What the US is doing in Afghhanistan is wondeful, but insufficient.
You are correct, it is insufficient as we never completed the job and have moved off to tasks assigned by neocon policy hacks.
Second, because its government is amenable to a fair degree of cooperation with the US, and is, aside from the 5th columnists within, opposed to islamism.
I'm sorry I thought we were talking criteria and not whether someone was willing to deal with us for personal gain. Musharaf helped set up the Taliban, and while helping us minimally with lower level figures did nothing to the man that was giving away vital tech (which means he is still free to do so) and may very well be shielding OBL.
Where do you get that he's opposed to militant Islam when he is Islamic and helped put together the Taliban as a force to rule Afghanistan?
including that the US and britian would have had to maintain a permament, very expensive, no fly zone over the Kurdish region so that hussein wouldn't begin a genocide against the Kurds; because a Hussein shorn of sanctions was certain to regain atomic technology and this time complete his efforts at acquiring the bomb; because he would have invaded other oil producing nations again once he had the bomb, creating tremendous instability; because he was cooperating with islamists; because he would have passed some kind of suitcase bomb or worse onto the Islamists; and so on.
The point of an expensive no fly zone is interesting, with the exception that we just had to put in a whole lot more and will likely be paying out for just as long.
There is no reason why we could have kept him sufficiently bottled up militarily and with regard to WMD tech. It is not invade or let him do what he wants, sanctions as they were and let him do as he wants. Those are stock dilemmas. He was contained and his tech disabled. I might add that it is unlikely he would have ever gotten nuclear tech. Well before then, and certainly if he tried to get production going, we'd have justifiably destroyed it.
He couldn't have invaded anyone else as he had no real military to speak of and we could have kept it that way.
He did not work with Islamic terrorist groups, most specifically the ones we are fighting. Our own intel at the time is that he would not work with them and would only start considering giving them aid, including any tech he had, if he were attacked.
it explains why france and Russia refused to allow a vote in favour of the war.
1) They never stopped a vote. Bush never put it forward because there were states beyond just France and Russia that were opposed.
2) Even if they had stopped it, perhaps it was for the reasons they gave before the UN on why it was a bad idea, which coincidentally were proven true after our invasion.
3) Regardless of whether France and Russia had ulterior motives for not attacking Iraq, they turned out right that it was a bad idea and would not go as Bush and Blair predicted.
But he did not get off scott free: That he was removed from the button and can no longer disseminate nuclear tech is a very, very big deal.
Compare/contrast that with us killing 10,000+ innocent people to get at a guy and make sure he's imprisoned so that he cannot do the same thing.
Musharaf's pulling him from a certain office is jack shit. It is getting away scot free. By the way what can stop him from disseminating such info?... he's free.
The US did not help Hussein gas anyone
It takes more than just the gas to gas someone. We helped. We even covered for him when international human rights groups and other nations became outraged at the activities. If you cannot admit those very simple facts, you really ought to just drop out of this debate.
the US does not want to fight an all out war against all the Islamic world. It must choose its targets carefully, and accomplish as much as possible through diplomacy and pressure.
Yeah, choose carefully. That's my position... not Bush's. The Iraq war was "planned" by neocon hacks well before 911 (their papers are printed and publically available). Once 911 occured Bush began to take them seriously and implement what they already wanted to do. That was NOT careful planning based on the realities we were facing. It was based on faulty intel and ideological positions at least 5 years old.
But that is what happened as they realized that an iraqi democracy would be the beginning of their end.
How can it possibly be the beginning of the end for them? They had no place there before, and now they have a foothold for more attacks. That was the beginning of a beginning.
What would stop an anti-US terrorist group from existing in a democratic Iraq?
that does not stop them from committing attacks elsewhere. but it sure makes it harder and limits their options.
How???? By swamping them with indecision at so many more juicy targets to choose from? Look at the situation, we just grew their options and made it easier to attack us... and I might add a whole new group of innocent citizens.
But he was wrong about the US. he thought it would lose its will and withdraw. Instead, the paper tiger proved to be far more than that.
We did lose our will and withdraw. We specifically removed our focus and strength from fighting OBL in Afghanistan, as well as throughout Indonesia, and went to fight Saddam who was a much easier target.
Remember OBL was not Saddam Hussein. 911 was not connected with Saddam Hussein.
At first we started to do the right thing, then we stopped and began doing the wrong thing.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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