what can $237,000,000,000 buy?

[varwoche]

237 billion dollars is the LOW estimate for the Iraq war according to a report by house democrats. Given turn of events since report was produced (Sept 2003), this number may be conservative.
report - pdf (http://www.house.gov/budget_democrats/analyses/iraq_cost_update.pdf)

Imagine this sum of money applied towards peaceful purposes. For instance, I'll bet you could build the mother of all desalination plants for Israel and have enough spare change to completely change the economic landscape in Palestine. Now THAT would be bold geopolitics.

[corplinx]

You are saying we should have gone to war with the PLO instead?

[LucyR]

Originally posted by varwoche
237 billion dollars is the LOW estimate for the Iraq war according to a report by house democrats. Given turn of events since report was produced (Sept 2003), this number may be conservative.
report - pdf (http://www.house.gov/budget_democrats/analyses/iraq_cost_update.pdf)

Imagine this sum of money applied towards peaceful purposes. For instance, I'll bet you could build the mother of all desalination plants for Israel and have enough spare change to completely change the economic landscape in Palestine. Now THAT would be bold geopolitics.

Right. The recent Mars missions were less than a billion, weren’t they? So we can land probes on a distant planet and search for signs of life, that if found would revolutionize our view of ourselves and our position in the universe, and some people say that's a waste of money...

What are we all playing at?

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by LucyR


Right. The recent Mars missions were less than a billion, weren’t they? So we can land probes on a distant planet and search for signs of life, that if found would revolutionize our view of ourselves and our position in the universe, and some people say that's a waste of money...

What are we all playing at?

Being dominated by the military/industrial complex.

[shemp]

Oh come on, the money wasn't "wasted"! A lot of it went toward purchases of new luxury homes and cars by Halliburton execs! I'm sure they'll share those benefits with the familes of all the people killed by the Bush Re-Election War.

[Tricky]

Let's see, this war was to protect us from future terrorist attacks, right? So if about 3000 people were killed in 9-11, then that's about $80,000,000 spent for each person that died.

Could we save more lives by using some of that money for repairing streets, broken signal lights, more traffic cops, "red-light" cameras, or even simply investing in automobile safety technology. Seems like you would get a much better return on your dollar, and you would be working towards stopping a problem that is still killing Americans every day.

[Ladewig]

Imagine this sum of money applied towards peaceful purposes. For instance, I'll bet you could build the mother of all desalination plants for Israel and have enough spare change to completely change the economic landscape in Palestine. Now THAT would be bold geopolitics.

I think it is too early to say that the money was wasted or that the money was not applied to (long-term) peaceful purposes. If a stable democracy not dominated by religious fundemantalists is constructed in Iraq, then the shape of the middle-eastern landscape is changed for the better.

Yes, I understand that such an outcome is, at best, a long shot given our current information, but it is possible and as such should be considered before the money is declared a waste.

[varwoche]

Originally posted by Ladewig


I think it is too early to say that the money was wasted or that the money was not applied to (long-term) peaceful purposes. If a stable democracy not dominated by religious fundemantalists is constructed in Iraq, then the shape of the middle-eastern landscape is changed for the better.

Yes, I understand that such an outcome is, at best, a long shot given our current information, but it is possible and as such should be considered before the money is declared a waste.
I didn't exactly say it was wasted. I certainly wish for the outcome you outline but, like you, consider it a long shot.

[Mr Manifesto]

Originally posted by corplinx
You are saying we should have gone to war with the PLO instead?

I don't know about varwoche (although I think (s)he's saying it could have been spent towards a peace arrangement rather than 'war'), but I reckon you could have spent the money better going after Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda- remember them?

[varwoche]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto
I don't know about varwoche (although I think (s)he's saying it could have been spent towards a peace arrangement rather than 'war'), but I reckon you could have spent the money better going after Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda- remember them?
I believe that the most critical front in the war on terror is the battle for hearts and minds, and view my (inanely idealstic) proposal as a different type of offensive weapon designed for a different type of war.

In terms of the war on terror, the Iraq venture seemed like a non-sequitor at the time. And were it not for the fact that the occupation caused Iraq to become terror central, it would seem even more like a non-sequitor now.

Speculating about mis-spent dollars is is no more than a lament though, because I belong to the "you break it, you own it" school of thought.

[varwoche]

Of course, in order to speculate how the money might have been better spent it is useful to know the $ amount. Apparently the administration is trying to obscure the cost in advance of US elections.

cnn article (http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/21/congress.iraq/)

"They haven't asked for one single penny for next year for Afghanistan and Iraq. Give me a break," Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware said on NBC's "Today" show.

"Why aren't they asking for it? They don't know? We already know it's going to cost at least a minimum of $60 billion to keep the troops there," said Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Biden said that cost does not include any reconstruction funds.

Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska told NBC that the administration needs to "be honest with the Congress, be honest with the American people."

"Every ground squirrel in this country knows that it's going to be $50 billion to $75 billion in additional money required to sustain us in Iraq for this year," said Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which also held hearings on Iraq.

[clk]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this war was about oil. 10-15 years from now, if Iraq has settled down, there will be an incredible amount of oil flowing out of Iraq and into the US. Then we will be able to say: "Screw you, OPEC! You can take your oil and shove it up your ass!". I think the US in the long run will regain all of the money it spent on the Iraq war.

I personally would have taken the $237 billion and put it into alternative fuel research, and established laws that slowly raise the minimum mileage of cars, etc. I would have maybe even started up a few breeder reactors, since they are supposedly quite efficient. That would have saved hundreds of US lives and a heck of alot of trouble.

[Tony]

Originally posted by clk
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this war was about oil. 10-15 years from now, if Iraq has settled down, there will be an incredible amount of oil flowing out of Iraq and into the US. Then we will be able to say: "Screw you, OPEC! You can take your oil and shove it up your ass!". I think the US in the long run will regain all of the money it spent on the Iraq war.


I hope you're right.

I personally would have taken the $237 billion and put it into alternative fuel research, and established laws that slowly raise the minimum mileage of cars, etc. I would have maybe even started up a few breeder reactors, since they are supposedly quite efficient. That would have saved hundreds of US lives and a heck of alot of trouble.

Well I would have used it to build a highspeed national rail system and comprehensive mass tansit systems for our nation's major cities. So there.:p

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by clk
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this war was about oil. 10-15 years from now, if Iraq has settled down, there will be an incredible amount of oil flowing out of Iraq and into the US. Then we will be able to say: "Screw you, OPEC! You can take your oil and shove it up your ass!". I think the US in the long run will regain all of the money it spent on the Iraq war.

I personally would have taken the $237 billion and put it into alternative fuel research, and established laws that slowly raise the minimum mileage of cars, etc. I would have maybe even started up a few breeder reactors, since they are supposedly quite efficient. That would have saved hundreds of US lives and a heck of alot of trouble.


Good ideas clk.

However, I think getting cars running of an ethanol based system would be best.

Ethanol = No Pollution

There was an article in Scientific American about the practicallity of Hydrogen Based Fuel, and how it really isn't that great of an idea for a new fuel source.

I'll post in Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology later.

[toddjh]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
Ethanol = No Pollution

Err...how do you figure? Ethanol is "renewable," in a sense, but it's not pollution-free. On top of the emissions from burning ethanol itself (aldehydes, some nitrates, and still significant levels of hydrocarbons), there's also the pollution created by the power plants and refineries used to create the ethanol in the first place. Remember that it takes more energy to create a gallon of ethanol than you get from burning it. If I recall correctly, there was a scandal recently about ethanol producers creating a lot more pollution than they said they would.

There was an article in Scientific American about the practicallity of Hydrogen Based Fuel, and how it really isn't that great of an idea for a new fuel source.

My money is still on electric. If we could get high-capacity, stable superconductors to store the energy, they could be just as good as internal combustion.

Jeremy

[Michael Redman]

We didn't have the money to spend on something else, we borrowed it. So the best use would be never to have borrowed it in the first place. If we want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for a good cause, we ought to be honest and pay for it up front, rather than burdening our kids with paying for it, plus interest, at a later date.

I bet we could provide a clean, reliable water supply for every person on earth for far less than $237 billion. Think anyone would appreciate that?

[TillEulenspiegel]

what can $237,000,000,000 buy?

232,994,700,000 slim jims.

[Ladewig]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this war was about oil. 10-15 years from now, if Iraq has settled down, there will be an incredible amount of oil flowing out of Iraq and into the US. Then we will be able to say: "Screw you, OPEC! You can take your oil and shove it up your ass!". I think the US in the long run will regain all of the money it spent on the Iraq war.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, there are a lot of factors involved in invading the country and one of the most important was the location of U.S. military bases in the Middle-east. Saudi and Osama and pretty much everyone within 1800 miles wanted the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia. Now that the U.S. has built bases on the coast of Iraq, I'm predicting that the first thing the new government will do is set up a 99-year lease (ala Gitmo Bay) so the U.S. will have a place to dock ships, quarter troops and land airplanes without anyone having any recourse.

[Skeptic]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this war was about oil. 10-15 years from now, if Iraq has settled down, there will be an incredible amount of oil flowing out of Iraq and into the US. Then we will be able to say: "Screw you, OPEC! You can take your oil and shove it up your ass!". I think the US in the long run will regain all of the money it spent on the Iraq war.

I hope you're correct. Which would make an interesting point: suppose the war WAS about oil, and not freedom or democracy or fighting terror. Wouldn't that be a much BETTER justification for a war than any of those idealistic or unclear goals?

Surely, it is a legitimate interest of the USA not to be chained to foreign, often hostile, oil producers, one that is far too important to leave to chance. Oil, for a modern industrial state, is almost as important as water; would anybody object if the war was to ensure enough drinking water for American citizens?

While I don't actually think the war is about oil, I wish it were. Morally, it would be easier to justify it that way to those who are "on the fence".

I personally would have taken the $237 billion and put it into alternative fuel research, and established laws that slowly raise the minimum mileage of cars, etc. I would have maybe even started up a few breeder reactors, since they are supposedly quite efficient. That would have saved hundreds of US lives and a heck of alot of trouble.

That's another issue. Of course, the problem is that most of the "no war for oil!" crowd is also a "no nuclear reactors!" crowd, despite the fact that nuclear power is the only practical solution for oil dependency for the US in the near future, or at least for minimizing the problem (until they find a way to make nuclear-powered cars, that is...). So if it's "wrong" to ensure cheap oil supply and it's ALSO wrong to use nuclear power, what is the USA to do?

[clk]

Originally posted by Ladewig


I've said it before and I'll say it again, there are a lot of factors involved in invading the country and one of the most important was the location of U.S. military bases in the Middle-east. Saudi and Osama and pretty much everyone within 1800 miles wanted the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia. Now that the U.S. has built bases on the coast of Iraq, I'm predicting that the first thing the new government will do is set up a 99-year lease (ala Gitmo Bay) so the U.S. will have a place to dock ships, quarter troops and land airplanes without anyone having any recourse.

I agree that there were many reasons for going to war. However, I think oil was one of the primary, if not the primary reasons for going to war. I don't think we would have gone after Saddam if Iraq did not have any oil.

Originally posted by Skeptic

I hope you're correct. Which would make an interesting point: suppose the war WAS about oil, and not freedom or democracy or fighting terror. Wouldn't that be a much BETTER justification for a war than any of those idealistic or unclear goals?

Surely, it is a legitimate interest of the USA not to be chained to foreign, often hostile, oil producers, one that is far too important to leave to chance. Oil, for a modern industrial state, is almost as important as water; would anybody object if the war was to ensure enough drinking water for American citizens?


I have several problems with going to war for oil:
1. it is a temporary solution
2. it costs us American lives
3. it is very expensive
4. it breeds anti-American sentiment and causes rifts between the US and our allies
5. there is no guarantee it will go well, as evidenced recently

Even if everything goes well in Iraq, we will still be dependent on foreign oil, and that is the problem. As I said before, I think the best way to screw Iraq, OPEC, and Saudi Arabia is to hit them where it hurts- the pocket book. If we were to invest, say, $100 billion on alternative energy resources for power and for vehicles, it would have the following benefits:
1. it creates new industries and fosters innovation
2. it creates new US jobs
3. it slowly decreases our reliance on foreign oil
4. it causes less pollution

In addition to these benefits, it does not have the drawbacks that come with going to war for oil. Granted, there are other benefits to going to war with Iraq, as Ladewig mentioned, but IMO the liabilities outweigh the rewards.

[varwoche]

Originally posted by clk

Even if everything goes well in Iraq, we will still be dependent on foreign oil, and that is the problem. As I said before, I think the best way to screw Iraq, OPEC, and Saudi Arabia is to hit them where it hurts- the pocket book. If we were to invest, say, $100 billion on alternative energy resources for power and for vehicles...
I'm not quite onboard that oil was an important motivation. 237gb buys a lot of oil afterall.

But I strongly agree that fuel conservation is an important aspect of the war on terror -- an aspect that Bush ignores. Here's the really screwed up part: Why (minimally!) doesn't he use the bully pulpit to implore Americans, for god and country, to support the war against terror by reducing fuel consumption?

[michaellee]

originally posted by varwoche
Imagine this sum of money applied towards peaceful purposes. For instance, I'll bet you could build the mother of all desalination plants for Israel and have enough spare change to completely change the economic landscape in Palestine. Now THAT would be bold geopolitics originally posted by Tricky
Could we save more lives by using some of that money for repairing streets, broken signal lights, more traffic cops, "red-light" cameras, or even simply investing in automobile safety technology. Seems like you would get a much better return on your dollar, and you would be working towards stopping a problem that is still killing Americans every day. originally posted by Mr. Manifesto
...but I reckon you could have spent the money better going after Al Qaeda. originally posted by clk
I personally would have taken the $237 billion and put it into alternative fuel research, and established laws that slowly raise the minimum mileage of cars, etc. I would have maybe even started up a few breeder reactors, since they are supposedly quite efficient. That would have saved hundreds of US lives and a heck of alot of trouble. originally posted by Tony
Well I would have used it to build a highspeed national rail system and comprehensive mass tansit systems for our nation's major cities. So there. originally posted by Michael Redman
I bet we could provide a clean, reliable water supply for every person on earth for far less than $237 billion. Think anyone would appreciate that?

