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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
By way of answering the question Mr. Friedman raised in his column, I'm going to blather a bit about models of decision-making. I didn't come up with this, but I forget who it was.
There are essentially four methods of decision making:
1) You make a decision on how to use your resources. This is usually the best (you're more likely to be both frugal with your resources and direct it in the ways you want. Not to say it's perfect, but it tends to be the best).
2) You make a decision on how to use your resources on other people. This is second best (you're frugal, and if you're a person of goodwill - as I think America as a whole can be described as - then you'll probably try to do your best with respect to the other folks. However, there will be more mistakes on account of miscommunication and misunderstanding about needs and means - not just the needs of the other people, but their lack of understanding of the limits of your means, so there will sometimes be resentment rather than gratitude, because you "could have done more"). This is us in Iraq, now.
3) Others make decisions on how to use your resources on themselves. This is getting close to the worst. They know what they want, but price is no object. Uncle Sucker has bottomless pockets and after all, their needs are so important (and, after all, they're not as well off as Uncle Sucker, so it's only fair that he foot the bill, regardless of price). Their will be a tendency to be wasteful, and if things don't work out well (as they often don't because this usually leads to "dream palace" thinking - anything can be afforded, wants can trump real needs, and if things don't turn out as expected - well, it's really Uncle Sucker's fault rather than impracticality on the part of the group making the decision, because if only Uncle Sucker had provided more, then things would have gone as hoped).
4) Third-party decision-making: Others making decisions on how to use your resources on someone else. All the flaws of both #2 and #3 come into play - responsibility and accountability are out the window. Well-meaning people engage in activities that are shameless if looked at objectively. Things come a cropper, as large amounts of resources are devoted to boondoggles, and (especially over time - usually things like this work best in the early stages, with the initial burst of idealism, and then devolve over time) there is a huge temptation not to do what is in the best interest of the folks providing the resources or the supposed beneficiaries, but what is best for the third-party decision-makers (where does France's Security Council vote fit here? Or Russia's? Or China's?).
Look, the world is not a democracy, not a transnational federation of well-meaning people who put their own interests aside and do what is for the best of all (all of Chirac's and de Villepin's posturing to the contrary notwithstanding, and I know Mr. Friedman was on-and-off impressed by them, but those World-Emperors have no cloths). Lets see if these guys can really handle mutual shared power without shared responsibility in the EU, something I doubt, before suggesting they should have what, yes, lots of people want (a say over others).
This isn't as new as Mr. Friedman's column implies. I remember over 15 years ago, my mother was in the Extended Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin, and as part of setting up a course was talking with a man from Turkey, and the discussion evolved into politics, and he said that Turks would like a vote in U.S. elections because U.S. policy affects them so much. Her response was that they should apply to become a State, then (my mother, the Yellow-dog Democrat. Or at least she was at the time).
Oh, no. . .didn't want the responsibilities that come with U.S. citizenship, just the right to have a say like anyone electing a Senator or Representative. Same thing here.
Americans really are rather relaxed, though, with sharing policy decisions with those who really do demonstrate that they have shared concerns and are real allies. Much of the diplomatic strategy in the run up to war was shaped by what Tony Blair wanted - and to some degree this extends now, into Bush's push for the "Road Map", rather prematurely in my opinion (it might be a good idea, but it was rushed to implementation because Blair wanted emphasis on the Israel-Palestinian problem after the Iraq war). Yes, some traditional allies weren't listened to as much as they felt they deserved - but these were ones who were backstabing behind our backs (so much of French diplomacy, once one looks at the details, is the opposite of high-minded idealism, though I know many people want to look at it that way and thus refuse to look at the seamy underside, or at the dirty details of why they were doing everything they could to keep Saddam in power, why they switched from having opposed sanctions to asserting that sanctions were the way to go, and the like. "Blood for Oil"? That's was the French motivation. Humanitarianism was not part of their thinking in the least).
