Sins of the Father

Most people agree that Bush Sr. should have finsihed the Job in Iraq back in the Gulf War when he had the chance. My question now is Little Bush trying to make up for Papa Bush’s mistakes?

I don’t agree with wars, so i wouldn’t agree with father Bush’s one either. But i agree that is very possible that Bush jr. wants to, and probably believe dearly he should, ‘finish the job’ his dad started.

The whole Bush family is disgusting… they make me sick.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there is something personal involved. In 1990 Bush the father said he was going to war because Iraq was infringing on Kuwait’s sovereignty. But we’re now doing the same. With Afghanistan at least you could say they are harboring bin Laden, and we were attacked so it’s war. But with Iraq you can’t.

I don’t believe Bush has made the case for going to war with Iraq. After that comment from Rumsfeld that the firing at planes over the no-fly zone constituted a breach of the resolution, though the resolution doesn’t mention that, I got the sense stronger than ever that Bush is just looking for an excuse to go to war. In 1998, Pat Buchanan declared of Iraq, “this little Arab country is no threat to the United States” (buchanan.org/pa-98-0223.html) while he was criticizing Clinton for launching air strikes. I don’t see what has changed then except Sept. 11, which would be everything except that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are far more related to al-Qaida than Iraq is. Iraq itself has not changed in what we know about it, and the excuses Bush is putting forward to go to war are not that Saddam is helping Bin Laden but that Saddam is developing WMD. We knew this in 2000. Why didn’t Bush bring it up in his presidential campaign? He could have done it at any time but he chose to wait until August 2002. That helped him in the elections, I don’t see any other reason why wait until autumn 2002.

Bin Laden is probably hiding out in Pakistan. If there was a lot of evidence in that area [against Iraq] we would have heard it already. I’m sure there’s a incriminating evidence against “allies” that we haven’t heard so loudly. There are dozens of dictatorships in the world, potentially irresponsible, that are developing weapons we have no clue about, since they have never allowed inspectors. North Korea is just the most conspicious- they seem to be crying out for attention since they admitted so many programs- practically any dictatorship or potentially irresponsible country is equally dangerous.

But equally importantly, going after Iraq is damaging to the war on terror. It undermines the U.S.‘s credibility. It gives al Qaida another issue to exploit. They are already exploiting the Israel-Palestine issue. The real battle is not about who to go to war with. In the end it comes down to the ideological battle for people’s beliefs. The U.S. has a lot to do here. We should stop giving aid to Israel. There is no point, they are rich and can defend themselves. They have a modern military. If we can’t force the Israelis and Palestinians to come to an agreement, at least we can be impartial and not keep getting dragged into the Israelis’ side. And even larger than that there is the whole culture of the Middle East. It is the largest region with authoritarian governments, and most of them are socialist. The last U.S. president to try to crack down on human rights abuses in the region was Jimmy Carter, and look what he got, the Iranian Revolution. Not surprisingly, none of his successors have wanted to stick their heads into that gulliotine (though there is hope that another, liberal revolution in Iran will occur sometime in the near future). But even so, we have to try to de-radicalize the politics of the region. I think Iran offers the best hope. They have been through the entire radical phase without hampering and they have seen its limitations.

I just wanted to point out I am not in support of a war. When I said that Bush Sr. should have finished the job I wasn’t indicating support for the action he took, I was simple saying that is he was going to start something, he should have finished it. No one likes leaving a job half-done, or completeing it with a half-assed effort.