Is there anyone in America who even bothers to think that maybe a better suggestion would be for the government to not spend the money AT ALL? At least most of the suggestions involved spending the American taxpaid government dollars in America, but keep on wishing. Because of the citizenry's ever increasing support for the government to tax and spend, tax and spend; be it Republican, Democrat, conservative or liberal, and never reduce the budget, it is becoming clear what our elected officials now plan to do and will be able to pull off.

Read the following three quotes.

"We serve the cause of liberty, and that is, always and everywhere, a cause worth serving."

"We're changing the world. And the world will be better off. . . . there's an historic opportunity here to change the world."

"As the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom. We have an obligation to help feed the hungry . . . we're providing food for the North Korea people who starve. We have an obligation to lead the fight on AIDS, on Africa. And we have an obligation to work toward a more free world. That's our obligation. That is what we have been called to do."

Toss out the U.S. Constitution. Toss out the campaign promises of "smaller government". Toss out more of your hard earned dollars into the federal trough so it can be spent in Africa, North Korea, Iraq, and any damn country George Bush deems fit.

"[President Bush is] the ultimate decision-maker for this country."

The above four quotes are from George W. Bush, made during his press conference on April 13, 2004.

I did not realize the Constitution had been amended, altered and/or re-written recently. The preamble must now say something like:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect World, establish global Justice, insure domestic and foreign Tranquility, provide for the common defense, and the defense of any foreign country in need, promote the general Welfare, and the Welfare of any foreign country with starving or AIDS stricken people, and serve the Causes of Liberty to ourselves and all people of all foreign nations, and our Posterity, and accept the Obligation to free the entire world, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America, and all foreign countries we are called upon as the Greatest Power on Earth."

Go on and vote for Kerry. Vote for Nader. Vote for Bush. Won't make a bit of difference. If the people of the U.S. can accept statements from the President made like those above without raising an eyebrow or even questioning what was said, then all the talk of freeing the world, and providing food and medicine for the world means one thing. The world includes every country except the United States of America.

[clk]

Originally posted by varwoche

I'm not quite onboard that oil was an important motivation. 237gb buys a lot of oil afterall.



But who would you buy the oil from? You'd probably have to buy alot of it from OPEC.

[varwoche]

Originally posted by michaellee
Is there anyone in America who even bothers to think that maybe a better suggestion would be for the government to not spend the money AT ALL?
I accept the premise that there is a war to be waged against an Islamist/terrorist enemy, and that winning it will be costly, but do not see the Iraq war as an effective expenditure (measured in more than $ of course).

[gnome]

Originally posted by Skeptic

I hope you're correct. Which would make an interesting point: suppose the war WAS about oil, and not freedom or democracy or fighting terror. Wouldn't that be a much BETTER justification for a war than any of those idealistic or unclear goals?

Surely, it is a legitimate interest of the USA not to be chained to foreign, often hostile, oil producers, one that is far too important to leave to chance. Oil, for a modern industrial state, is almost as important as water; would anybody object if the war was to ensure enough drinking water for American citizens?

While I don't actually think the war is about oil, I wish it were. Morally, it would be easier to justify it that way to those who are "on the fence".

The problem I have if it really IS a war for oil, and nothing else matters, is this: modern warfare is far too destructive a manner to settle control over natural resources. Especially in our age of nuclear weapons, engaging in reckless wars of conquest can literally endanger human life on the entire planet. It's also contrary to our national character, or at least what we tell our children our national character is. War is supposed to be a last resort--aren't we civilized enough to compete and trade for resources without just killing people because they have oil and we want it? Come on...

I would feel the same way about drinking water. Obviously, if the water were getting so scarce that people were dying of thirst, we would likely fight over it no matter how moral I'd like us to be.

But we're not at that point yet...

What would justify a war, if not material gain? War is justified as a last resort against a direct threat to our own people or allies... to protect our lives and our freedom. What about the lives and freedom of people overseas? That's a long debate. What to do about a country that is abusing its own people? Does its sovereignty trump the good we can do by intervening? If the Iraq war really was about freeing the Iraqis, why didn't we establish this debate? Instead we just went for the "threat" aspect, which in retrospect seems rather trumped up.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Skeptic
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this war was about oil. 10-15 years from now, if Iraq has settled down, there will be an incredible amount of oil flowing out of Iraq and into the US. Then we will be able to say: "Screw you, OPEC! You can take your oil and shove it up your ass!". I think the US in the long run will regain all of the money it spent on the Iraq war.

I hope you're correct. Which would make an interesting point: suppose the war WAS about oil, and not freedom or democracy or fighting terror. Wouldn't that be a much BETTER justification for a war than any of those idealistic or unclear goals?

Surely, it is a legitimate interest of the USA not to be chained to foreign, often hostile, oil producers, one that is far too important to leave to chance. Oil, for a modern industrial state, is almost as important as water; would anybody object if the war was to ensure enough drinking water for American citizens?

While I don't actually think the war is about oil, I wish it were. Morally, it would be easier to justify it that way to those who are "on the fence".

I personally would have taken the $237 billion and put it into alternative fuel research, and established laws that slowly raise the minimum mileage of cars, etc. I would have maybe even started up a few breeder reactors, since they are supposedly quite efficient. That would have saved hundreds of US lives and a heck of alot of trouble.

That's another issue. Of course, the problem is that most of the "no war for oil!" crowd is also a "no nuclear reactors!" crowd, despite the fact that nuclear power is the only practical solution for oil dependency for the US in the near future, or at least for minimizing the problem (until they find a way to make nuclear-powered cars, that is...). So if it's "wrong" to ensure cheap oil supply and it's ALSO wrong to use nuclear power, what is the USA to do?

Just about sums it all up, Skeptic. The US comes first, first and first in all considerations. If it wants oil, hell, it can just find a place that has some oil and take it. I think you just "let the mask slip".

[Tesserat]

1. Feed Africa

2. Build a moon base and call it "City of the Exalted Tesserat"

3. Rebuild Micheal Jackson

[a_unique_person]

You can't do nation building, it's a waste of money. However, nation destruction is quite OK.

[Michael Redman]

Originally posted by michaellee
Is there anyone in America who even bothers to think that maybe a better suggestion would be for the government to not spend the money AT ALL? Originally posted by Michael Redman
We didn't have the money to spend on something else, we borrowed it. So the best use would be never to have borrowed it in the first place.If you're going to quote me, at least quote me in context.

[PygmyPlaidGiraffe]

Originally posted by a_unique_person


Just about sums it all up, Skeptic. The US comes first, first and first in all considerations. If it wants oil, hell, it can just find a place that has some oil and take it. I think you just "let the mask slip".


this never really makes sense to me


How does the US political entity (current administration for eg) or military entity aquire this oil? Is it not, rather, private corperations that develop the oil patches around the world? Not since WWII have nation states moved politically and militariliy mobilised to aquire oil fields for national interest.

Are Exxon, Shell, Elf, Gulf or any of the other multinational companies an extension of the American poliical or military establishments (which are temporary and dynamic at best)?

[epepke]

Originally posted by toddjh
Err...how do you figure? Ethanol is "renewable," in a sense, but it's not pollution-free. On top of the emissions from burning ethanol itself (aldehydes, some nitrates, and still significant levels of hydrocarbons),

Ayup. Not to mention nitrous oxide.

I'd like to see all-ceramic engines developed. Higher temperatures mean a much higher Carnot efficiency.

there's also the pollution created by the power plants and refineries used to create the ethanol in the first place. Remember that it takes more energy to create a gallon of ethanol than you get from burning it.

Actually, it takes way more, to the extent that it takes more petroleum to create a gallon of ethanol than if you just cracked it. This is not an inherent limitation of the idea, just the way things have gone, which is why you don't see gasohol any more.

My money is still on electric. If we could get high-capacity, stable superconductors to store the energy, they could be just as good as internal combustion.

I disagree. I don't want to be in the same county when that superconducting loop gets creamed by an SUV.

[varwoche]

Update: 300 billion and mounting.
article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7684-2005Apr21.html) The core of the measure -- about $75 billion for military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan -- has generated no controversy. That sum will push war and reconstruction costs since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to more than $300 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

[Ziggurat]

None of the proposals put forward here for alternate uses of that money would do ANYTHING about the fundamental problem we faced, namely stopping Islamofascist terrorism. And it's no surprise, since so few people here understand the problem to begin with. Spend it on tracking down Al Quaeda? What does that mean? Invade Iran instead of Iraq, since that's where much of the Al Quaeda leadership is? No, I doubt that's what he had in mind. Build desalination plants? Nope, that doesn't solve the problem either. Poverty is NOT the root cause of terrorism. Water is not the root cause of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Spend it on alternative energy research? Hardly. We can reduce our dependence on oil all we want, but we can't END the world's dependence on it, not anytime soon, regardless of how much money we throw at the problem.

Spend it on winning hearts and minds? Well, believe it or not, that's EXACTLY what we're doing right now. There have been two dominant ideologies in the middle east, Islamism and pan-arabism. Both ideologies are violent, oppressive, and destructive. Both breed terrorism and export violence. And for decades now, there has been no alternative. In fact, it has been inconcievable to most people in the middle east that there COULD be an alternative.

We have crushed both Islamism and pan-arabism, in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively. We have shown, quite conclusively, that both ideas are weak and hollow. Now we are in the process of demonstrating that there is, in fact, an alternative. Democracy in the arab world IS possible. And that is indeed waking up hearts and minds across the region. Walid Jumblatt, a prominent figure in the Lebanese occupation, has a history of quite strident anti-Americanism. But here's an interesting quote from him earlier this year:
"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45575-2005Feb22.html

Saudi Arabia recently had their first elections EVER. The elections were only local, and only for a fraction of the municipal seats. But a taboo has been broken nonetheless, and that is incredibly significant AND positive. Mubarak recently had to back down and allow for multi-candidate elections. They may not end up being anything close to free or fair, but the fact that he even had to make that concession indicates he cannot ignore calls for greater democracy as he once could.

In order to win the war against Islamofacist terrorism, we need to break the myth that there are no alternatives to pan-arabism or Islamism. We need to provide an alternative that the middle east can recognize is better for them. We have that alternative, and it's democracy. But just telling the arab world to become democratic was never going to work. We needed a demonstration. And Iraq is that demonstration.

So what are we getting for our $240 billion? A chance at fixing a region of the world that has been a breeding ground for global violence. Is it guaranteed success? No it isn't. But EVERY alternative I've EVER heard is guaranteed failure. Most alternatives do not even pretend to offer a chance at success, but merely suggest that we not worry about the problem so much. So is it worth it? I'd say hell yes. Especially when you consider that the 9/11 attacks did an estimated $500 billion in damages to our economy.

[BPSCG]

1) $234 billion to free Iraq.
2) As many thermonuclear warheads and delivery systems for North Korea as $1 billion will buy.
3) As many thermonuclear warheads and delivery systems for Iran as $1 billion will buy.
4) As much opulence as $1 billion will buy me.

:D

[kimiko]

Originally posted by Ladewig
I've said it before and I'll say it again, there are a lot of factors involved in invading the country and one of the most important was the location of U.S. military bases in the Middle-east. Saudi and Osama and pretty much everyone within 1800 miles wanted the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia. Now that the U.S. has built bases on the coast of Iraq, I'm predicting that the first thing the new government will do is set up a 99-year lease (ala Gitmo Bay) so the U.S. will have a place to dock ships, quarter troops and land airplanes without anyone having any recourse. We didn't need Iraq for that, we already have a presence in Qatar. Al Thani even wants us there, which the Iraqis may not in a year or two.

Edited to add: And Kuwait, I can't believe I forgot them.

[kimiko]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
We have that alternative, and it's democracy. But just telling the arab world to become democratic was never going to work. We needed a demonstration. And Iraq is that demonstration. Why wasn't Kuwait that demonstration? We "freed" them without lifting a finger to press for democracy. From the CIA World Factbook: Suffrage: adult males who have been naturalized for 30 years or more or have resided in Kuwait since before 1920 and their male descendants at age 21; only 10% of all citizens are eligible to vote; formation of political parties is illegal; elections: none; the monarch is hereditary; prime minister and deputy prime ministers appointed by the monarch

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by kimiko
Why wasn't Kuwait that demonstration? We "freed" them without lifting a finger to press for democracy.

Because Bush Sr., unlike W., still subscribed to "realist" notions of foreign policy and didn't consider democratization as a priority for the US. Bush Sr. did not see the coming storm, and so did not understand how that "realist" policy was failing in the region. Few people did back then. And so opportunities were missed.

Edit to add: but it wouldn't have worked anyways. Kuwait is too small, and was never much of an example of pan-arabism to begin with. Installing democracy in Kuwait would not have done anything to dispell the myth of pan-arabism as a viable alternative. It would have been easy for the wider arab world to ignore what went on there.

[kimiko]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
Because Bush Sr., unlike W., still subscribed to "realist" notions of foreign policy and didn't consider democratization as a priority for the US. Bush Sr. did not see the coming storm, and so did not understand how that "realist" policy was failing in the region. Few people did back then. And so opportunities were missed. Are you saying Bush Jr had no opportunity to use his position to ask for democracy from Kuwait? He could have said they were removing all US military presence until that happened, and with Iraq sitting right there, it would have been an incredible incentive for change.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by kimiko
Are you saying Bush Jr had no opportunity to use his position to ask for democracy from Kuwait?