Most of these places, too, if you discuss it with them, they don't really want a "vote" in how America's power is exercised - they want the deciding vote - indeed, this is ultimately what charges of "U.S. bullying" end up coming down to; not us forcing them to go with us (the French, Germans, Russians etc. were not forced to go into Iraq against their will), but us refusing to put their policy interests ahead of our own. I'm not sure that there's any way to square that (square their ambitions for control over our resources with our own interests).
Candor in the pages of, say, the New York Times would be a start: refusal to simply parrot back the assertions of foreign leaders (just as the NYT refuses to simply parrot back the premises of the American administration), unquestioningly, would help. It never helps when we look like we might be a mark (or that, if only we had a different Administration, France would get it's way. Look - I'm sorry to correct Mr. Friedman on another thing, but it isn't as if a Gore Administration would have gotten Kyoto ratified, and it also isn't as if the French and the EU were not, well before the Bush Administration took office, looking for ways to "counterbalance" U.S. power and build a EU that would be an opponent of it. To claim otherwise is to expose ignorance - one can look at the history of the '90s with an open eye, and read the quotes, rather openly expressed, by European government officials in the various media of Europe, and see that this was a driving motive behind their efforts to build a "strong Europe", well before Bush even announced for President).
Yes, they got along better with Clinton on a personal level - but they were no more willing to compromise with him than they are with Bush (the implication in Mr. Friedman's columns that the blame is largely the responsibility of the American Administration also misses the mark). Clinton would repeatedly try and get them to cut the sort of deals they were happy to cut for each other, so he could sell various international agreements at home. Canada, Germany, lots of countries got Kyoto crafted in such a way as to help them out some, which made it easier for them to ratify at home. Clinton couldn't get them to budge. The Land Mines accord? Same thing: Clinton asked for an exemption for the Korean Peninsula, they refused to compromise. The ICC? Similar - they set it up for themselves, and wouldn't modify it so it might be more palatable to America.
So when these countries express a desire to have a decisive say over the exercise of U.S. power, through international institutions, without any accountability for themselves, having previously demonstrated that they are at best indifferent to American interests and at worst hostile to it while mouthing platitudes of friendship and bonhomie to the American press (while being far more open in their own about their true feelings, indeed expressing themselves often in ways that, if an American politician would even come close - Rumsfeld, for example - they would be pilloried in the press and no one would be permitted to forget it), being, in effect, passive-aggressive relatives rather than allies in the true sense of the word, then a well-informed American will look at their desires to "have a vote over American power" with a skeptical eye, knowing that they have their own axes to grind (and that the French, in particular, while apparently invoking "unilateralism" as the latest crime against humanity, have generally been the most jealous of their sovereignty when it comes to setting their own foreign policy without letting others have a vote. . .or do you forget the history of French involvement - or lack thereof - in NATO?)
But, really, the solution is for most of these places to get their own houses in order. Some of Mr. Friedman's better columns have been on the envy-driven paranoia that is found in various regions of the earth; they are poor and deprived while others are rich, and yes, it makes them sullen and they blame those who are successful for their plight. This is really just one facet of that problem. In the meantime, we all need to keep in our mind what is driving this, and not blame ourselves when that blame is not deserved (which is not the same as refusing to accept responsibility when blame is deserved) - though others will try and make us feel guilty over everything. Because they understand what many Americans do not: one of the things that sets America and Americans apart from most other nations, is we want other nations to like us. We have a deep-seated desire to be loved (others don't care as much about this. They may not want to be hated, but they'd rather be respected than liked. This is one of the reason why some of the rhetorical ploys that are often raised against America aren't raised against others; it isn't that other countries or people couldn't be accused of such things - often with much greater justification. It's just that they wouldn't care as much as so many Americans do).
