
“Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country.” —George W. Bush
The president was jabbing at the Iranians here; he has no ability to detect the irony of saying this while commanding 160,000+.foreign people in Iraq.
We toppled Saddam, our military was victorious. Now it’s a political clash between competing factions and, unfortunately, there’s little more we can achieve other than exacerbating the violence.
It’s past time to leave Iraq! No more wasted blood and treasure, please!
But of course, guys like Congressman Don Young say you should be executed for treason if you want to pull out. How do we find solutions in that climate?
Sadly, we will likely be bogged down in Iraq for years to come.
Nick
What The U.S. Can Learn From “Lawrence of Arabia”
Posted by – April 11, 2007
In my post, Why did they create the new nation of Iraq? I discussed T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) and his vision of the Middle East’s borders after WWI, which would’ve amounted to the Shias getting their own state in the Mesopotamian Basin, a single state for most of the Sunnis of what are now the fake nations of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and the whole region transitioning to Arab self-rule. The British shot down Lawrence’s proposal, because they were imperialists in the purest sense, and wanted an Empire of “civilized” and orderly Western governments sending them resources and profits.
The real T.E. Lawrence
It should almost go without saying that America is failing in Iraq today mainly due to our woeful ignorance of history and the nature of the region and its people.
We can learn a lot from the British Empire’s mistakes in their Mandate of Mesopotamia.
1) There is a natural tissue rejection of any foreign body. The Iraqis in 1919 and 1920 revolted against British rule. The Ayatollahs in Karbala and Najaf declared jihad against the English. The Kurds resisted as well. The area was only controlled with heavy bombing from the Royal Air Force and use of poison gas.
2) Subjugating people who don’t want to be subjugated is ugly. It was ugly when Saddam did it, it was ugly when the British did it, and it is ugly with our new version Subjugation 2.0 that we’re attempting today. It is immoral, and lends itself to atrocities. Facing the 1920 rebellion in Iraq, Winston Churchill wrote, “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.” And use gas on tribes they did. “gas was used against the Iraqi rebels with excellent morale effect,” Churchill said. Phosphorus bombs were also employed. The West today acts outraged that Saddam gassed the Kurds, but had no problem selling Saddam said gas, nor with gassing rebellious tribes themselves decades earlier.
3) Iraq, and Arabs, are not what people think. Iraq is a fake construct, and though Iraqis are now attached to the current territory, the borders were drawn by the British in such a way to engender instability and dependence on foreigners.
Everyone should watch Lawrence of Arabia. While it is flawed, it did win seven Oscars (including Best Picture) and it gives real insight into the turbulent birth of modern “Arabism” and the struggles with it today.
What struck me most in Lawrence of Arabia was that the concept of “Arab” is also a new construct, and an identity, to an extent, also imposed by outsiders. The line in the movie when the Bedouin chieftain Auda abu Tayi says “what’s an Arab? I am Howitat!” says it all. Not only did he not have a unified Arab national identity, he did not know what an Arab was!!! He knew only a tribal identity.
Then after Lawrence and the chieftains seized Damascus from the Ottoman Turks, the Howitat and the Harith tribes can’t agree who will control what city services. Water is offline because the Howitat who control electricity won’t coordinate with the Harith who control water and need power to run the pumps (or visa versa). “Being an Arab will be thornier than you suppose, Harith!” Auda abu Tayi says. They blame each other and despise each other. I don’t know what happens, I think they end up giving the British the water duties and eventually the Imperialists play the tribes off each other as further pretext for foreign rule, but Lawrence says “There may be honor among thieves, but there’s none in politicians” and leaves Damascus.
The Damascus situation and the failure of the independent Arab state post-WWI seems like an eerily similar forerunner of the disturbing reports coming out of Baghdad lately, with tribes in gridlock and some areas devoid of basic government services like water and trash collection because sectarians will attack anyone working for the government as a “collaborator.” One of the most powerful quotes in the movie that hits home today is when Lawrence says, “So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people – greedy, barbarous, and cruel…” and while this statement had plenty of imperialism behind it, it’s hard not to see insight in it given the current tribal bloodbath in Iraq.
Though decades of nationalist rule created a strong Iraqi identity (check out Hometown Baghdad for a great vlog by ordinary Iraqis) and many Iraqis demand the old borders and stability be maintained, much of the population seems to have reverted to the same kind of pre-national tribalism and sectarian infighting seen in Lawrence of Arabia. Once tyranny is removed, whether it be Saddam or the Ottomans toppled, Arab society seems to inexorably revert to the more basic tribal forms. When in crisis, you go with what you know.
