When Will Iraq be Liberated?
Or is there a new definition and this can be expected in the United states soon?
Via Hammerdown.
World Affairs
Ignore the Evidence?
Richard Perle produces a jewel:
Two of President George W. Bushmilitary advisors said that the US inability to find illegal weapons in Iraq means little.
“I don’t think that you can draw any conclusion from the fact that the stockpiles were not found,” Pentagon advisor Richard Perle said…
Hmmm…many of us might think that you can draw some conclusions like: 1) there were not any stockpiles and 2) it is more likely that the administration really did lie when justifiying the war.
Neocons v Realists
Bilmon wrote a long and excellent essay on the history of the neoconservatives and their interplay with the foreign policy realists over the last 30 years.
Has neocon influence peaked? Is Wolfowitz the next Secretary of Defense or will he be gone from the Pentagon by February?
A must read if you are interested in US foreign policy.
Libya
Libya has been off my radar for years and for those of us who haven’t been paying any attention to Libya for a long time Qadhafi’s recent fold on WMD’s appear to naturally follow from Bush policy. We are wrong.
Josh Marshall points out that:
The Libya deal looks like an especially good example of the Bush Doctrine in action if you haven’t been paying any attention to Libya for the last dozen years.
Read his short article and the references.
And Juan Cole argues that
… the real reason Qadhafi just folded is economic. And the lesson to be drawn here is that under certain circumstances, economic pressure can work, and remove the need for war.
Lesson: do your homework before locking in your evaluation of a current event.
Why IraQ?
w asked, in a speach to the Australian parliament:
Who can possibly think that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power?
Charles Kuffner has the best answer to this that I have seen so far:
That’s not the point
…..
The problem here is that this is the wrong question to be asked. It’s a meaningless question meant to distract us from looking at the implications of how we went about removing Saddam from power and what it has cost us in money, lives, missed opportunities, and international reputation.
Read it all. There is some good stuff in the comments as well.
Via Not Geniuses.