I've had foreign corespondents point this out (I didn't recognize this on my own, actually. As with the stuff on decision-making, other people brought this up). They tend to see it as a sort of character flaw that means we don't understand the nature of the world. I think that it's a strength in many ways, but it does have it's drawback in that we're overly-sensitive to criticism of the "well, if you do this, people might not like you" sort. Now, the fact that we are this way, in a world of cynicism (and I know American foreign policy has its cynicism, but we're exceptional not in the cynical aspects, but in the bouts of idealism backed by the means to achieve idealistic ends), means that when we commit to something, we really try. One of the reasons Americans will try fairly hard to help the people of Iraq, sincerely help them, is that we want to earn their friendship. Many Americans feel we owe them a blood debt left over from the Gulf War (indeed, the more we find, the worse I feel. I supported both wars. I don't have feelings of "triumphalism", though I'm probably one of the sort that Mr. Friedman's columns would identify as being the sort of American who does. I feel pretty horrible every time we find a mass grave. I also supported our policy in the '80s of helping Iraq against Iran and on balance, given what we knew at the time and what we feared if Iran won decisively, I think it was justifiable. But I weep).
But, you know, America wasn't the only country involved in the Gulf War, or involved in helping Iraq in the '80s. France was also there - both times. Do you think the French feel bad about hanging the Iraqis out to dry? C'mon. Also, within the context of your question, it must be remembered that one of the reasons we didn't topple Saddam then (one of a number, I know) was precisely because we did give countries like France, Syria, and Saud Arabia a "vote" over the exercise of U.S. power in the Gulf War.
this sounds interesting. Or at least potentially so. We'll have to see how it works in practice (if the fix is in or the candidate selection is highly controlled, then this is more cosmetic than substantive. But it's a start. A start from perhaps a fairly low basis, but a start none the less).
Well, I for one never thought we should go below 12 active divisions in the first place, and the problem with Bush, Rumsfeld, and Congress is they haven't gone ahead and fixed that mistake. Indeed, they seem, like Clinton, wedded to the reverse - cutting troop levels while increasing commitments and operational tempo.
To that end, IMO while laying it in on Rumsfeld, Phil Carter lets Shinseki off too easy; he was a Loyal Old Soldier for Clinton, even though the warning signs were already there. I'd believe that this was more than just a clash of personalities and politics if Shinseki had been as outspoken then, at a time of decreasing budgets and increasing military commitments, as he is now, when at least the budgetary bleeding has had a tourniquet put on it.
Yes, it's fair of him to point out that a tourniquet is not sufficient medical attention - it's an emergency step, not the final step in proper treatment, and we can't stop here. We need more. (It's also fair to point out that our commitments in Iraq vastly exceed the scale of commitments of the previous decade.) But if Dr. Shinseki had given the previous medical team more suitable advice, the tourniquet may not have needed to be applied. (After all, lets not pretend that hand-picked Chiefs somehow got invented by Rumsfeld. There's a reason that Shinseki was put in, and before him Shalikashvili - they were the hand-picked loyalists of their era, who could be relied upon not to present the military case, but to get the military to swallow the pill of their political superiors. So, yah, I find Shinseki's speech, in that context, more than a little self-servingly ironic).
Who could have imagined the toppling of Saddam would unleash something like this on the people of Iraq? Haven't they suffered enough?
Oh, the humanity!
In other news, the EU's gnomes reduce growth projections - again. It's sort of a ritual now (another good post by Colin May on the subject1). The Berlin-Paris Axis pushes for the adoption of the draft Constitution. Obviously, if only everyone submitted to the draft Constitution, then prosperity would be right around the corner. Sure.
1Note: You know, regarding the "slower growth but more caring thing", it's actually rather hard to do. Lower growth over as little as 20 years will make a considerable difference to the living standards of actual people, and it's not as if EUrope will be able to afford to make up the gap with increased social spending because, as a result of lower growth, they won't have the resources to do that. Higher growth is actually the more compassionate way to go.
This is driven home historically. A lot of people don't know this, but at the beginning of the 20th Century, Argentina was one of the 20 richest nations in the world. Yep - that's a "true fact", as it were. By the middle of the 20th century, Argentina was - well, Argentina as we know it today. Bad economic policies can reduce one to squalor in a hurry.