No, I'm not. But read my update: democratizing Kuwait would not have accomplished much for the broader region.

[kimiko]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
No, I'm not. But read my update: democratizing Kuwait would not have accomplished much for the broader region. Maybe, but we could have tried that first, and even if it didn't work and we had to invade someplace, we'd already have another arab democracy. As it is, Kuwait still isn't, and is never even mentioned in Bush's speeches. Don't Kuwaitis deserve democracy and freedom too?

[Beerina]

Originally posted by clk
I agree that there were many reasons for going to war. However, I think oil was one of the primary, if not the primary reasons for going to war. I don't think we would have gone after Saddam if Iraq did not have any oil.



I have several problems with going to war for oil:
1. it is a temporary solution
2. it costs us American lives
3. it is very expensive
4. it breeds anti-American sentiment and causes rifts between the US and our allies
5. there is no guarantee it will go well, as evidenced recently
[/B]

It's eerie how accurately Frank Herbert's "Dune" (the book) got it about wars for oil in the mideast. A desert planet, sole source for the method of fast transportation. Yet there, it's water that's very expensive.

And the most eerie thing: As ungodly profitable as Dune was, the war to retake the planet would cost the Emperor something like 30 years of profits from it. Which was balls-on for Gulf War I.

[Beerina]

Sickeningly, had we imposed democracy in Kuwait, it probably would have made people in the Middle East madder at us than leaving in a dictatorial monarchy.

At least at first.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by kimiko
Maybe, but we could have tried that first, and even if it didn't work and we had to invade someplace, we'd already have another arab democracy. As it is, Kuwait still isn't, and is never even mentioned in Bush's speeches. Don't Kuwaitis deserve democracy and freedom too?

It's rather less pressing than other issues. And you're falling for a sort of absolutist logic that if we aren't doing every single thing according to a principle, we ought to reject that principle.

Kuwait has limited democracy already, as you yourself pointed out. Yes, we should push for more democracy there, and we may very well be doing so. But partial democracy is already worlds apart from places like Syria or Saddam's Iraq. The Kuwaiti government isn't nearly as oppressive as many of the surrounding countries, and that's not a coincidence either. So naturally it's going to be lower on our list of priorities. Yes, Kuwaitis deserve democracy and freedom. But they've already got a degree of it, and they have internal mechanisms to push for more already. Most of the arab world doesn't even have that, and so those countries that don't must be the center of our attention and efforts.

But I don't think what you proposed would have been exactly the appropriate approach anyways. What, after all, would we do if they refused? Are you really suggesting that you would risk letting Saddam, a primary troublemaker, off his leash just to try to pressure Kuwait, a minor player in the region that's already closer to what we want than its neighbors? You think that couldn't have backfired, that they couldn't turn around and play the agrieved party, and start smuggling oil for Saddam in exchange for his protection? That's a very high-stakes game to play for such low rewards, which could have left pan-arabism even stronger than before and left us with even fewer options to counter it.

[kimiko]

Originally posted by Beerina
Sickeningly, had we imposed democracy in Kuwait, it probably would have made people in the Middle East madder at us than leaving in a dictatorial monarchy.

At least at first. In a manner similiar to how the Iraqis were madder at us at first when we invaded?

[kimiko]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
It's rather less pressing than other issues. And you're falling for a sort of absolutist logic that if we aren't doing every single thing according to a principle, we ought to reject that principle. Democracy and freedom in one corner of the middle east is less pressing?? It's our current rationale for being there; and with forethought, we could have accomplished that one first. I'm not 'falling' for anything. If Bush says we are combatting terror by democratizing the ME, then I will analyze our actions according to that goal to determine if it is true. I've finally bought Sharansky's book and started reading it, so I'm very eager to examine our actions from a spreading democracy perspective.

Kuwait has limited democracy already, as you yourself pointed out. Yes, we should push for more democracy there, and we may very well be doing so. But partial democracy is already worlds apart from places like Syria or Saddam's Iraq. The Kuwaiti government isn't nearly as oppressive as many of the surrounding countries, and that's not a coincidence either. So naturally it's going to be lower on our list of priorities. Yes, Kuwaitis deserve democracy and freedom. But they've already got a degree of it, and they have internal mechanisms to push for more already. Most of the arab world doesn't even have that, and so those countries that don't must be the center of our attention and efforts. The CIA calls them a "nominal constitutional monarchy". They are a constitutional monarchy in name only. 10% suffrage with political parties being illegal is almost meaningless in terms of democracy. I disagree with your assessment of having to do the harder areas first.

But I don't think what you proposed would have been exactly the appropriate approach anyways. What, after all, would we do if they refused? Are you really suggesting that you would risk letting Saddam, a primary troublemaker, off his leash just to try to pressure Kuwait, a minor player in the region that's already closer to what we want than its neighbors? You think that couldn't have backfired, that they couldn't turn around and play the agrieved party, and start smuggling oil for Saddam in exchange for his protection? That's a very high-stakes game to play for such low rewards, which could have left pan-arabism even stronger than before and left us with even fewer options to counter it. They wouldn't refuse, it would be their death. Saddam demonstrated his wishes before, there is no reason to think he would want cooperation instead of control the second time around.

Fact- Bush claims we will combat terror through democratizing the Middle East. Fact- every free country supposedly makes us all safer in that view. So, why pass up an easy and inexpensive opportunity? And for the people of Kuwait, when will we decide they finally deserve democracy? And how long will they have to wait?

[Number Six]

There's something I've never understood about the "the war is for oil" stuff. If the goal was to keep oil flowing cheaply then why have a war instead of not? And for that matter, why have Gulf War I instead of peace? Saddam wasn't trying to hog all the oil so that he could deprive the west of it, rather he was trying to hog all the oil so that he'd be the one getting the oil revenues.

If it were an Islamic fundamentalist government that was trying to get all the oil and then deprive the infidels of it then I'd be more likely to believe that the war was just for oil. But the oil in Kuwait and Iraq and Saudia Arabia was going to be sold (not given) to the west no matter who ruled there (unless perhaps it's Islamic fundamentalists ruling there). Am I missing something?

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Beerina
It's eerie how accurately Frank Herbert's "Dune" (the book) got it about wars for oil in the mideast. A desert planet, sole source for the method of fast transportation. Yet there, it's water that's very expensive.

I really like Dune, but if you want to read it as an alegory for the middle east (plenty of reason to), there's a few things he got absolutely wrong, too, that are rather central to the story. In his books, the Fremen had been made strong by the harshness of their living conditions. Supposedly the Sardaukar were also bred as incredibly tough fighters by similarly harsh conditions. But conditions in the middle east have not bred strong people. Arab militaries are notoriously bad, and lose wars consistently. Arab societies are weak, and cannot compete on a global scale, and they constantly blame others for their own failings. There is nothing of the fremen independence and self-suficiency in the general arab world. Quite the reverse: they are entirely dependent not only on oil (the arab world only exports oil, mosques, violence, and refugees), but even on western technology and expertise to maintain their oil industries.

But here's another interesting tidbit: the Tleilaxu and their axolotl tanks are pretty much the epitome of Islamist mysogyny taken to its logical extreme. Of course, the Tleilaxu were technologically advanced, which is also a far cry from the modern arab world.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by kimiko
I disagree with your assessment of having to do the harder areas first.

You misunderstand me. We did NOT do the hardest part first. Afghanistan was easier than Iraq, and we did that before Iraq. Dealing with Iran will be harder than with Iraq (I don't think we should invade, so our options are much more limited). No, it's not about doing the hard part first at all. It's about striking at the center of the problem. Kuwait is at the periphery.

They wouldn't refuse, it would be their death. Saddam demonstrated his wishes before, there is no reason to think he would want cooperation instead of control the second time around.

Why do you think they couldn't pick up another protector? Say, invite Chinese troops to protect them? China's always eager to expand its influence in oil-rich regions. Frankly, we don't know how they would respond - I've given two possible options, but I'm sure there are plenty of others. But it's a bad idea to push them on an issue where they have plenty of possible responses that would backfire on us.

Fact- Bush claims we will combat terror through democratizing the Middle East. Fact- every free country supposedly makes us all safer in that view. So, why pass up an easy and inexpensive opportunity? And for the people of Kuwait, when will we decide they finally deserve democracy? And how long will they have to wait?

You're making an awfully big assumption that it's easy to make Kuwait democratic. I see no evidence for that. Things aren't that bad there for the average citizen (in contrast to Iraq under Saddam, or Syria under Assad, or Iran under the mullahs), so it would be quite easy to portray overt, direct pressure as imperialist ambitions on our part. Twist their arm too hard and nationalist sentiments are easy to use as a counter. It's really not as easy as you suppose. The way to approach Kuwait is to constantly give support to domestic democractic movements, to insist that they be treated fairly by the government. And it's quite likely that we're doing stuff along those lines - it's not headline-grabbing stuff. But that's a long-term project. Results won't come overnight. Short of overthrowing the monarchy (hardly jstifiable when they're not particularly unpopular among their own citizens, they're not especially repressive, and they don't have a history of aggression towards their neighbors or us), there's really nothing we can do to force change overnight.

[kimiko]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
You're making an awfully big assumption that it's easy to make Kuwait democratic. I see no evidence for that. Things aren't that bad there for the average citizen (in contrast to Iraq under Saddam, or Syria under Assad, or Iran under the mullahs), so it would be quite easy to portray overt, direct pressure as imperialist ambitions on our part. Twist their arm too hard and nationalist sentiments are easy to use as a counter. It's really not as easy as you suppose. The way to approach Kuwait is to constantly give support to domestic democractic movements, to insist that they be treated fairly by the government. "Things aren't that bad" isn't a reason to be denied democracy and freedom. Removing military presence is not "overt, direct pressure". It is the threat posed by Iraq which would have provided all the pressure. We twisted Iraq's arm, and got nationalist sentiments and foreign terrorists as a result, but the conservatives aren't concerned with that, only with ultimate success. We are supporting Kuwait's government as it exists right now, without regard to their lack of democratic representation.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by kimiko
"Things aren't that bad" isn't a reason to be denied democracy and freedom.

I'm not talking about denying anyone democracy. What I'm saying is that the steps you propose we should have taken would not have helped in the bigger picture. We cannot guarantee that such pressure would have democratized Kuwait (no answer to the possibility of picking up China as a protector, I notice, and they're not exactly in the democracy-promotion business). It would have gained us nothing in the broader context of democratising the rest of the middle east (why would Assad care if Kuwait became democratic? That poses no threat to his Ba'athist regime). And it WOULD have made removing Saddam that much harder to do. It would limit our options, not expand them. Not a good way to fight a war.

Removing military presence is not "overt, direct pressure". It is the threat posed by Iraq which would have provided all the pressure.

Don't be naive. If we threaten to remove troops, then that's overt and direct pressure. We're threatening to feed Kuwait to the wolves. Doesn't matter that we're not the wolves, they're still likely to get pissed at us for making such threats. And would we really be willing to follow through on such a threat? Because you cannot make a threat that you are not ready to carry out, or you weaken yourself considerably.

We twisted Iraq's arm, and got nationalist sentiments and foreign terrorists as a result, but the conservatives aren't concerned with that, only with ultimate success.

Your comparison doesn't work. The existing Kuwaiti government can act as a focus for nationalist sentiment, and can use that nationalism to oppose any change in the status quo. But the status quo in Iraq was hated. Once we threw out Saddam, there was no central power which could exploit nationalism against us. Sunni insurgents could certainly rally around concepts of Sunni nationalism, but that didn't play well with the Shia or the Kurds, who had plenty of reason to despise the prior regime. Sadr tried it too, but overplayed his hand and got checked by Sistani. Now, the emerging sense of nationalism is largely in support of the newly elected government. And that's a good thing. We are no longer the primary offenders of that nationalist pride, the terrorists are. They look at these suicide bombers funded from Ba'athist remnants hiding out in Syria, they hear a Saudi (Osama) telling a Jordanian (Zarqawi) to keep killing Iraqis, and the enemy they see is not us, it's the terrorists. We are winning, and we are winning because we have turned this war into a war between the terrorists and ordinary arabs, and we are empowering those ordinary arabs to stand up to the terrorists.

But there is no such dynamic in Kuwait. The current regime is not really hated by the general public. Internal tensions aren't nearly so strong. The status quo is bearable. Under these circumstances, pushing for change from the outside simply doesn't work the same way.

[Disco]

Originally posted by TillEulenspiegel
what can $237,000,000,000 buy?

232,994,700,000 slim jims.

I thought Linda said you were dead?

:confused:

MHB

Edit: sorry for the derail, folks

[kimiko]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
What I'm saying is that the steps you propose we should have taken would not have helped in the bigger picture. So you disagree with Sharansky's contention that "freedom anywhere will make the world safer everywhere? (no answer to the possibility of picking up China as a protector, I notice, and they're not exactly in the democracy-promotion business). I didn't comment because it is ludicrous. China doesn't have the resources to move the necessary manpower to Kuwait to protect it. And the vacume between an American pullout and a China move-in would have given Saddam all the opportunity he needed. Still, there is no reason to think China would want to take on a protectorate. There is more likelihood to the prospect of democratizing Kuwait through US pressure as we already had an 'in', than in assuming China would be able to fill our gap.
It would have gained us nothing in the broader context of democratising the rest of the middle east Jumblatt can answer that for you: "But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Kuwait would have one million+ voting with full suffrage. Or is freedom and democracy for only a million just not that inspiring? And it WOULD have made removing Saddam that much harder to do. It would limit our options, not expand them. Not a good way to fight a war. Why? Because getting democracies to cooperate with us is harder than bribing autocrats? Could that be motivation not to "free" Kuwaitis? Because giving them their own voice wouldn't necessarily be to our interests? But the status quo in Iraq was hated. Once we threw out Saddam, there was no central power which could exploit nationalism against us. They had no problem seeing us as the invading foreigners (with hints of Crusade religious overtones). They have an identity beyond simply ethnic tensions. They had a regional identity before the current government, and one that went back to ancient times and continues today. But there is no such dynamic in Kuwait. The current regime is not really hated by the general public. Internal tensions aren't nearly so strong. The status quo is bearable. Under these circumstances, pushing for change from the outside simply doesn't work the same way. So their democracy can wait for a rainy day. Ok.