WWI created the outlines for all the disasters that we have in the Mideast today. The British stacked up the House of Cards that was Iraq. Now the U.S. has toppled it, but doesn’t know what the cards and identities even mean as they try to stack something back up, and are probably just making it worse.
We would do well to heed the lessons of history, and abandon our fruitless quest to pacify and remake the Middle East. It’s 2007, and we should know better than to retrace British blunders.
Leave Iraq to Iraqis; it’s the only way.
“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” — George Santayana.
Nick
Of Continents and Subcontinents (animation by Nick)
Posted by – February 26, 2007
I whipped up this simple, amateur animation to make a point.
India and Europe are roughly the same land area, but India is considered a subcontinent. Why is Arabia dubbed a “peninsula” and not a subcontinent? These are all pretty arbitrary designations based on little but cultural history.
We forget that about 40% of humanity are either Chinese or Indian. That’s 2 out of 5 humans on Earth.
We don’t get much information on the bulk of our brethren.
We barely know anything about them.
We don’t hear that millions of Muslims have lived in relative peace for centuries in India and China, we just hear what a “threat” Islam is, how they are all “savages.”
We don’t understand China, even as they emerge as a hegemon.
I myself don’t know about the dozens of languages in India and how they communicate.
You can begin to scratch the surface here:
We gotta remember we are all ONE. From above there are no borders, no nations, no anthems. From above there is only a beautiful green planet, and what the dominant species on her chooses to be.
Nick
George W. Bush Compares Iraq War To “First George W.’s” Revolutionary War
Posted by – February 22, 2007
O Rly?
At a President’s day celebration Tuesday, “President Bush linked the ideals of the first president to the war being fought by the 43rd” (full story here).
This was so incredible, the disembodied spirit of George Washington ripped through the space-time continuum and said:
U.S. Foreign Policy In Deep Shi’ite
Posted by – January 21, 2007
U.S. Foreign Policy In Deep Shi’ite
An in-depth analysis
In 2007, the dominant news story will be the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq. War is also the dominant spiritual and moral issue of my generation. It’s impossible for me not to blog about this.
The president has ordered a “surge,” or increase of 21,500 troops, which brings us to roughly 2004-troop-levels. This didn’t work in 2004, so it is unlikely to change things.
His saber-rattling regarding Iran and Syria is also unsettling. I liked that movie better the first time, when it was called Nixon Illegally Orders Crossborder Raids Into Laos and Cambodia Without Authorization.
But let’s cut past all the obvious problems, cut through the spin, and get behind the headlines to the underpinning issues.
Let’s talk about Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq.
Where is the Prime Minister coming from?
Nouri al-Maliki is from the Dawa Party, the stringently Shi’ite political party.
The Dawa Party has been singularly running the Iraqi government since May.
Who founded the Dawa Party? Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr.
The fact that the father-in-law of militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr founded the ruling party in Iraq, tells you A LOT about what is behind the current upheaval.
What this means is, the Iraqi government is closely linked to the Sadrist movement at best, and, at worst, is its wholly-owned subsidiary.
When the Shi’ites lynched Saddam, they chanted “Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr! Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr!”
So we’ve had Sadrists running Iraq. They’ve ruthlessly cracked down on Sunnis. All but the entirety of the Sunni upper and middle class (an estimated 1-2 million Iraqis) have relocated to Amman, Jordan, transforming the makeup of Iraq and the makeup of Jordan. I see no indication those Sunnis will ever re-enter Iraq en masse.
We will continue to see that is Iraq is now a profoundly Shi’ite nation, unrecognizable compared to Hussien’s reign, with the Sadrists currently holding the power center. During Saddam, Shias were a majority, but now that they’ve disbanded his secular Ba’ath Party, lynched him and 1-2 million Sunnis have relocated, the Shi’ites are a super-majority in Iraq. With the U.S military keeping a lid on the Sunni insurgency, there’s no succeeding countervailing influence to total Shi’ite dominance. I’ve been following the news closely, and in recent years the Shias have remade Baghdad in their own image. It is now a Shia capital of a new Shia nation. It will continue to be profoundly Shia. And in these desperate times, moderate voices are a minority with no sway to speak of. I’m not saying that only militants and fundamentalists are left in Iraq. I’m saying that Shias, with their own strict brand of Iranian-bred Islam are now a super-majority in Iraq, and we are now dealing with an Iraqi nation that is more Shia-dominated, more fundamentalist, and more fractured and violent than ever expected . Jeffersonian democracy just ain’t in the cards.
Currently, the Dawa Party government (in short, Sadrists) are running the show, though they are fighting a nasty civil war against the Sunni tribesmen on their west and the Iranian-backed Badr Brigades on their east (Shias murdering huge amounts of fellow Shias) among many other groups that spring up or shift every week.