All it really takes is a 1 point difference in growth rates - something that's existed consistently between the U.S. and the EU and is likely to continue, unless either the EU reforms significantly or those who want America to follow policies more like those of EUrope get their way (the former would potentially raise EU growth rates, while the latter would crater ours). But if things keep going the way they are now, the average EUropean will not be "better off" than the average American - not by a long shot - because the EU's policies are more aptly described as "short sighted", not "more caring".
By the way, it's been several months now, and we still haven't found them. We were told by this Administration that Iraq was ruled by a vicious dictator and his sadistic sons, but where are they?
You know what I think? I think this vulfervitz fellow went down to CIA headquarters with Cheney and they browbeat the good people there into doctoring video tapes to make people believe that this "Saddam" fellow existed and ruled Iraq like a tyrant, so people would go along with their war, when everyone knows that - or at least Robert Fisk assured us that - Iraq was really a benign little democracy. If this Saddam fellow and his sons with their supposedly lurid fetish for the Bush girls really existed, don't you think they would have been found by now?
If there's a lot less Kewl stuff on this blog this week, well, ennui has set in a bit. I mean, I look at delving back into the EU Constitution with trepidation and foreboding (one can get lost in that maze and, anyhow, I probably covered the main points).
Topical regeneration is right around the corner. It'll probably involve a slight shift in the sort of subject matter that is blogged.
The world hasn't stopped, mind. People are still protesting the reign of the mullahs in Iran, India appears set to approve a geneered potato, and the EU is poised for another "showdown" on the CAP, which will probably - as usual - fizzle (why I can still love the BBC sometimes: that story quotes some dude warning against "lame compromises", and then the story section immediately following is titled "possible compromise" LOL), and the Eternal is ratified: UN types are still grousing, Frenchmen are fixated on scandalous orgies while the streets fill with mobs and the Republic (fifth? sixth? I've lost count) seems to be teetering on the brink of collapse, and the German economy is nearing meltdown as output falls.
Over at Innocents Abroad there is a good post on the economic conditions in Euroland. Indeed, excellent. I've been observing some of the same thing with respect to the ECB's economic forecasts (and from the magazine The Economist, which for years has, every year, in their "Year in Preview" issue, forecast that the EU would grow 1% more than the U.S. economy, and every year it has been the reverse - the U.S. economy has consistently grown at a higher rate than that of the EU).
Remember all that hub-bub about the Americans "protecting the oil ministry but letting the museum [or whatever - fill in the blank] get looted" Well, I fell for the museum looting stuff, which turned out to be bogus to the Nth degree, but it seems the other half of that Leftist Urban Legend is also bogus (via Orin Judd.
Btw, I think the gang at BrothersJudd should pool their resources and move to sweeter digs.
In Liberia, efforts are being made to negotiate a cease-fire, to suspend the horrible situation there. I can understand why, and even sympathize with those who suggest that the U.S. should get more involved in negotiating such a cease-fire, as we did the last time this level of violence broke out (and I supported our involvement then).
However, such a cease-fire would certainly involve leaving the opposing sides in place, leaving Charles Taylor in Monrovia. It's hard to say that would be a solution. The only result would be to once again delay the confrontation. It would mean that the current humanitarian crisis in Liberia would abate, but it wouldn't go away - indeed, it would be prolonged, and the disorder would continue over an extended period only to flare up in another (or in a series of) episode of violent clashes.
Sometimes the most humane thing that can be done is to let these things play themselves out - let one side win and the other be defeated (and Charles Taylor driven into exile or tried and hung for his crimes). A cease fire is not an end of the conflict (as we see on a great scale elsewhere. It just puts it off. As for the idea that "well, if there's a cease-fire, then perhaps peace will break out and everyone will embrace each other like long-lost brothers leading to hugs all around and a happy ending" - well, that's not the history of at least this particular conflict. It's time to let one side defeat the other.