[clk]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
None of the proposals put forward here for alternate uses of that money would do ANYTHING about the fundamental problem we faced, namely stopping Islamofascist terrorism.


I don't see how invading Iraq helps us fight terrorists. If anything, we have created a new hotbed of terrorism in Iraq. Iraq is now more dangerous than Israel/Palestine.


And it's no surprise, since so few people here understand the problem to begin with. Spend it on tracking down Al Quaeda? What does that mean?


It means providing more troops and resources on the ground in Afghanistan to find Al Queda/Taliban leadership instead of diverting funds from Afghanistan into Iraq.



Spend it on alternative energy research? Hardly. We can reduce our dependence on oil all we want, but we can't END the world's dependence on it, not anytime soon, regardless of how much money we throw at the problem.


The goal is not to completely end the dependence on oil, just to reduce it to the point where we can supply our own oil instead of depending on countries that support terrorists. If we can stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia and other Mid East countries, it will cripple their economy and force them to change their economic and social structure. If they don't have any more money, then the terrorists have lost a major source of funding. I have outlined before what I think Bush should have done instead of invading Iraq:
1. Use international support that we had after 9/11 to pressure middle eastern countries towards social reform.
2. Give countries like Saudi Arabia an ultimatum: either reform your country or we will stop purchasing oil from you in 10 years. Also threaten economic sanctions. Tell them that if they agree to reform, they will have our support.
3. Launch a huge government project (like the Manhattan project) that focuses on alternative fuel research. Impose fuel economy standards on automakers. It's not farfetched, we already have hybrid cars that get excellent mileage. We just need to make them more popular.

Faced with international pressure and the prospect of a huge economic depression, I think countries like Saudi Arabia would relent and agree to slowly reform their societies towards religious moderation.




Now we are in the process of demonstrating that there is, in fact, an alternative. Democracy in the arab world IS possible. And that is indeed waking up hearts and minds across the region.


I don't think we are capturing Islamic hearts with our actions in Iraq. I think the vast majority of Muslims disagree strongly with the war.


Saudi Arabia recently had their first elections EVER. The elections were only local, and only for a fraction of the municipal seats. But a taboo has been broken nonetheless, and that is incredibly significant AND positive. Mubarak recently had to back down and allow for multi-candidate elections. They may not end up being anything close to free or fair, but the fact that he even had to make that concession indicates he cannot ignore calls for greater democracy as he once could.


How do you know these events were in any way tied to Iraqi voting?


In order to win the war against Islamofacist terrorism, we need to break the myth that there are no alternatives to pan-arabism or Islamism. We need to provide an alternative that the middle east can recognize is better for them.

We could have done this with what I proposed. It would have saved us a few hundred billion dollars, thousands of US lives, and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. It would have strengthened our economy, and we would still have global respect.

[kimiko]

Originally posted by clk
1. Use international support that we had after 9/11 to pressure middle eastern countries towards social reform.
2. Give countries like Saudi Arabia an ultimatum: either reform your country or we will stop purchasing oil from you in 10 years. Also threaten economic sanctions. Tell them that if they agree to reform, they will have our support.
3. Launch a huge government project (like the Manhattan project) that focuses on alternative fuel research. Impose fuel economy standards on automakers. It's not farfetched, we already have hybrid cars that get excellent mileage. We just need to make them more popular. This is a really great idea. I know Kerry mentioned investing in alternative fuel research, but of course, we had already invaded at that point, so it wouldn't have saved us all the money and lives from the invasion. I don't think Bush ever would have been so forward thinking due to the large numbers of his family and inner circle who made money on oil. There's no way anyone would have approved 237 billion, but even a fraction of that would fund a lot of research.

Did you read Sharansky's book? Your approach sounds like it would fit his ideal.

[clk]

Originally posted by kimiko
This is a really great idea. I know Kerry mentioned investing in alternative fuel research, but of course, we had already invaded at that point, so it wouldn't have saved us all the money and lives from the invasion. I don't think Bush ever would have been so forward thinking due to the large numbers of his family and inner circle who made money on oil. There's no way anyone would have approved 237 billion, but even a fraction of that would fund a lot of research.

Did you read Sharansky's book? Your approach sounds like it would fit his ideal.

Never read Sharansky's book, though I'll look into it, thank you for the recommendation.
I saw an interview on the Daily Show recently that piked my interest. Jon Stewart interviewed Thomas Friedman, and Friedman had the same idea about launching a national project to break our dependence on foreign oil. Friedman suggested that the President could also do something radical, such as trade in his limo for a Toyota Prius. Such a move would inspire other Americans to conserve energy and fuel.
I don't think this idea is new, many people proposed a similar plan after 9/11. It is a shame Gore did not become President. Given that he was an environmentalist, I think he likely would have engaged such a plan instead of invading Iraq.

[69dodge]

Originally posted by ooh_child
I thought Linda said you were dead?

:confused:Yeah, that confused me too. But look at the date. He posted it a year ago.

[a_unique_person]

I said from the start, it would have been easier and cheaper just to pay the Iraqi people the cost of the war to ditch Saddam and hold elections. Currently, it works out to about $12,000 American for every man, women and child in Iraq. I think the whole issue would have been well and truly over peacefully long ago if this had been done.

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Originally posted by varwoche
237 billion dollars is the LOW estimate for the Iraq war according to a report by house democrats. Given turn of events since report was produced (Sept 2003), this number may be conservative.
report - pdf (http://www.house.gov/budget_democrats/analyses/iraq_cost_update.pdf)

Imagine this sum of money applied towards peaceful purposes. For instance, I'll bet you could build the mother of all desalination plants for Israel and have enough spare change to completely change the economic landscape in Palestine. Now THAT would be bold geopolitics.

Well, to some people (Im not convinced but it doesnt sound implausible), the money was an investment. Control Iraq and on the long run you can control the whole area, this means american industry controlling the good old oil.

I bet there is more money here than what was invested.

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Originally posted by Number Six
There's something I've never understood about the "the war is for oil" stuff. If the goal was to keep oil flowing cheaply then why have a war instead of not? And for that matter, why have Gulf War I instead of peace? Saddam wasn't trying to hog all the oil so that he could deprive the west of it, rather he was trying to hog all the oil so that he'd be the one getting the oil revenues.

If it were an Islamic fundamentalist government that was trying to get all the oil and then deprive the infidels of it then I'd be more likely to believe that the war was just for oil. But the oil in Kuwait and Iraq and Saudia Arabia was going to be sold (not given) to the west no matter who ruled there (unless perhaps it's Islamic fundamentalists ruling there). Am I missing something?

Who is profiting, from now, with business there? I read, somewhere, that american companies have juicy contracts...

[clk]

Originally posted by Bodhi Dharma Zen

I bet there is more money here than what was invested.

I used to think this too, but now I am not so sure. 200 billion dollars is just too much money. I only wish Bush had been right. If the war had cost under 100 billion, as the Bush administration had expected, then I think we could have gotten our money back assuming everything had gone as planned. It would have been spectacular:
1. American troops quickly storm Iraq and gain control within a month.
2. Iraqis warmly welcome US troops.
3. Saddam's regime falls quickly.
4. A pro-US democracy is quickly set up and functional.
5. The new Iraqi government privatizes Iraqi oil and opens it up to US companies.
6. Most of Iraq's oil starts coming into the US for a rate lower than what OPEC charges.
7. New oil fields are found and quickly exploited.

If the above would have gone as planned, then we could have easily broken our ties to OPEC within 15-20 years. It could still happen, but it will take a lot longer. Iraq contains 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. If we can get our hands on that, it will be a boon for our economy and foreign policy as well as being a blow to the terrorists.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by kimiko
So you disagree with Sharansky's contention that "freedom anywhere will make the world safer everywhere?

You're smarter than that. You don't need to resort to intentionally mischaracterizing my position. This is a tough fight, and we can't do everything we would like to do. We have to set priorities. And Kuwait was frankly not a priority. Nothing you have argued indicates otherwise.

Jumblatt can answer that for you: "But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Kuwait would have one million+ voting with full suffrage. Or is freedom and democracy for only a million just not that inspiring? Why?

Yes, quite frankly it WOULDN'T be as inspiring. Why is this not obvious? In the eyes of the arab world, Kuwait isn't a suffering nation. Democracy in such a place would be viewed as nice and all, but easily dismissed as just a luxury they can afford because they've got the US as their sugar daddy and because they're so wealthy, but useless for those countries that don't have it so well. Iraq is another story completely. It suffered from decades of the worst arab dictatorship. To turn it around, to make things better not with Islamism (the supposed only alternative) but with democracy, that MEANS something. If it can be done there, why can't it be done everywhere else in the region? What excuse can Mubarak offer to not democratise if it works in Iraq? But it working in Kuwait is far too easily dismissed.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
You're smarter than that. You don't need to resort to intentionally mischaracterizing my position. This is a tough fight, and we can't do everything we would like to do. We have to set priorities. And Kuwait was frankly not a priority. Nothing you have argued indicates otherwise.


You appear to be lacking some moral clarity here.

[Kerberos]

Originally posted by kimiko

They wouldn't refuse, it would be their death. Saddam demonstrated his wishes before, there is no reason to think he would want cooperation instead of control the second time around.
They would refuse and it wouldn't be their death. For the US to hand Kuwait to Iraq on a silver platter would be very, very dumb, the US knows it and Kuwait knows you know it. They'd simply have called your bluff, and it would have been a bluff. Applying pressure is all well and good, but you need to make credible threats if you expect them to have any effect, making clearly empty threats aren't going to impress anybody.

[varwoche]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
None of the proposals put forward here for alternate uses of that money would do ANYTHING about the fundamental problem we faced, namely stopping Islamofascist terrorism. And it's no surprise, since so few people here understand the problem to begin with. Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

I'd like to know if you have read Imperial Hubris written by Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA bin Laden department and arguably the world's leading expert on A-Q. I highly recommend it.

(This does not mean that Scheuer endorsed the specifics of my monday morning quarterbacking -- he didn't.)

From a position of extreme authority, Scheuer makes strong arguments on certain general points that you dismiss, namely: (1) importance of hearts & minds and how badly the US has bumbled it, (2) importance of tracking down A-Q immediately and how badly the US bumbled it, (3) importance of US energy indepdence as it relates to WOT, and (4) massive foolishness of Iraq war as it relates to WOT.

Another of his key points is that the Israel/Palestine conflict is a central issue.

(On point 4, I don't know if Scheuer has revised his views based on intervening events.)

As to my opinion, at the time I wrote the original post I considered the notion that the war in Iraq would lead to a sea change in the mddle east as hallucinogenic. I have altered my opinion based on new facts. I'm still dubious though.

The reason I'm dubious is because I view Israel/Palestine as a core issue. Despite some signs of hope, I'm not yet seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

[Mycroft]

Originally posted by kimiko
Why wasn't Kuwait that demonstration? We "freed" them without lifting a finger to press for democracy. From the CIA World Factbook:

Because Kuwait is a benevolent dictatorship and it's not likely to improve the lives of its citizenry to force a regime change. Further, Kuwaiti citizens tend to be very well educated and enjoy a high degree of freedoms anyway, and it’s very likely in time they will have democratic reforms without our intervention.

[kimiko]

Originally posted by Kerberos
They would refuse and it wouldn't be their death. For the US to hand Kuwait to Iraq on a silver platter would be very, very dumb, the US knows it and Kuwait knows you know it. They'd simply have called your bluff, and it would have been a bluff. Applying pressure is all well and good, but you need to make credible threats if you expect them to have any effect, making clearly empty threats aren't going to impress anybody. The problem is they have more power in the relationship, and they know it. We need their oil, so we will be spending money there regardless of what they do domestically. They get US military protection and to do as they please regarding human rights.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by clk
I don't see how invading Iraq helps us fight terrorists. If anything, we have created a new hotbed of terrorism in Iraq. Iraq is now more dangerous than Israel/Palestine.


We have created a battleground in Iraq. Terrorists MUST fight there, because if we succeed, they will have been dealt a terrible blow. They know this very well, which is why they are putting so much of their effort there, but too many people in the west, including you, seem to be unaware of how big a defeat for them our success would be. That we have brought the fight to them should not be viewed as a step backwards. That's like thinking Normandy was a mistake because more soldiers were being killed by Nazis during the invasion than before. That's not how war works.

It means providing more troops and resources on the ground in Afghanistan to find Al Queda/Taliban leadership instead of diverting funds from Afghanistan into Iraq.

The Taliban are not the problem anymore. Al Quaeda leadership is not IN Afghanistan anymore. And the real war extends far beyond EITHER organization. We could kill every single member of Al Quaeda and we'd still be facing an Islamofascist threat.

The goal is not to completely end the dependence on oil, just to reduce it to the point where we can supply our own oil instead of depending on countries that support terrorists. If we can stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia and other Mid East countries, it will cripple their economy and force them to change their economic and social structure.