In medieval Europe, feudal lords raised militias (see Knights of the Round Table, The) to protect their territory and interests. Following Saddam, Iraqi sheiks, Ayatollahs, nutjobs and politicians have been raising militias to protect their territory or people or ideology, minus the chivalry, and adding in huge doses of terrorism and kamikazi warfare.
I studied the scholarly journals when I took a course on foreign policy in college two years ago, and learned all I could about Iraqi Shi’ites. Back then there were lots of articles arguing that Iraqi Shias are fiercely nationalistic, and because they are a culture, language and physical appearance that is drastically different from their Persian co-religionists (Iranian Shias) and had no qualms about slaughtering Iranians en masse in the Iran-Iraq war, we should not worry about Iraq’s Shias opening the door to Iranian hegemony in the region. Now the word from foreign policy journals is that Arab Shias have strong ties with their Persian neighbors, with Iranian seminaries underpinning the Iraqi theological class (I wonder how they navigate the huge language barrier?) and that there is serious danger of uncorked Shia dominance and Iranian influence spurring a region-wide Shia vs. Sunni civil war. Will Iraqi Shias join Iran in a new religious Persian Empire? I still lean toward the first theory, that Iraqis will kill Iranians more than collaborate with them. But my G-d, even the most scholarly among us don’t know where the loyalties of most Iraqis lie! And THAT is perhaps the best argument against this war that I have.
Iran will certainly TRY to become a new hegemon in the region, but, in all likelihood, I think they’ll continue to be killed by the Dawa / Sadr guys. Meanwhile, militia groups have splintered off and grown until Iraq’s become this diffuse, hallucinogenic whirlwind of chaos and violence reminiscant of that gruesome Vietnam book we read in college. The horrors continue to trickle in, stories too ugly to print here, as Iraq sets new lows in the grim history of human depravity.
Meanwhile, we are fighting to prop up a government that is of, by and for the Sadrists. Sadr himself is returning to Iraq’s government.
Can our U.S. troops make a difference? In the latest Newsweek poll, 53 percent of Americans don’t believe the “surge” will reduce the violence in Baghdad and 67 percent think it is either “very” or “somewhat” likely to lead to more U.S. deaths in Iraq without getting the U.S. closer to our goals there.
On the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer last week, President Bush said, “Look, I had a choice to make, Jim, and that is – one – do what we’re doing. And one could define that maybe a slow failure. Secondly, withdraw out of Baghdad and hope for the best. I would think that would be expedited failure. And thirdly is to help this Iraqi government with additional forces – help them do what they need to do, which is to provide security in Baghdad.”
Helping prop up the Dawa Party?
When U.S. troops pull out of Iraq after too many more deaths, will the Sadrists still control things?
It is past time to vigorously question the “we cannot afford the consequences of withdrawal” line everyone is repeating like zombies. Hell, I’ve even parroted this.
Why not skip the unnecessary decade of bloodshed, declare victory we deposed Saddam, pull the F out, and let the Sadrists have it? What I was trying to establish is, the Sadrists already have it, and pulling out likely won’t change that.
I think Bush isn’t really scared of a new Persian Empire, but won’t pull out because it would leave 
Iraq to Muqtada al-Sadr, and he can’t bear the thought of 3,000 U.S. servicemen dying to lead to a brutal Shi’ite theocracy being installed. And I don’t blame him there; it’d be a terrible outcome. Brutal theocracy is what Sadr is all about. We would all turn on the TV to find Grand Ayatollah Muqtada al-Sadr presiding over women being beaten for not wearing hijab, women’s driver’s licenses being revoked, and anyone caught with a musical instrument getting summarily executed. But all these things are already happening! The Iraqi symphony orchestra already fled a few years ago after facing beatings and intimidation for practicing their music. We may have to take the bitter pill that a theocracy is what the remaining Iraqis want (most of the anti-theocracy people are now in Jordan).
And isn’t Iraqi self-determination better than continuing this absurdist charade of “IRAQ WILL BE FREE WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT! FREEDOM IS ON THE MARCH! YOU HAVE NO CHOICE! YOU WILL BE FREE!”
Isn’t it a way better option to just bypass the next 15-20 years of wasted blood and treasure?
What are the moral and spiritual consequences of continuing to play with this fire?
Thanks for reading my lengthy ramblings. This is a fascinating discussion. Iraq is the wildfire sucking the oxygen away from every presidential contender and every domestic problem, and, again, is the dominant spiritual and moral issue of our time.
I look forward to your comments.
Nick