And speaking of that other conflict with it's cease-fires, how come no amount of suicide attacks on Israel by Palestinians are ever "a threat to the peace process", but when Israel strikes back, it's characterized this way:
There are fears that the attack will trigger more violence, and that the implementation of a new US-backed peace plan will be undermined by the raid.
Yah - I mean, it's one thing for Palestinians to kill a few Jews (I mean, that's par for the course and almost understandable to your typical Beeb type), but Jews fighting back? Why, the peace-plan might be undermined! The story goes on, in a way that would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic:
Speaking from his hospital bed, Mr Rantissi [the injured Hamas warlord] vowed revenge, saying Hamas would continue the fight against Israel until every last "Zionist" was gone.
"We will maintain our jihad (holy war) and resistance until we kick out every single criminal Zionist from our land," he told the pan-Arab broadcaster al-Jazeera by telephone.
So in other words: no change from yesterday's Hamas position.
He [Gordon Brown] said UK national income could grow by joining the currency, delivering higher living standards and lower prices.
Which is the part that many are latching onto.
Well, several countries have had the Euro for several years now, and there is no growth in national income or living standards that are attributable to joining the Euro, and the EUBC World Radio Report (which some took to calling the "Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation" but is really a Voice of the EU) which, in its radio program this morning analysing this decision cast it in terms of "why are the British so Europhobic?" (literally - that was a segment. I'm not exaggerating), just a couple months ago had a memorable piece on how the snidely whiplashes - er, private businesses - of Europe used the conversion to the Euro to raise prices.
So in other words, the pro-Euro side are basing their arguments on claims that have not proven out in the reality of the experience. The Euro has been, if anything, a drag on the economies of the "Eurozone" (the region that adopted it), and the claims of fantastic increases of trade between Britain and the rest of EUrope if only they'd lose the Pound are absurd and, again, contradicted by the experience of those nations that have adopted it.
Update: Here's more on the folly of the Euro. The opponents of the Euro can point to empirical reality while, as usual, the proponents arguments come from cloud-cukoo land. The Euro has been economic deadweight at best and a negative force more often than not. All these stories of the wonderful things that will happen if we just adopt the Euro (or if everyone just adopts the Maastricht treaty before then, or the EU draft Constitution now) never materialized. It's pathetic to see the same tropes dragged out once again on behalf of encouraging the British people to be less "Europhobic" (meaning exchange the Pound for the Euro and the British political system for the EU), since reality is quite at variance from the carnival-barker like claims being made on behalf of this stuff by their advocates:
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In the run up to the war against Iraq, the opponents, especially on the Left, frequently argued "well, we helped him in the '80s", often in some sort of extreme form (implying Saddam had power because of America or that we were his biggest supporters. Of course, the help Iraq received from the U.S. was always far less than those making these accusations claimed (Iraq's military was equipped mainly by the Sovworld and by France - regions that, of course, came in for praise from these same moralizers, rather than blame), but there was some, and of course, with the exception of Christopher Hitchens, they made these accusations not to suggest that we helped create (or at least prolong) a problem and therefore should go in and clean it up, but instead to assert that we had no standing to oppose Saddam (and therefore we should take sanctions off, start trading with him again, and treat him like the legitimate leader of a sovereign country - all the things they want us to agree to with respect to Kim Jong Il or Castro, and indeed all the things that they were asserted put blood on our hands in the '80s when we had that policy in Iraq. Yes, their position utterly lacked internal consistency, but since when has that ever stopped them?)
Still, they had a point: as mass graves are dug up throughout Iraq, we remember that not only did we leave this guy in power after the Gulf War, but we did tilt towards and assist him in his war against Iran in the '80s.
Was that wrong?
It certainly wasn't the best of all possible worlds. People often act as if there were or are two alternatives in the world we live in: a morally pure policy that will lead to nothing but good results, and an amoral policy. However, that's not really the world we live in. The world we live in often involves choices between bad and worse. We helped Iraq in the '80s because the consequences of an Iranian victory would have been worse (or at least, in a world of incomplete knowledge and judgement calls, reasonable people - and unreasonable ones including Nobel Prize winner Jimmy Carter - concluded that an Iranian victory would be worse). We helped the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan as part of a struggle against a larger foe - Soviet Communism. Pressure on them there was part of the strategy leading to their defeat and the liberty of hundreds of millions (literally) of people in Eastern Europe and in Asia (and also the blossoming of democratic government elsewhere in the world in the '90s).