And if frogs had wings, they wouldn't bump their butts when they hopped. First off, this goal probably cannot be achieved (and where are all the "peace" activists demanding we open more nuclear power plants?). Secondly, we don't even get most of our oil imports from the middle east. Third, oil is fungible: it doesn't matter if we stop buying completely, other countries will have to continue. Most of the oil from the Persian Gulf goes to Asian countries. There is NOTHING that we could possibly do that would keep them from demanding, and paying, for middle eastern oil. And fourth, crippling their economies won't force them to change anything. They've been crippled for decades as it is. We ruined the economy of Iraq with sanctions: how'd that pressure work out for getting him to reform?

I have outlined before what I think Bush should have done instead of invading Iraq:
1. Use international support that we had after 9/11 to pressure middle eastern countries towards social reform.

I keep hearing things like this. But what form, exactly, would that pressure take? Threaten them with UN resolutions? That's never worked. Threaten them with not buying oil? That never works either: sombody will always be willing to buy, too many countries depend on their oil, that's simply not possible. Threaten them with economic sanctions? Nope. Again, too many countries would simply be unwilling to play ball. The international "support" you imagined we had never existed to the extent you thought. Especially since much of the world can't even see that the lack of democracy is at the heart of the problem, and significant portions of it (including two veto-weilding members of the security council) are quite undemocratic themselves and so have no reason to back up a democratization push.

2. Give countries like Saudi Arabia an ultimatum: either reform your country or we will stop purchasing oil from you in 10 years. Also threaten economic sanctions. Tell them that if they agree to reform, they will have our support.

That's laughable. Oil is fungible. We can stop buying, but we can't keep others from buying. All that could ever possibly accomplish is shifting who buys oil from where, but really, what do you think that would accomplish? You think they'd take our threats seriously? Of course not.

3. Launch a huge government project (like the Manhattan project) that focuses on alternative fuel research. Impose fuel economy standards on automakers. It's not farfetched, we already have hybrid cars that get excellent mileage. We just need to make them more popular.

Hardly. Again, this is just wishful thinking. I'd like improvements in gas mileage, and they are achievable, but they don't change the fundamental equation. Hybrid gas mileage isn't that much better. The replacement rate for vehicles on the road isn't high enough, and energy gets used for so many things besides cars. None of these things has any real chance of having near-term impact - you're talking a decade at least before you even see SIGNS of an impact. That's too long to wait. And in that time, China's increasing energy demands are going to outstrip any possible savings we could achieve. So the problem can't be solved this way anyways.

Faced with international pressure and the prospect of a huge economic depression, I think countries like Saudi Arabia would relent and agree to slowly reform their societies towards religious moderation.

Boy, are you disconnected from reality. "International pressure" is meaningless. Economic depression? They've had that for decades, and the situation isn't improving. The poorest middle eastern country there was, Afghanistan under the Taliban, wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to moderate their religious position. No, I'm afraid it's quite obvious that you REALLY don't understand the problem if you think that economic pressure can get middle-east tyrants to relax their grip on power.

I don't think we are capturing Islamic hearts with our actions in Iraq. I think the vast majority of Muslims disagree strongly with the war.

That doesn't matter. The vast majority of germans disagreed with our conquest of Germany in WWII. What matters isn't what they thought of the war, but what happens in the aftermath. Do Iraqis seize the chance for democracy? Does the wider arab world recognize thatdemocracy is working for Iraqis? Do they start to demand such rights for themselves? THESE are the important questions. If these answers come out right (and everything I've seen suggests things are moving in the right direction), it really doesn't matter what they think of how we got to that end game. I can deal with an entire middle east that hates us, if they hate us the same way the French and Germans do.

How do you know these events were in any way tied to Iraqi voting?

Because after decades of political stagnation, I have a hard time believing that all these essentially simultaneous moves towards democracy are all coincidences. And because such people as Jumblatt, a Lebanese oposition figure whom I quoted above, tell us rather explicitly that the Iraqi elections were an inspiration for their own pushes for democracy.

We could have done this with what I proposed.

No, we could not have. "International pressure" is meaningless to dictatorships. It is impossible to break the world's dependence on oil. Deteriorating economies have never in the past pushed arab countries towards political reform. In short, your proposals are pure fantasy.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by varwoche
I'd like to know if you have read Imperial Hubris written by Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA bin Laden department and arguably the world's leading expert on A-Q. I highly recommend it.

I'm aware of it, but no, I haven't read it.

From a position of extreme authority, Scheuer makes strong arguments on certain general points that you dismiss, namely: (1) importance of hearts & minds and how badly the US has bumbled it,

I don't dismiss this at all. Rather, I dismiss the idea that short term improvements should be the goal, or even that what we do to win hearts and minds in the long term will even look popular in the short term. Because it's very difficult to get a read on what arab populations REALLY think. They live in totalitarian states, and hiding your true opinions is pretty much a survival skill. But so many "experts" predicted that the "arab street" would be massively enraged by the war, and while it wasn't popular, there really wasn't the predicted backlash.

We won the hearts and minds of Germans and Japanese in WWII. We didn't do that by acting the way they wanted us to. We didn't do that by being nice. We did it by crushing them militarily, by destroying the systems they had in place, and replacing them with better ones. That's what we are doing in Iraq.

(2) importance of tracking down A-Q immediately and how badly the US bumbled it

Perhaps. Although this sounds more like tactical mistakes than strategic mistakes.

(3) importance of US energy indepdence as it relates to WOT,

People who have no real connection to either the economics or the science of energy production can make such claims rather easily. But energy independence is simply not possible any time soon, if ever. The numbers just don't add up.

Another of his key points is that the Israel/Palestine conflict is a central issue.

This is also something I really don't believe in. It wasn't even part of Osama's original declaration of war. By every meaningful, objective measure, the Israel/Palestinian conflict is a minor problem for the arab world. We've been treating it like a central problem for the last several decades, and that hasn't accomplished anything. Instead, it has served as an excuse for other countries to refrain from making progress on other issues. I see no reason to go back to the failed ways of thinking about the middle east.

As to my opinion, at the time I wrote the original post I considered the notion that the war in Iraq would lead to a sea change in the mddle east as hallucinogenic. I have altered my opinion based on new facts. I'm still dubious though.

The reason I'm dubious is because I view Israel/Palestine as a core issue. Despite some signs of hope, I'm not yet seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

But the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not really a core issue. Arabs in Egypt aren't oppressed by Israelis, they're oppressed by Mubarak. Arabs in Syria don't have to worry Sharon is going to kill them, they have to worry that Assad or his Ba'athist bedfellows will. Iranians aren't being tortured for expressing anti-Israeli or even anti-Palestinian sentiment, they're being tortured for challenging the mullahs. So I don't understand this idea that solving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict can POSSIBLY lead to reform in the region. I'd say it's quite the reverse: the conflict there will be easier to solve once neighboring countries no longer have a vested interest in prolonging the conflict, as they do now.

[varwoche]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
We won the hearts and minds of Germans and Japanese in WWII. We didn't do that by acting the way they wanted us to. We didn't do that by being nice. We did it by crushing them militarily, by destroying the systems they had in place, and replacing them with better ones. That's what we are doing in Iraq. Note that another of Scheuer's criticisms is that the US is not crushing anyone militarily, and instead has played it way too dainty (in both Iraq and Afghanistan).

People who have no real connection to either the economics or the science of energy production can make such claims rather easily. But energy independence is simply not possible any time soon, if ever. The numbers just don't add up. If I gave the impression that I (or Scheuer) think that complete energy independence is around the corner, then I miscommunicated. His point -- and I agree -- is that we are far too beholden to the Saudis, and this could be rectified in part via intelligent energy policy.

This [Isreal/Palestine as central issue] is also something I really don't believe in. It wasn't even part of Osama's original declaration of war. By every meaningful, objective measure, the Israel/Palestinian conflict is a minor problem for the arab world. Here I categorically disagree. The reason I view it as a central issue is because: a) the importance placed on this issue by the entire Mulsim world, and b) perceived US unfairness.

It doesn't matter that it wasn't prominent in bin Laden's rhetoric prior to 911. He well knows how important the issue is to Muslims and he has effectively played on it.

It's not a matter of winning bin Laden's heart and mind. The US has alienated the entire Muslim world -- the world from which A-Q derives support.

Anyone who is serious about this issue has no excuse not to read Imperial Hubris. It's not every day that this type of intelligence insight -- agree or not with the conclusions -- is made available to the public.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by varwoche
Here I categorically disagree. The reason I view it as a central issue is because: a) the importance placed on this issue by the entire Mulsim world, and b) perceived US unfairness.

But we're NEVER going to be seen as being fair, not to the muslim world, unless we abandon Israel completely, and that's not in our interest and it won't win us any friends anyways. The muslim world's obsession with Israel/Palestine doesn't do THEM any good either. And to be honest, I'm not actually convinced it IS the issue everyone keeps saying it is. Here's a very interesting take on that question from Amir Taheri, an excellent source for analysis on the middle east:

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/9792

"There are no free elections or reliable opinion polls in the Arab world. So no one knows what the silent majority really thinks. The best one can do is rely on anecdotal evidence. On that basis, I came to believe that the Palestine-Israel issue was low down on the list of priorities for the man in the street but something approaching an obsession for the political, business, and intellectual elites.
...
The reason why the elites fake passion about this issue is that it is the only one on which they agree. In many cases, it is also the only political issue that people can discuss without running into trouble with the secret services.
...
Conventional wisdom also insists that the US is hated by Muslims because it is pro-Israel. That view is shared by most American officials posted to the Arab capitals. But is it not possible that the reverse is true – that Israel is hated because it is pro-American?
...
If Muslims hate the US because it backs Israel which, in turn, is oppressing Muslims in Palestine, then why don't other oppressed Muslims benefit from the same degree of solidarity from their co-religionists?"

The idea that the Israel/Palestinian conflict is really the lynchpin of middle east peace simply doesn't add up.

[clk]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
We have created a battleground in Iraq. Terrorists MUST fight there, because if we succeed, they will have been dealt a terrible blow.


No, we are creating new groups of terrorists where none existed before. And the terrorists are not limiting themselves to Iraq. They launched 2 brutal attacks in Spain and Chechnya well after the Iraq war.


They know this very well, which is why they are putting so much of their effort there, but too many people in the west, including you, seem to be unaware of how big a defeat for them our success would be. That we have brought the fight to them should not be viewed as a step backwards. That's like thinking Normandy was a mistake because more soldiers were being killed by Nazis during the invasion than before. That's not how war works.


Again, we are just creating a new hotbed where none existed before. Iraq was not a danger to the US. Now Americans are dying every day. We have managed to piss off Muslims all over the world, ensuring that terrorist groups like Al Qaida have a continuous supply of recruits. It doesn't matter how many terrorists we kill in Iraq, because bin Laden only has to show pictures of Abu Ghraib to get more replacements. As long as there is this much hate directed against the US, we will not win the war on terror.

Contrast the current Muslim view of the US with the sympathy we had after 9/11. In the days after 9/11, even the hardliners in Iran condemned the attacks and sympathized with us. There were not many Muslims that were on the side of OBL on that day. We had an opportunity to use that, but instead we ruined our chance and now almost every muslim hates us.


We could kill every single member of Al Quaeda and we'd still be facing an Islamofascist threat.


Maybe, but the threat would be much, much smaller than it is now.


First off, this goal probably cannot be achieved (and where are all the "peace" activists demanding we open more nuclear power plants?).


Don't ask me. I am all in favor of nuclear power plants. In fact, I think we need to start building some breeder reactors.


Secondly, we don't even get most of our oil imports from the middle east.


We get 20% of our imports from the Persian Gulf, and 40% of our imports from OPEC. We consume 8 million barrels of oil per day. 2 million of those come from the mid East. If the average fuel economy of new cars and light trucks could reach 42 MPG by 2010 and 58 MPG by 2020 (compared to 24 MPG today), this would reduce U.S. oil use by 2.2 million barrels per day (MBD) by 2010 and 4.6 MBD by 2020. Let's say that oil costs $30 a barrel. That means every year, we deprive the mid East of $22 billion dollars. That's alot of money that goes into the pockets of Americans instead of fanatical muslims.

source: http://www.ecoiq.com/magazine/opinion/opinion12.html


Third, oil is fungible: it doesn't matter if we stop buying completely, other countries will have to continue.
Most of the oil from the Persian Gulf goes to Asian countries. There is NOTHING that we could possibly do that would keep them from demanding, and paying, for middle eastern oil.


No, there's alot we could do. First off, we need to share nuclear technology with democracies like India. They say they don't have the technology to build breeder reactors (http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1525/15250840.htm). Well, let's give it to them, but they have to assure us that they will be completely secure. We can also share whatever fuel efficiency technology with our allies.


And fourth, crippling their economies won't force them to change anything. They've been crippled for decades as it is. We ruined the economy of Iraq with sanctions: how'd that pressure work out for getting him to reform?


The pressure worked out quite well, considering they had no army, navy, no airforce and of course, no WMD. There was no way that they could attack us.


Boy, are you disconnected from reality. "International pressure" is meaningless. Economic depression? They've had that for decades, and the situation isn't improving. The poorest middle eastern country there was, Afghanistan under the Taliban, wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to moderate their religious position. No, I'm afraid it's quite obvious that you REALLY don't understand the problem if you think that economic pressure can get middle-east tyrants to relax their grip on power.


If they turn into the Taliban, then we can invade them. The economic pressure will cause them to not be able to have any army or method of fighting back.


No, we could not have. "International pressure" is meaningless to dictatorships. It is impossible to break the world's dependence on oil. Deteriorating economies have never in the past pushed arab countries towards political reform. In short, your proposals are pure fantasy.

