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Originally written by Sir David:

Alec, I must say that I agree with you on our order of operations; there were, and still are, plenty of other problems we could have solved. Diplomacy does not always work, unfortunately; I know about the African civil wars, and I really wish we would do more about those. As I said, N. Korea should really have been our first target (the African countries I don't count as "targets", since those require peace-keeping troops and care packages rather than invasion forces). But the fact of the matter is that we are now in Iraq, and we cannot simply abandon them to their fate. I believe that the invasion and reconstruction in Iraq were/will be easier than in N. Korea, and we need practice. So I say we make the best of it, try our hardest to establish freedom and democracy (it's a process, don't expect every Iraqi to vote before the year is up), and just do what we can for the Iraqi people. I'm far more optimistic than you are, Alec; I think that the media is casting a shadow on the quiet improvements in Iraq and focusing instead on the violence and bloodshed, simply because that makes better news. I think we will succeed, in the end; we didn't do so bad in Japan or Germany.
Japan and Germany are not analogous. There has never been a democratic regime in Iraq, and there is no 'common enemy' in Iraq. (In both cases, the moderate regimes that replaced the authoritarian ones hated and feared nearby Soviet influence).
And next to no Americans -- if any -- were killed in either occupation, at least after the fighting ended.
The media are casting a shadow on everything about Iraq. I haven't heard word one about them except for from small, liberal news outlets. Funny thing is, if anything good were happening there, you'd think the TV and paper news (which are dominated by those who supported the war) would trumpet it to the skies.

Alec, please. No matter how much of a liar Bush is, percieved or genuine, he never said anything as outrageous as your statement that American bombs will cause 50% of the Iraqi people to die of hunger and thirst.
Geographically, Sir David. The Tigris/Euphrates basin takes up about half of the country. And the estimate for long-run casualties at the outset of 'Shock and Awe' was 500,000 or so. Only further complications have occurred since then. 500,000 is a tremendous number; to put it into perspective, Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together killed about 100,000 people on the long term.


EDIT: I typed this post while Slith was posting... anyway, I agree with him, and I think I've made that point in other dicussions. If Iraq is a success, it will become a city on a hill, a role model for third world countries everywhere. This "get the hell out of here" attitude is nothing but harmful, but I think that those opposed to the war in the first palce are more supportive of that policy than Bush is. I really don't think he wants out of Iraq too quickly; if so, I'll be totally against that. But I think anything he says to suggest that is really just sucking up to his opponents, and to the more radical citizens of Iraq.
He wants out of Iraq. He has made this abundantly clear; he either expected it to be a walkover and is insulted it wasn't or wanted to set up a US-friendly (or at least US-corporation-friendly) regime and then get the hell out of the country.
I would protest Bush's point: he did, in fact, say 'We're going to war in Iraq and you can't stop us' -- if not in as few words. Owning the media makes you a de facto if not de jure dictator in a democratic society; then again, I'm sure you are one of the people who takes the phrase 'the liberal media' seriously.

Not on what news, Drakey? I've seen very, very few news articles recently that mention Iraq without mentioning civilian casualties. I can't think of any, in fact.
News reports are notoriously sketchy on these things; they say that civilians are killed, but not who, why, or how many. One American death and we won't stop screaming.

On WWI: those problems were hardly caused by America. Peace without victory, anyone? Wilson honestly wanted to stop the fighting; that was his goal. England, France, and the rest wanted reparations. They didn't just want to end the killing, they wanted to punish Germany to the point where the Germans could never fight again. This obviously didn't work; Wilson was disgusted by the European countries taking advantage of a defeated nation.
The war would have ended by stalemate in 1919 instead of decisive victory in 1918; neither side COULD have had a 'decisive victory' if the US hadn't gotten involved. Neither side could have extracted the kind of peace the Allies were able to thanks to the morale effects of American intervention.


No, we did not join the League of Nations, but the League really wouldn't have been very strong anyway. Wilson wanted America to join the League, of course, but political rivalries at home along with a general isolationist feeling in Americans prevented that. And who knows what would have happened if Wilson, not the isolationists, had gotten his way? Or America, not Europe? Probably not the Holocaust, I can tell you that.
The League was completely and utterly feckless. It was designed in such a way to exclude or diminish the protagonists in WW1, it ignored the Soviets, and the US wasn't ready to get involved in a long-haul global commitment like that anyway. When Italy invaded Ethiopia, Haile Selassie protested the attacks loud and long; his nation had been a member of the LoN since its inception, and so had Italy.
England and France did nothing; the US wouldn't have if they had been a member.
Again, the US turned WW1 from a colonial struggle that would have been nondecisive into the flagstone of two world wars.
You will not find a sane historian who will tell you that the US was right to enter the first World War, Sir David; diplomacy could have settled it, but the US barely ever tried to use diplomacy. They sat on their laurels until the right propaganda victory came, and pitched in for the side they had the most financial interest in.

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