Indeed, the same folks who point fingers of accusation at us for having aligned with Saddam in the '90s implicitly recognize that this is a world of hard choices when they say things like "well, I don't like Kim Jong Il, of course, but I think we should be more conciliatory, provide the aid to him - no strings attached because that would humiliate a sovereign country - that will help the North Korean people [ if it gets to them] and, yah, have the side effect of propping up his regime". Dittoes with Castro (though it's often harder to get them to say they don't like Fidel). Their moralism with regards to our past ties to Saddam are then exposed as just a rhetorical blackjack with which to bludgeon opponents or gull the ignorant into sympathizing with or joining The Movement.
But the foremost example of this is the military help we supplied to the Soviet Union during World War II. No serious student of the history of that war can possibly ignore the fact that it was the Red Army that bore the brunt of that war, did most of the fighting and most of the dying. Recognizing this does not minimize the contributions and heroism of the other forces, including our own (which my Grandfather was a part of as a paratrooper), but it's a fact. However, it's also a fact that without American trucks and supplies, the Soviet Army would not have been able to fight its way across Eastern Europe to Berlin.
We supplied the armies of a Generalissimo, Stalin who, at the time the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union, had more blood on his hands than Hitler did. But we recognized that NAZIsm was the greater evil (and, indeed, Hitler quickly caught up with and surpassed the crimes of Stalin, in consciously emulating them) and had to be defeated first. This involved a deal with if not Satan himself, then his right-hand man, because the world is full of hard choices, not easy ones.
The same Left that points fingers of accusation for consorting with Saddam rarely, if ever, do so with regards to our consorting with Stalin on a much wider scale. Now, this is not because they have any deep affection for Stalin (quite the contrary, they will - well, at least a large majority, but by no means all, will - if it comes up, denounce Stalin). But they do have a sort of blind spot when it comes to Communism (the feeling seems to be that those involved at least meant well or started with decent goals, and anyway if things didn't work out it was the West's - and in particular, America's - fault anyhow). Indeed, their narrative of the Cold War usually starts with putting the blame not on Stalin (for breaking his commitments in Eastern Europe and blockading Berlin), but on us for not being conciliatory enough and lacking sufficient understanding of their security needs, and being unnecessarily provocative (everything we did counts as provocative in this narrative, everything the Soviet Union did as understandable). But in any case, hard choices had to be made. In a perfect world, Patton's asserted policy of what he would do if his army was in between both the NAZI and Soviet army would have been national policy - attack in both directions, fight both Stalin and Hitler simultaneously. But in reality, that would have been foolish and self-defeating. So we helped one against the other.
Which brings me to the next hard choice I'm going to write about today. The argument often was raised during debates among bloggers, in mails, on discussion boards, &tc "well, if you think we should change the regime in Iraq, how about Zimbabwe [or fill in some other country or list of countries] too, huh?"
My answer was that I'd love to see these other dictatorships overthrown, too, but that supporting the end of Saddam's regime didn't necessarily commit me to overthrowing every dictatorship everywhere, because every situation is different. That wasn't quite true, though. In a perfect world, I'd love to see Castro toppled, Mugabe thrown in jail, the Mullahs of Iran deposed, the House of Saud driven back out into the deep desert where they belong, even Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (who was elected but is ruling like a dictator) put on trial for his crimes (such as ordering his "Bolivarian Circles" to shoot and kill protestors). Why? Am I some sort of crusader for democracy? Kind of. But also because most of these regimes are not just unpleasant for the people they rule, but cause problems for the world and for us.