No, what is fantasy is thinking that Islam, the most violent and oppresive religion on Earth, will embrace democracy with open arms. That's what Cheney and Bush thought too. "Iraqi's will greet us with flowers!" We all know how that turned out. And Iraq was quite a liberal country to start out with. Saddam wasn't some super religous Islamist. He allowed rights for women and such. If we are having such a hard time directly converting a liberal muslim country into a democracy, what makes you think that we will indirectly be able to convert Saudi Arabia into one?
Saudi Arabia had some first ever elections, you say? Well guess what? The Islamist party won. Yay!
Democracy won't guarantee that the countries will become more liberal and back away from religion. They need social reform.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by clk
No, we are creating new groups of terrorists where none existed before.

Have you ever heard of Abu Abbas? Or Abu Nidal? No, there were terrorists in Iraq before we invaded. Ex-Ba'athists have been turned into terrorists? Well, that's what they really were to begin with - it was just easier to ignore the problem before.

And the terrorists are not limiting themselves to Iraq. They launched 2 brutal attacks in Spain and Chechnya well after the Iraq war.

What, you think they limited themselves to Iraq before we invaded? No, they did not. The Chechnya conflict has been going on a long time. Russia created their own problem there, and our invasion of Iraq wasn't the spark for Beslan.

The Madrid bombings do indeed have a nominal connection. But the perpetrators lived in Spain before we invaded. Also of note is that their planning cycle was reduced to weeks, not years. And yet, we haven't been attacked in the US since 9/11, or since we invaded Iraq. Why is that?

I never claimed that Iraq was going to solve things overnight. I never even claimed that it would improve things in the short run. This fight isn't about the short term. You have yet to put forward any alternative that could possibly actually SOLVE the problem. Well, that's not good enough.

Again, we are just creating a new hotbed where none existed before. Iraq was not a danger to the US.

Wrong. Saddam was a sworn enemy of the US. He shot missiles at our pilots regularly. In other words, he was trying for YEARS to kill Americans. And after 9/11, it became clear to those who actually noticed what happend that our enemies can strike at us even if they don't have advanced weaponry. And you can be sure Saddam noticed: that's why he had murals painted showing him standing proud while the twin towers burned in the background. The lesson was not lost on him, even if it was lost on you. We made a mistake after the first gulf war. Never leave your enemy wounded but alive: either destroy him, or make him your friend. The later option was never possible with someone like Saddam, from the moment he invaded Kuwait we had to remove him from power.

We have managed to piss off Muslims all over the world, ensuring that terrorist groups like Al Qaida have a continuous supply of recruits. It doesn't matter how many terrorists we kill in Iraq, because bin Laden only has to show pictures of Abu Ghraib to get more replacements.

How racist and ignorant of you. Arabs do not follow ideologies and behaviors blindly like pavlovian dogs. They adopt methods like terrorism because they think it will work, because they HAVE worked in the past. I couldn't care less if muslims hate us. Some of them will regardless of what we do. What worries me is the idea that they will continue to learn that terrorism works. THAT is what breeds terrorism. THAT is what we HAD been teaching them for decades. It was perfectly logical for arabs to resort to terrorism, because it accomplished what they wanted. Well, those days are over. They can be as pissed as they want to, as long as they know that we will never bow to terrorism again, and that they can never engage in it without paying serious consequences. THAT is what will stop terrorism, not some frightened appeasement or timid attempts to placate their anger.

Contrast the current Muslim view of the US with the sympathy we had after 9/11. In the days after 9/11, even the hardliners in Iran condemned the attacks and sympathized with us.

And why was that? Because the Iranian mullahs were scared of our possible response, and because their populace really DID sympathise (the Iranian population is fairly pro-US) so they had no one to hide behind. But it was a fiction. You think the mullahs who begin every parliament session with chants of "death to America" actually regretted seeing their wish come true? I doubt it. But I can do without sympathy that accomplishes nothing. What I wanted to see was action. And there was very little action taken in the arab world to address the source of the problem. That doesn't cut it.

There were not many Muslims that were on the side of OBL on that day. We had an opportunity to use that, but instead we ruined our chance and now almost every muslim hates us.

Use that to do WHAT, exactly? People keep saying we squandered sympathy, but that sympathy was useless.

No, there's alot we could do. First off, we need to share nuclear technology with democracies like India. They say they don't have the technology to build breeder reactors (http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1525/15250840.htm). Well, let's give it to them, but they have to assure us that they will be completely secure. We can also share whatever fuel efficiency technology with our allies.

Um... no. India is not part of the NPT. This allowed them to legally develop nuclear weapons. But the consequence for not joining the NPT is that countries that DID join the NPT do not share nuclear technology with them. You take that away, and you destroy the NPT - countries which DID join no longer have incentive to remain in it, since the one benefit has been extended to a country that did not join. And other nuclear powers, like China and Russia, will no longer feel constrained to not give out nuclear technology to those countries which choose to drop out of the NPT. And while I might trust India to keep that stuff secure, I don't trust Russia to ensure that the breeder reactors they give to, say, Chavez in Venezuela don't end up providing the basis for a weapons program. Did you honestly not undertand that this is the consequence of what you propose?

The pressure worked out quite well, considering they had no army, navy, no airforce and of course, no WMD. There was no way that they could attack us.

Al Quaeda has no army, no navy, no airforce and of course, no WMD. There's no way they could attack us. Do you not even notice what you're saying?

No, what is fantasy is thinking that Islam, the most violent and oppresive religion on Earth, will embrace democracy with open arms.

It's not about "Islam" embracing democracy. I couldn't give a damn about what "Islam" does. It's about what PEOPLE do. People everywhere want to live without fear. That's universal. But in the arab world, living in fear is the norm. Democracy offers a way out of that. So yes, I think arabs will embrace democracy if they see it as a way to live without fear. Which they're starting to do in Iraq. That's why 8 million of them voted despite death threats from terrorists.

Saudi Arabia had some first ever elections, you say? Well guess what? The Islamist party won. Yay!
Democracy won't guarantee that the countries will become more liberal and back away from religion. They need social reform.

Boy, did you miss the point on this one. Islamists have ALWAYS been in charge in Saudi Arabia. Before, they had that power handed to them by the monarchy. Now at least some of them need to campaign for it, and depend on voters to hold onto power. That's a step forward, because it means that they are accountable to the population. Even if the population want Islamists in charge, they aren't going to want those Islamists to be doing the kind of crazy stuff that unelected Islamists like to do. They're going to want those Islamists to actually achieve something for them, like improvements in their standards of living. And if they can't deliver, then they'll elect someone else down the road. Who exactly they elect isn't nearly as important right now as the fact that they're having elections. Because in the long run, the ONLY way the Islamists can maintain power in a democracy is if they learn to be rational. And that will be a HUGE improvement.

[clk]

Originally posted by Ziggurat

What, you think they limited themselves to Iraq before we invaded? No, they did not. The Chechnya conflict has been going on a long time. Russia created their own problem there, and our invasion of Iraq wasn't the spark for Beslan.


My point is that not every terrorist is going to flood into Iraq to fight us. They can still attack us, or Russia, or Spain or anyone else at home.


The Madrid bombings do indeed have a nominal connection. But the perpetrators lived in Spain before we invaded. Also of note is that their planning cycle was reduced to weeks, not years. And yet, we haven't been attacked in the US since 9/11, or since we invaded Iraq. Why is that?


The typical pattern of the terrorists is to launch a major attack against a country, wait until everyone forgets about it, and then launch another one. We are already slowly starting to forget the horrors of 9/11. Unfortunately, the terrorists are patient, much more than we are. The fact that they have not attacked us since 9/11 does not validate the Iraq war.


Wrong. Saddam was a sworn enemy of the US. He shot missiles at our pilots regularly. In other words, he was trying for YEARS to kill Americans. And after 9/11, it became clear to those who actually noticed what happend that our enemies can strike at us even if they don't have advanced weaponry. And you can be sure Saddam noticed: that's why he had murals painted showing him standing proud while the twin towers burned in the background. The lesson was not lost on him, even if it was lost on you. We made a mistake after the first gulf war. Never leave your enemy wounded but alive: either destroy him, or make him your friend. The later option was never possible with someone like Saddam, from the moment he invaded Kuwait we had to remove him from power.


Saddam was not a fundamentalist muslim. He didn't care about killing Americans for Allah. He may have been crazy, but he wasn't stupid enough to launch a major attack against the US. What would he have gained? He knew we would come after him and overthrow him. He was only interested in keeping his own power. Did you see the interview he did right before the war? He almost pissed his pants, he was so scared of us. If he wanted to pose a threat to us, then he would have kept his WMD and sold them to terrorists.


How racist and ignorant of you. Arabs do not follow ideologies and behaviors blindly like pavlovian dogs. They adopt methods like terrorism because they think it will work, because they HAVE worked in the past.


No, they adopt terrorism and oppressive policies because the Koran says it's OK to kill infidels, and it's OK to beat your wife. And their religious leaders back them up. Islam is the most violent and oppressive religion on Earth. Call me a racist if you want, but the facts are on my side. Islam is at war with every major country: US, China, Russia, India, you name it. Not to mention at war with every major religion: Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism. Can you give me an example of Hindus training militants to fly planes into buildings full of Jews? Or Buddhists training militants to ram a car full of explosives into a church full of Christians? No? Why? Because their religion is more peaceful, and their religious leaders aren't fanatical. Contrast that to muslim terrorists who will kill unarmed civilian children and chant Allah's name while they are doing it.


I couldn't care less if muslims hate us. Some of them will regardless of what we do. What worries me is the idea that they will continue to learn that terrorism works. THAT is what breeds terrorism. THAT is what we HAD been teaching them for decades. It was perfectly logical for arabs to resort to terrorism, because it accomplished what they wanted. Well, those days are over. They can be as pissed as they want to, as long as they know that we will never bow to terrorism again, and that they can never engage in it without paying serious consequences.


Other religions have also seen that terrorism works for muslims. Why don't they resort to terrorism as well? And the muslims aren't going to stop terrorism no matter how many buildings in Baghdad we bomb. As long as they keep learning that Allah will reward them with 70 virgins in heaven for killing an American, they will keep attacking us. We need to eliminate fundamentalist Islam.



Um... no. India is not part of the NPT. This allowed them to legally develop nuclear weapons. But the consequence for not joining the NPT is that countries that DID join the NPT do not share nuclear technology with them. You take that away, and you destroy the NPT - countries which DID join no longer have incentive to remain in it, since the one benefit has been extended to a country that did not join. And other nuclear powers, like China and Russia, will no longer feel constrained to not give out nuclear technology to those countries which choose to drop out of the NPT. And while I might trust India to keep that stuff secure, I don't trust Russia to ensure that the breeder reactors they give to, say, Chavez in Venezuela don't end up providing the basis for a weapons program. Did you honestly not undertand that this is the consequence of what you propose?


Firstly, India already has a nuclear bomb. Secondly, they already have a breeder reactor, we would just be helping them develop it.
A recent news story:

US offers co-production of F-18 and nuclear technology to India

New Delhi, Mar. 25 : In a dramatic decision, the United States tonight has offered the co-production of F-18 fighter jets to India.

In another decision, the United States has agreed to help India's civilian nuclear programme with the possible sale of nuclear reactors that would be used to generate electricity.

http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=90355


So we are already considering selling them nuclear reactors. Is that a violation of the NPT? I don't see Russia just flat out giving nuclear technology to a country that didn't have it before. There is a big difference between us giving technology to India that only refines what they already have and Russia flat out adding a 9th country to the nuclear club.


Al Quaeda has no army, no navy, no airforce and of course, no WMD. There's no way they could attack us. Do you not even notice what you're saying?


The difference between AQ and Saddam is that AQ is full of fundamentalist muslims. See above.


It's not about "Islam" embracing democracy. I couldn't give a damn about what "Islam" does. It's about what PEOPLE do.


Well, what the people are doing right now is based on what Islam tells them to do. That's why the laws of many of these countries come directly out of the Koran. So we better start giving a damn about what Islam does.




Boy, did you miss the point on this one. Islamists have ALWAYS been in charge in Saudi Arabia. Before, they had that power handed to them by the monarchy. Now at least some of them need to campaign for it, and depend on voters to hold onto power. That's a step forward, because it means that they are accountable to the population. Even if the population want Islamists in charge, they aren't going to want those Islamists to be doing the kind of crazy stuff that unelected Islamists like to do. They're going to want those Islamists to actually achieve something for them, like improvements in their standards of living. And if they can't deliver, then they'll elect someone else down the road. Who exactly they elect isn't nearly as important right now as the fact that they're having elections. Because in the long run, the ONLY way the Islamists can maintain power in a democracy is if they learn to be rational. And that will be a HUGE improvement.

The point is, when given the chance to choose moderate candidates, they refused. As long as fundamenatlist Islam is wide spread, we will have terrorism.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by clk
The typical pattern of the terrorists is to launch a major attack against a country, wait until everyone forgets about it, and then launch another one. We are already slowly starting to forget the horrors of 9/11. Unfortunately, the terrorists are patient, much more than we are. The fact that they have not attacked us since 9/11 does not validate the Iraq war.

No, that's not the patern at all. The patern is to plan an attack and them carry it out. Planning takes time, but they don't wait IN ORDER for us to forget about it. That rather misses the point: they want us cowering in fear, and that doesn't happen if we forget about it. But what you seem not to have noticed is that the planning-to-execution cycle, which used to take years, has shrunk considerably since the destruction of Al Quaeda's bases in Afghanistan. The Madrid bombings, as I've already mentioned, took only a matter of weeks to plan. Why haven't there been such attacks in the US?

Saddam was not a fundamentalist muslim. He didn't care about killing Americans for Allah. He may have been crazy, but he wasn't stupid enough to launch a major attack against the US. What would he have gained?

