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09/02/2003 Archived Entry: "It's no wonder we're about to go begging to the UN."
It's no wonder we're about to go begging to the UN.
So, the Great Re-Makers of The Middle East are about to go groveling to the UN, seeing as how they've turned the country to shit and Whistle Ass wants out so he can get re-elected. Maureen Dowd counts up the score so far.
If we review the Bush war council's motives for conquering Iraq, the scorecard looks grim:• We wanted to get rid of Osama and Saddam and the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We didn't. They're replicating and coming at us like cockroaches. According to Newsweek, Osama is in the mountains of Afghanistan, plotting to use biological weapons against America. If all those yuppies can climb Mount Everest, at 29,000 feet, can't we pay some locals to nab Osama at 14,000 feet?
• Bushies thought freeing Iraq from Saddam would be the first step toward the Middle East road map for peace, as well as a guarantee of greater security for Israel. But the road map blew up, and Israel seems farther away from making peace with the Arabs than ever. The U.S. has now pathetically called on Yasir Arafat to use his power to help after pretending for more than a year that he didn't exist.
• Rummy wanted to exorcise the stigma of Vietnam and prove you could use a lighter, faster force. But our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan may not banish our fears of being mired in a place halfway around the world, where we don't understand the language or culture, and where our stretched-thin soldiers are picked off, guerrilla-style.
• The neocons wanted to marginalize the wimpy U.N. by barreling past them into Iraq. Now the Bush administration is crawling back to the U.N., but other nations are suspicious of U.S. security and politics in Iraq.
• Dick Cheney and Rummy wanted to blow off multilateralism and snub what Bushies call "the chocolate-making countries" of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. But faced with untold billions in costs and mounting casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are beginning to see the advantages of sidekicks who know the perils of empire.
• The Pentagon wanted to sideline the C.I.A. and State and run the war and reconstruction itself. Now, overwhelmed, the Pentagon's special operations chiefs were reduced to screening a 1965 movie, "The Battle of Algiers." last week, as David Ignatius reported in The Washington Post, to try to learn why the French suffered a colonial disaster in a guerrilla war against Muslims in Algiers.
Replies: 2 people speak up
if the security council has any sense at all they will laugh in his pompass lying face. no one with any sense would want anything to do with this war, thats why they all opposed it in the first place. the arab world has a thousand year history of fighting off invaders, and they view history in centuries, not years, so they will not stop fighting untill they win, or we kill all of them. you cannot defeat an enemy who is willing to die to kill you. to the western mind, that sort of enemy represents sheer abject horror, and that is why we cant win this war. a man who has nothing left to lose is a very dangerous man. maybe other countries who have actually studied history (other than american history which is mostly fairy tales) will be smart enough to not get involved.
what america really needs is a cabinet level position called
"secretary of history" whos job it is to remind the president of the historical context of his actions. so maybe then we wont make the same damn mistake over and over again. trying to stop terrorism with violence is like trying to pound nails into water, its really easy to do, but it accomplishes nothing, and we should really know that by now.
Posted by justin @ 09/03/2003 10:54 AM NY
Hmmmm, a cabinet-level Dept. of History?. Justin, I think that's a brilliant idea.
I completely agree with you: we have a disastrous lack of historical knowledge in our fair Republic. And the lessons we do learn (i.e., Vietnam) are soon forgotten.
That's the price you pay when you become a nation of amnesiac, happy, little lemmings.
Posted by Metropolitan99 @ 09/03/2003 11:01 AM NY