But in the real world we have limited resources and we have to prioritize. We cannot send our forces, however good, into every country. Much less occupy them afterwords to insure a transfer to a better regime. After haranguing the Left for much of this post, it's time to make a point that many of those of us who support a grand strategy to reshape the Middle East and defeat regimes that support, foster, or create the environment in which terrorists operate sometimes seem to forget. Not only is it impractical to do much in the Congo, but we're not going to see any military strikes against Syria or Iran anytime soon (beyond, perhaps, a few covert operations). At least not unless our army is expanded significantly or our commitments elsewhere are significantly reduced. As it is, we're stretched pretty thin just taking care of Iraq and our other past commitments (in my not too humble opinion, I think it's time to tell Our European Friends that they should assume all the responsibilities in peacekeeping in the Balkans. It would free up our forces, and give them a dose of cold water regarding their phantasmagorical belief that they're All Growed Up Now. The only problem with such an idea is the potential consequences for the people who live in the former Yugoslavian areas could be ugly. So there we stay). These missions involve a lot more troops and effort than one might think from just the numbers listed in an article (I encourage folks to read the article if they haven't already).
But just because we can't do everything, that doesn't mean we should do nothing. One prioritizes, using many factors - mostly having to do with what is in our interest, but also including what is right. On balance, by comparison with the foreign policies of most countries, America's has not been - as the Left will try to describe - uniquely abhorrent, but actually compares favorably with the policies of other countries (including, especially, the countries the Left is enamored with - and I'm not even talking the dictatorships they've swooned over throughout the years but, say, French foreign policy, for example). Are we perfect? No. But we strive for goals that few others even consider relevant. We have the strength to do many positive things, and we use it - almost invariably with more reluctance than any other people with similar strength would. But that strength is also finite.
Therefore, we're not planning on tackling "Syria next" or "Iran next", not in the way that we did Afghanistan and Iraq. The reason is practical (and I'm sure that reason is understood by those making policy decisions) - it couldn't be done because those places couldn't be added to the number of places our strong, but finite, military men and women are already dealing with.
The bad thing is I think the governments of those places understand that, too, and so they aren't going to be as. . .cooperative. . .as we might have hoped.
Never the less, I stand by this and this, not because the assertions about a web of deception aren't absurd, but because there's no amount of past record that can't be slipped down the memory hole by those making the accusations and their friends in a complicit media. I mean, how often in this atmosphere has the fact that their was ample evidence - from the UN, previous administrations, other governments across the world - for Saddam's weapons program been brought up? One can read lengthy articles and these facts are notable by their absence, and it's even worse over the airwaves on the BBC, for example.
So if nothing significant is found, Blair is gone, regardless of what the actual facts and truth are with respect to the knowledge of Saddam's weapons programs, and the other ramifications follow as well.
As for mass graves full of murdered children, nothing matters less to the humanitarian, progressive Left, which will simply point fingers of accusation not at Saddam, but at those who finally (belatedly) did something about it. It isn't as if those humanitarian progressives really wanted something done sooner (unlike cold-hearted Conservative me; every time something like this is found, I regret that we didn't go in much earlier and take out the Ba'ath National Socialist regime). For the humanitarian Left, though, the discovery of such mass graves is simply, hysterically, another tool to discredit the pro-war side with, oddly. The only thing they have to say about such things is that "well, you didn't go in when this was happening" - so they argue we should have let it continue ad infinitum.
And people get upset when someone says that the ideology of the Left has become corrupted by extremism and loathing of the West. For them, everything is just a tool to attack with America - and that's hardly a sign of real ethics.
For those who might have been tempted to think I was just expressing paranoid ravings here and here when I said that the Architects of EUrope have, as a matter of strategy, resorted to subterfuge to get their project advanced, check out this article, which focuses on "a back-door move to allow future treaty changes to be made without requiring ratification by national parliaments," snuck into the draft Constitution.
As for the rest of EUrope: the French model is the model the whole EU will be guided to follow, as is clear from the draft Constitution and the European Charter of rights. If it's ratified, then this is what things will look like in your own countries in five or ten years, you lucky devils.