No, Saddam is not crazy. But he had a VERY poor understanding of us. And he was prone to make rash, risky, and ultimately disastrous decisions (as the first gulf war proved). All it would take is for him to become convinced that he could strike at us without us being able to trace it back to him - not too big a stretch with shadowy terrorist groups that seemingly DON'T share his secularism. He wouldn't even need to provide support directly: just divert a little bit of his illegal oil-for-food kickback to terrorist groups, and no one's the wiser. Hell, he was getting away with shooting at US pilots for years with no real repercussions at all. This confidence you have that he wouldn't dare strike at us by aiding terrorists is not well grounded, to say the least.

No, they adopt terrorism and oppressive policies because the Koran says it's OK to kill infidels, and it's OK to beat your wife. And their religious leaders back them up. Islam is the most violent and oppressive religion on Earth. Call me a racist if you want, but the facts are on my side. Islam is at war with every major country: US, China, Russia, India, you name it. Not to mention at war with every major religion: Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism. Can you give me an example of Hindus training militants to fly planes into buildings full of Jews? Or Buddhists training militants to ram a car full of explosives into a church full of Christians? No? Why? Because their religion is more peaceful, and their religious leaders aren't fanatical. Contrast that to muslim terrorists who will kill unarmed civilian children and chant Allah's name while they are doing it.

I think you misunderstand my position. I actually agree for the most part with your fairly negative characterisation of Islam as a religion. What I disagree with is the idea that all it takes is religious conviction on their part to become terrorists. Because the objective evidence doesn't back that up. Al Quaeda members for the most part do NOT have religious training. Imams may be extolling the virtues of jihad, but they aren't sending their own sons off to be suicide bombers. No, it takes something else to become such a terrorist. Terrorism is a social activity, and a form of theater. Here's one of the best essays I've read on the subject, written before 9/11 with striking prescience:
http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/10/30/1.html
"What Marshall announced, in case after case, is that men embrace death — causing it, or marching into it — as a decision made before an audience. They break from danger when they perceive a social permission to do so, as when seeing others run, and they launch unwaveringly into it when they believe that other men require it of them as a condition of respect."
In the end, THIS is what motivates them, NOT the 72 virgins. Read the whole essay (it's not that long, and VERY good).

Other religions have also seen that terrorism works for muslims. Why don't they resort to terrorism as well?

Some christian fundies DID engage in terrorism here in the US, attacking abortion providers, but that failed (both because of law enforcement crackdowns and because of the general disgust with which their tactics were greeted by other christians and the population at large. Even the hard-core anti-abortion activists recognized that such tactics were counterproductive to their cause, so support for such activities evaporated. But there has been no such evaporation of support for muslim terrorists, because most muslims see it as free: they pay no penalty for members of their society engaging in such activity. We need to change that. And we HAVE changed that in Iraq. Iraqis now see the terrorists in their country as their own enemies, instead of fighters on their behalf, because they see first hand who the targets of those terrorists really are: the Iraqi people themselves. They are the first arab country to come to understand that Islamist terrorists are first and foremost killers of muslims, not infidels.

The difference between AQ and Saddam is that AQ is full of fundamentalist muslims. See above.

Not true. Most Al Quaeda members have no religious training. They tend to come from technical backgrounds, like engineering or medicine. Religion is an excuse, not a reason. It is a rallying cry to gain support, but it is not, in the end, the real motivation.

The point is, when given the chance to choose moderate candidates, they refused. As long as fundamenatlist Islam is wide spread, we will have terrorism.

If the democratic institutions be strengthened, I guarantee that they won't keep electing Islamists. I think wanting democracy is pretty much universal. But knowing how to run a democracy, understanding the consequences of your vote, that is something that must be learned. I really don't mind if they make some mistakes in who they vote for, as long as they keep voting, and their votes keep mattering. Because eventually they WILL figure it out. Islamists won't be able to deliver what the people really want in the end, which isn't stricter religious law, but simply a better life, and a sense of pride in their national accomplishments. Islamists won't be able to deliver this, and they WILL get voted out in the long run, if the structures remain democratic. The mullahs would be voted out of Iran overnight if Iranians actually had a genuine choice in their votes (they don't because candidates are preselected by the mullahs).

[clk]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
No, that's not the patern at all. The patern is to plan an attack and them carry it out. Planning takes time, but they don't wait IN ORDER for us to forget about it. That rather misses the point: they want us cowering in fear, and that doesn't happen if we forget about it. But what you seem not to have noticed is that the planning-to-execution cycle, which used to take years, has shrunk considerably since the destruction of Al Quaeda's bases in Afghanistan. The Madrid bombings, as I've already mentioned, took only a matter of weeks to plan. Why haven't there been such attacks in the US?


I disagree. I think they will not attack us when they know our alert level for them is very high. They were able to attack Spain because Spain never had a 9/11, so I don't think the people fully understood the threat of terrorism. They saw what happened to us, but it never fully registers until it strikes right at home.


No, Saddam is not crazy. But he had a VERY poor understanding of us. And he was prone to make rash, risky, and ultimately disastrous decisions (as the first gulf war proved). All it would take is for him to become convinced that he could strike at us without us being able to trace it back to him - not too big a stretch with shadowy terrorist groups that seemingly DON'T share his secularism. He wouldn't even need to provide support directly: just divert a little bit of his illegal oil-for-food kickback to terrorist groups, and no one's the wiser. Hell, he was getting away with shooting at US pilots for years with no real repercussions at all. This confidence you have that he wouldn't dare strike at us by aiding terrorists is not well grounded, to say the least.


I just don't see what he would gain from the US suffering from a 9/11 style attack, and then us linking him to the attack and coming after him. Saddam was a greedy bastard, I don't think he would risk his entire empire over something like that. He may have tried something like that before Gulf War I, but he was arrogant and naive back then. He thought he could defeat us. I think he learned a major lesson after Gulf War I. Yes, he did shoot at our pilots, but there is a big difference between shooting military personnel over Iraqi airspace and killing American civilians on US soil. He knew where the line was, and I don't think he was stupid enough to cross it.


I think you misunderstand my position. I actually agree for the most part with your fairly negative characterisation of Islam as a religion. What I disagree with is the idea that all it takes is religious conviction on their part to become terrorists. Because the objective evidence doesn't back that up. Al Quaeda members for the most part do NOT have religious training. Imams may be extolling the virtues of jihad, but they aren't sending their own sons off to be suicide bombers. No, it takes something else to become such a terrorist. Terrorism is a social activity, and a form of theater. Here's one of the best essays I've read on the subject, written before 9/11 with striking prescience:
http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/10/30/1.html
"What Marshall announced, in case after case, is that men embrace death — causing it, or marching into it — as a decision made before an audience. They break from danger when they perceive a social permission to do so, as when seeing others run, and they launch unwaveringly into it when they believe that other men require it of them as a condition of respect."
In the end, THIS is what motivates them, NOT the 72 virgins. Read the whole essay (it's not that long, and VERY good).


The essay was interesting, but I disagree that social status motivates them to launch these attacks. I think the author is oversimplifying a very complicated scenario: a soldier having to choose whether to fight or retreat in the midst of bullets flying past his head. Since I have never been in war, I can't really speculate on why soldiers are less likely to fight under different commanders.

I think the fact that Islam is the only religion that launches 9/11 type of attacks is significant. Not only that, but every time you see a tape of OBL, he will repeatedly mention Allah. This is significant. Maybe some members of Al Qaida are there to gain social status. But the fact that they are all Muslim is significant and very telling.


But there has been no such evaporation of support for muslim terrorists, because most muslims see it as free: they pay no penalty for members of their society engaging in such activity. We need to change that. And we HAVE changed that in Iraq. Iraqis now see the terrorists in their country as their own enemies, instead of fighters on their behalf, because they see first hand who the targets of those terrorists really are: the Iraqi people themselves. They are the first arab country to come to understand that Islamist terrorists are first and foremost killers of muslims, not infidels.


That is a very interesting theory. However, how do you know that many Iraqis will not be mad at the US for occupying and bombing their country, and for atrocities like Abu Ghraib?

Thousands of Iraqis peacefully demonstrated to mark the second anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein. They marched to Baghdad's Firdos Square where U.S. and Iraqi forces pulled down a large statue of the former Iraqi dictator in April 2003.

Police cars blocked off main roads in central Baghdad and two major bridges across the Tigris River that cuts the capital in half as thousands marched through the street, chanting: "No, no USA, no, no America, no, no to the occupation," and "No America! No Saddam! Yes to Islam!."

"Force the occupation to leave from our country," one banner read in English, reports the Associated Press (AP)
http://www.masnet.org/news.asp?id=2331

(emphasis mine)

We get rid of their brutal dictator, and we try to help them out by rebuilding their country and installing a democracy, and this is how they thank us. They hate the US. They equate Bush to Saddam. They say 'No to America, Yes to Islam'. As long as we have this kind of attitude prevalent in the Muslim world, we will have terrorism. We need to get rid of fundamentalist Islam. That should be the priority.



If the democratic institutions be strengthened, I guarantee that they won't keep electing Islamists. I think wanting democracy is pretty much universal. But knowing how to run a democracy, understanding the consequences of your vote, that is something that must be learned. I really don't mind if they make some mistakes in who they vote for, as long as they keep voting, and their votes keep mattering. Because eventually they WILL figure it out. Islamists won't be able to deliver what the people really want in the end, which isn't stricter religious law, but simply a better life, and a sense of pride in their national accomplishments. Islamists won't be able to deliver this, and they WILL get voted out in the long run, if the structures remain democratic. The mullahs would be voted out of Iran overnight if Iranians actually had a genuine choice in their votes (they don't because candidates are preselected by the mullahs).

I hope you are right.

[varwoche]

It could buy a... infrastructure corridor sweeping from northern Israel through the West Bank and ending in Gaza that would form the path for high-speed rail, telecommunications, energy and water lines linking major Palestinian cities and townsarticle (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4622195)

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by clk
I just don't see what he would gain from the US suffering from a 9/11 style attack, and then us linking him to the attack and coming after him. Saddam was a greedy bastard, I don't think he would risk his entire empire over something like that.

The exact same quesion could be asked about his invasion of Kuwait. It didn't make sense: we weren't going to let him do it, he had no chance to win militarily, why didn't he pull his troops back out of Kuwait and avoid a war he would lose? Similarly, why did he engage in a protracted war with Iran that in the end only weakened him? Because he's prone to miscalculation - there's no reason to think that ever changed, after all he had a chance to leave (and take a lot of his money with him) before the 2003 invasion, but he didn't, so it's not like he wasn't still making mistakes. Overestimating your enemy's thinking is just as dangerous as underestimating him. Just because it doesn't make logical sense doesn't mean he wouldn't do it. And it's not guaranteed that we even WOULD be able to definitively tie another 9/11-style attack back to him even if he did have a hand in it.

The essay was interesting, but I disagree that social status motivates them to launch these attacks. I think the author is oversimplifying a very complicated scenario: a soldier having to choose whether to fight or retreat in the midst of bullets flying past his head. Since I have never been in war, I can't really speculate on why soldiers are less likely to fight under different commanders.

No, the article is exactly correct. There's a reason that terrorist cells form primarily from men living together. Here's an excellent piece on the profiles of Al Qaeda members. Much of the common perception of them is wrong:
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/20041101.middleeast.sageman.understandingterrornet works.html
"At the time they joined jihad, the terrorists were not very religious. They only became religious once they joined the jihad. Seventy percent of my sample joined the jihad while they were living in another country from where they grew up. So someone from country A is living in country B and going after country C—the United States.
...
So what’s in common? There’s really no profile, just similar trajectories to joining the jihad and that most of these men were upwardly and geographically mobile. Because they were the best and brightest, they were sent abroad to study. They came from moderately religious, caring, middle-class families. They’re skilled in computer technology. They spoke three, four, five, six languages. Most Americans don’t know Arabic; these men know two or three Western languages: German, French, English.
When they became homesick, they did what anyone would and tried to congregate with people like themselves, whom they would find at mosques. So they drifted towards the mosque, not because they were religious, but because they were seeking friends. They moved in together in apartments, in order to share the rent and also to eat together - they were mostly halal, those who observed the Muslim dietary laws, similar in some respects to the kosher laws of Judaism. Some argue that such laws help to bind a group together since observing them is something very difficult and more easily done in a group. A micro-culture develops that strengthens and absorbs the participants as a unit. This is a halal theory of terrorism, if you like.
These cliques, often in the vicinity of mosques that had a militant script advocating violence to overthrow the corrupt regimes, transformed alienated young Muslims into terrorists. It’s all really group dynamics. You cannot understand the 9/11 type of terrorism from individual characteristics. The suicide bombers in Spain are another perfect example. Seven terrorists sharing an apartment and one saying “Tonight we’re all going to go, guys.� You can’t betray your friends, and so you go along. Individually, they probably would not have done it."

That is a very interesting theory. However, how do you know that many Iraqis will not be mad at the US for occupying and bombing their country, and for atrocities like Abu Ghraib?

To start with, because they suffered so much more under Saddam. And secondly, because people aren't stupid. I'm sure there are going to be a fair number of Iraqis who are pissed at us (though a LOT of them are already grateful). But most of those people are STILL going to recognize that it is the terrorists who continue to kill Iraqis in large numbers, who prevent reconstruction, who pose a threat to them individually. Even if they resent us for getting them into the current situation, they're still going to recognize that if they want to get OUT of it, to live in peace, to have some measure of prosperity, they NEED to side with us against the terrorists. And they recognize that. And the Abu Ghraib thing has been overhyped: the west seems to care about it a lot more than Iraqis do. Which is no surprise: Iraqis are keenly aware of what went on at Abu Ghraib under Saddam, and it was unimaginably worse. Iraqis didn't have to imagine either: video tapes of executions and torture were widely circulated, precisely because knowlege of what went on would help frighten the population into submission.

We get rid of their brutal dictator, and we try to help them out by rebuilding their country and installing a democracy, and this is how they thank us. They hate the US. They equate Bush to Saddam. They say 'No to America, Yes to Islam'. As long as we have this kind of attitude prevalent in the Muslim world, we will have terrorism. We need to get rid of fundamentalist Islam. That should be the priority.

And how, exactly, do you get rid of "Fundamentalist Islam"? I don't see any way of doing that other than getting rid of fundamentalist muslims. In other words, mass killing. But that's simply not an option - I'm not sure if we could do it if we wanted to, and there's no way we'll be willing to do that. And while I'm not keen on fundamentalist Islam, I don't see it as the main problem. Rather, I see Islamism as a bigger problem (the distinction being the latter is a political philosophy, not just religious belief). Sistani, for example, could be labeled as a fundamentalist, but he's NOT an Islamist. And he's not a threat to us, he's been quite useful in keeping the Shia population cooperative. Fundamentalist muslims who accept democratic institutions of government aren't going to go around blowing people up, because they'll be tied up with domestic concerns. The line has to be drawn not against fundamentalism (something we can't accomplish even if we want to), but at democracy: force acceptance of democracy, and they won't be resorting to violence to try to accomplish any political goals they do have. Populations that have the power to choose generally don't choose hardline positions.

But I think you may be overestimating Sadr's influence. He's got a fair amount of support from the very poor Shia, because he's got Iranian money to throw around. This protest is aimed less at actually getting us out than it is as a demonstration of his influence for his own domestic audience. But he keeps on failing whenever he tries to actually get any real power. He's been smacked down militarily twice already, and probably couldn't do a repeat even if he wanted to. He's been basically shunned by Sistani, who's got a lot more influence among the Shia than he does. And I don't think he got significant support in the elections either. He's a troublemaker, and represents a continuing problem. But his support is pretty much contingent on his constituency being disaffected: it dries up wherever things start to improve significantly. In the long run, he's holding a losing hand.

[clk]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
The exact same quesion could be asked about his invasion of Kuwait. It didn't make sense: we weren't going to let him do it, he had no chance to win militarily, why didn't he pull his troops back out of Kuwait and avoid a war he would lose?


As I've said before, he was naive and arrogant before Gulf War I. He thought he would be able to kidnap American troops and tie them to Iraqi tanks. Boy, was he wrong. He learned to fear the U.S. after that. Like I said, Saddam wasn't stupid, and he learned from his mistakes. He hated Kuwait, but he didn't dare try to invade again after Gulf War I, because he knew we would smack him down again.


Just because it doesn't make logical sense doesn't mean he wouldn't do it. And it's not guaranteed that we even WOULD be able to definitively tie another 9/11-style attack back to him even if he did have a hand in it.


So do you want to go to war with Saddam and waste $200 billion dollars because he might give money to Al Qaida? I know your philosophy about bringing democracy to get rid of Islamism, but here is the thing I have a problem with: we can no longer claim to be a peace loving nation. We invaded a country that was absolutely no threat to us. We no longer have the right to tell India that it should try to find a peaceful solution with Pakistan, etc.


No, the article is exactly correct. There's a reason that terrorist cells form primarily from men living together.
...
So what’s in common? There’s really no profile, just similar trajectories to joining the jihad and that most of these men were upwardly and geographically mobile. Because they were the best and brightest, they were sent abroad to study. They came from moderately religious, caring, middle-class families. They’re skilled in computer technology. They spoke three, four, five, six languages. Most Americans don’t know Arabic; these men know two or three Western languages: German, French, English.


And this is why it doesn't make sense that they would do this for respect. If they already have respectful jobs such as doctors and engineers, then why risk your career and entire life to gain just a little more respect? If terrorists did what they did so that they would gain respect among a few friends, then terrorism wouldn't be isolated primarily to Islam. There would be alot of Christian terrorists, and Hindu terrorists, and Jewish terrorists and Buddhist terrorists.




And how, exactly, do you get rid of "Fundamentalist Islam"?


Go after countries like Saudi Arabia with the plan I proposed. Their economy is entirely based on oil, and that is their weak point. You've said before:

Economic depression? They've had that for decades, and the situation isn't improving. The poorest middle eastern country there was, Afghanistan under the Taliban, wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to moderate their religious position.


The difference between Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan is that Afghanistan was already poor to begin with. When faced with a total economic collapse and the prospect of going from a rich nation to a poor nation, Saudi Arabia will reform their social structure. They don't really have a choice if they want to keep their standard of living anywhere close to where it is now. I'm not talking about forcing them to change overnight, I'm saying they need to change gradually over 10 years.

------------
Also, I'm sure you've heard of the recent state dept. report on terrorism. What is your response to the fact that terrorist incidents increased by over 300% from 2003 to 2004?

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by clk
He learned to fear the U.S. after that. Like I said, Saddam wasn't stupid, and he learned from his mistakes.

He learned not to take us on directly. He didn't learn to not try to strike at us at all.

I know your philosophy about bringing democracy to get rid of Islamism, but here is the thing I have a problem with: we can no longer claim to be a peace loving nation. We invaded a country that was absolutely no threat to us. We no longer have the right to tell India that it should try to find a peaceful solution with Pakistan, etc.

The world has never, and WILL never, respect a country because it is peace loving. That may be lamentable, but it is the truth. ESPECIALLY with regards to our enemies. Pakistan and India will either go to war or find peace because of the cold hard realities they face (including pressure from us), not because WE are peaceloving or not. To hell with being known as peace-loving - it has accomplished nothing. Rather, I would have our country be known for things like justice and democracy, because those things HAVE accomplished something, and those accomplishments often come about through war. Democracies don't go to war with each other - we are not threatened by any democracy, and no democracy has ever been threatened by us. Let the world think we are as warlike as any nation on earth, because it is the despots, the tyrants, the murdering dictators who we wage war on.

And this is why it doesn't make sense that they would do this for respect. If they already have respectful jobs such as doctors and engineers, then why risk your career and entire life to gain just a little more respect? If terrorists did what they did so that they would gain respect among a few friends, then terrorism wouldn't be isolated primarily to Islam. There would be alot of Christian terrorists, and Hindu terrorists, and Jewish terrorists and Buddhist terrorists.

You're REALLY missing both my point and the evidence staring you in the face. It's not about getting MORE respect by becoming a jihadi. It's about not LOSING the respect you already have. They cannot refuse to join their comrades, for that would be a betrayal, and that would lose them all respect. As for the comparison with other religions, well, that's kind of bunk, for two reasons. First, respect does seem to be particularly keen in the muslim world - people will kill their own daughters and sister in the most horrific manner because they have shamed the family. Honor killings do not happen among western Christians. But second, I never claimed respect was the only factor. Rather, what I'm trying to illustrate is that these people are not driven by incomprehensible forces, they do not kill themselves and others just because some whackjob imam told them they'd get 72 virgins for it. They are motivated to do things for the same underlying reasons that people everywhere are willing to kill and die: largely for the respect of their fellow men. And because they are not actually motivated by pure fantasy alone, they can also be disuaded by the same things that disuade people everywhere: if they know something doesn't work, they won't do it. Similarly, for the wider population, if they know that supporting an activity has negative repercussions for them personally, they will be less inclined to support such activity.

The difference between Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan is that Afghanistan was already poor to begin with. When faced with a total economic collapse and the prospect of going from a rich nation to a poor nation, Saudi Arabia will reform their social structure.

Are you trying to tell me that you'd support a military blockade of Saudi Arabia? You think the rest of the world wouldn't protest? Because that's what it would take to really put the screws on Saudi Arabia. Oil is fungible, so the only way we can stop Saudi Arabia from getting plenty of money by selling it to SOMEONE is to blockade them. Which would precipitate a global economic crisis, with oil prices everywhere shooting through the roof. And also complicates things by giving countries like Iran greater leverage. I don't think we're ready, or willing, to play for such stakes. And if you think the world is pissed at us over Iraq, you can't even begin to fathom how upset they'd be at us for screwing EVERYONE over by blockading Saudi Arabia. Is that really what you're arguing for?

Short of that, the pressure we can apply to them is a lot more limited. I'd be quite happy to see more pressure applied than we seem to have done so far, but you're kidding yourself if you think you can demand religious liberalization from Saudi Arabia and get it. No, what we have to focus on isn't their religious fundamentalism (something we can't really solve for them, though we can encourage and support reformers within the country), but rather try to cut off their state-sponsored export of jihadist ideology. There we may have some hope for success, but that alone isn't going to solve the problem.

Also, I'm sure you've heard of the recent state dept. report on terrorism. What is your response to the fact that terrorist incidents increased by over 300% from 2003 to 2004?

I'm aware of it. I'm aware that the state department has been changing the definitions they use, making comparisons between different years very difficult. I'm aware that a lot of these incidents are from Iraq (where Ba'athist kidnappings, torture, and murder under Saddam would not have been classified as terrorism). And I'm also aware that the intensity of fighting isn't the best metric for determining success. As I've said before, allied casualties increased as we began our Normandy invasion, but it would be a mistake to think that indicated things were getting worse for us, or that the Nazis were succeeding.

[clk]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
He learned not to take us on directly. He didn't learn to not try to strike at us at all.


Exactly. So the worst he might do is give money to Al Qaida. And even that is a big 'if'. Saddam and Bin Laden despised each other.



First, respect does seem to be particularly keen in the muslim world - people will kill their own daughters and sister in the most horrific manner because they have shamed the family.


Exactly. That's why we need social and religous reforms in these Islamic countries. Because Islam and it's cultural manifestations are the problem.


But second, I never claimed respect was the only factor. Rather, what I'm trying to illustrate is that these people are not driven by incomprehensible forces, they do not kill themselves and others just because some whackjob imam told them they'd get 72 virgins for it.


Maybe that is part of the reason, but that is not the only reason. Islam does play a big role. If the Imams were not so radical and did not preach so much hate, then terrorism wouldn't be as big as it is today.


Are you trying to tell me that you'd support a military blockade of Saudi Arabia?


After 5-10 years, if they do not agree to reforms, and once we no longer depend on their oil, yes we can blockade Saudi Arabia. If necessary, we could do it ourselves, or with any other allies that are willing to help.


You think the rest of the world wouldn't protest? Because that's what it would take to really put the screws on Saudi Arabia. Oil is fungible, so the only way we can stop Saudi Arabia from getting plenty of money by selling it to SOMEONE is to blockade them. Which would precipitate a global economic crisis, with oil prices everywhere shooting through the roof.

Once we start using the oil we have more efficiently, the price of oil will go down because of over supply. If other nations are overly dependent on oil, then that's their problem. I've already stated that we can share technology with other countries like India. They would be more than happy to accept our help.


I'm aware of it. I'm aware that the state department has been changing the definitions they use, making comparisons between different years very difficult. I'm aware that a lot of these incidents are from Iraq (where Ba'athist kidnappings, torture, and murder under Saddam would not have been classified as terrorism).


I have to admit, I don't follow the logic of supporters of the Bush administration when it comes to terrorism policy. Bush recently said:

"The enemy understands a free Iraq will be a major defeat in their ideology of hatred. That's why they're fighting so vociferously." —George W. Bush, first presidential debate, Coral Gables, Fla., Sept. 30, 2004


So if there is major fighting in Iraq, then it's because the enemy is desperate. But if Iraq had gone as planned, and we had converted it to a democracy quickly without any insurgent attacks, then he would undoubtedly have used the whole 'Mission Accomplished' aircraft carrier thing during his entire campaign. And used every opportunity that he had to discuss how great the war in Iraq went in the fight against terrorism. I wonder, though, why didn't any Republican predict that the insurgency was going to happen as it did? If Iraq is the centerpiece of the war on terror, then why didn't they prepare and plan for the insurgency? I mean, it WAS part of the plan that terrorists would flood in from all over the world to fight us, right?

[varwoche]

Update: $440,000,000,000 and counting (not including the substantial interest expense for the defecit spending).

article (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/13777263.htm)

[Freakshow]

You can't do nation building, it's a waste of money. However, nation destruction is quite OK.Nation destruction is easier. Nation building requires cooperation of the people whose nation it is. Destruction doesn't require cooperation.

It takes desire from both sides, to get along. But it only takes desire from one side, to fight.

[kalen]

what can $237,000,000,000 buy?

Spent correctly, World Peace.

I can start right away.

[BPSCG]

Update: $440,000,000,000 and counting (not including the substantial interest expense for the defecit spending).

article (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/13777263.htm)Hm. Looks like my recommendation #3 here (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1006450#post1006450) is getting more attractive by the minute. I wish I was as smart every day as I was the day I posted that.


(http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1006450#post1006450)

[Ziggurat]

Let's see, this war was to protect us from future terrorist attacks, right? So if about 3000 people were killed in 9-11, then that's about $80,000,000 spent for each person that died.[/i]

If you want to deal with just cold, hard dollar figures, which is the only reason to attach a dollar figure to someone's life, at least be honest about it and ask what the damage from 9/11 was in dollars. And that comes in at around half a trillion dollars, which makes the prospect of spending half that much to try to fix the big-picture problems which caused 9/11 and likely would create similar problems in the future seem a little less far-fetched. But then, considering more than one aspect might not make quite the dramatic point you wanted, so yeah, I guess I can see why you wouldn't want to talk about that.

[a_unique_person]

It was well before it got to the 'big picture' bit where it all started to fall apart. Namely, Bush and his advisors just couldn't understand the 'inbetween picture'. They honestly thought the war would have been long finished by now, with the cost of the war paid for with Iraqi oil, and all the surrounding states in 'shock and awe' of the US military power. That they were wrong on all three assumptions is amazing, especially when they had plenty of people available to tell them the odds of getting such a simple and favourable outcome were vanishingly small.