the blame game

[Dumbie]

........Pro-war hawks offer a different set of excuses. Some assert that going to war was the right idea, but the operation was bungled by incompetent leadership in the Pentagon. William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, wants Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign, yet the pundit simultaneously claims that the debacle in Iraq vindicates his earlier call for vast increases in U.S. defense spending. In this view, we are losing because we don’t have a big enough army to run an empire and because civilians at the top were never serious about winning.

This excuse suffers from two glaring weaknesses. First, the war may not have been winnable no matter what we did, because Iraq was a deeply divided society from the onset, and occupying powers almost always face fierce resistance. That the occupation was badly executed is indisputable, but it is by no means clear that any occupation would have succeeded. Second, if hawks such as Kristol thought we needed a bigger military to perform a global imperial role, they should have withheld their support until adequate forces were available. Instead, they did everything they could to get us into the regime-changing business as quickly as possible.

For their part, Secretary Rumsfeld and other administration officials blame our problems on Baathist “dead-enders” and radical jihadis, aided and abetted by Syria and Iran. It’s not the Bush administration’s fault we’re losing, we are told; it’s our enemies’ fault. That is no defense at all, of course, because it merely reminds us that the Bush team failed to anticipate what would happen once Saddam was gone and we “owned” Iraq. And given that the Bush administration has repeatedly threatened Syria and Iran with regime change, it is hardly surprising that these regimes are now happy to see us bogged down in Baghdad. U.S. leaders should have considered these possibilities before they went to war, and their failure to do so is hardly a reason to excuse them now.

The most scurrilous alibi, however, blames our difficulties on eroding public support at home. Grieving antiwar mother Cindy Sheehan gets pilloried by right-wing commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and President Bush declares that Americans who favor withdrawing “are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States.” Similarly, neoconservative pundit Max Boot recently maintained that Iraqi democracy would survive its birth pangs only “if we don’t cut and run prematurely.” So, we are told, “staying the course” will work, unless we are forced to pull out by weak-willed critics back home.

This argument is a clever bit of political jujitsu, because it in effect blames any future defeat on the people who have long contended that the war was unnecessary and unwise. But it is also a bogus excuse. In a democracy, a commander in chief who wants to go to war is responsible for building and maintaining public support for sending our sons and daughters into harm’s way. President Bush sold the war brilliantly before the fighting started, but his sales pitch could not survive the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the embarrassing revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib, the bungled occupation, the mounting list of dead and wounded, and the rising economic toll. Most of all, this rationale highlights the conspicuous lack of a plausible theory of victory now. We are not losing because our troops lack public support. The war lacks support because we are losing.

If our Iraq adventure ends badly, there will be ample blame to go around. But the buck should stop, as President Harry Truman famously said, in the Oval Office. President Bush was quick to claim credit when things were going well, and he cannot escape blame when things turn ugly. This is President Bush’s war, and America’s failure will be his legacy.

Stephen M. Walt is academic dean at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His latest book is Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: Norton, 2005)..........

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/c...?story_id=3266

[sinecure]

Blame?

Try this on for size:

Lebanon 1982: 32 Westerners killed

Beirut 1983: Car bomb kills 17 Americans

Beruit 1983: 241 Marines Killed (58 French Paratroopers also killed)

Kuwait 1983: Truck bomb kills 5 Americans

Beruit 1984: Truck Bomb kills 24 Americans (2 GI's)

Beirut 1984: Kuwait Airways Flight 221 hi-jacked, 2 Americans killed

Beruit 1985: TWA flight 847 hi-jacked. Navy diver killed.

Athens 1986: TWA flight 840 bombed killing 4 Americans

Scotland 1988: Pan Am flight bombed 270 killed.

New York 1993: World Trade Center Bombed killing 6.

Riyadh 1995: Car bomb kills 5 GI's.

Dhahran 1996: Truck bomb kills 19 GI's

Kenya 1998: Truck bomb kills 224 (2 Americans)

Yemen 2000: 17 Sailors Killed (USS Cole)

Riyadh 2003: Suicide bomber kills 34 (8 Americans)

Riyadh 2004: Paul Johnson kid napped and executed

Jiddah 2004: US consolate stormed by militants, five killed.

...Unlike YOU, I don't see it as a "game", azzwh00lie, but should I go on with the list? add to it or fill it in? ...or do you get the point?

[Dumbie]

Ops you've must have posted the wrong list Sinski, no where does it mention Iraq.

[Ateo]

Everybody has a list. Lists are meaningless.

[metalripper666]

Originally Posted by Dumbie

Ops you've must have posted the wrong list Sinski, no where does it mention Iraq.

because we all know absolutlely no americans died in iraq

[sinecure]

tigsnort-- "Everybody has a list. Lists are meaningless."

Dumbie--"Ops you've must have posted the wrong list Sinski, no where does it mention Iraq."


And ALL OF THOSE EVENTS on my list were merely "unfortunate accidents"... right?

There is NOBODY to blame... right?

They are ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL...right?

There is NO COMMONALITY... NO ETIOLOGICAL FACTOR that could possibly link them together... right?

There is also NOTHING AT ALL as well as NO POSSIBLE WAY to link these events to whatever has historically [or is currently happening] to/in Iraq... or France.... or anywhere else in the world... right?

You guys are simply not thinking.

...but then, perhaps I expect the impossible.

"I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents." --Elie Wiesel

[Ateo]

Someone could make up a similiar list about the US.

Yep, there's lots of bad guys in the world that do bad things. Even the good guys do bad things sometimes. Which shows you it's a grey world, not a black & white one. And if you try to solve problems in a grey world with black & white methodology, you're never going to get anywhere, in fact you're only going to make things worse.

Ignoring one's own faults and focusing obsessively on the faults of others is what terrorists do, it's what drives them. I was under the impression America wasn't like that. The current admin, however, is proving me wrong.

[sinecure]

Originally Posted by tigsnort

Someone could make up a similiar list about the US.

Yep, there's lots of bad guys in the world that do bad things. Even the good guys do bad things sometimes. Which shows you it's a grey world, not a black & white one. And if you try to solve problems in a grey world with black & white methodology, you're never going to get anywhere, in fact you're only going to make things worse.

Ignoring one's own faults and focusing obsessively on the faults of others is what terrorists do, it's what drives them. I was under the impression America wasn't like that. The current admin, however, is proving me wrong.

OK... so make up a similar list about the US, Tig. I'd really like to compare/contrast/discuss the two.

One of the refuges of the hoplessly and permanently confused is to accuse anybody who can see a distinct differential as "seeing everything in black and white." I can do much the same by simply accusing you of seeing everything as an "18% gray card" [a reference for the photography buffs].

As I've pointed out to you on numerous other threads-- it's easy [and oh-so GUTLESS] to say "well... I guess that's OK. We mustn't be JUDGMENTAL here." to everything... to everything except those who CAN discern right from wrong.

So, go ahead... compose and post your "U.S. List"... I'd like to see it.

[Ateo]

Don't get me wrong, I don't view terrorists as "deserving of understanding" or any of that crap. I think they're human garbage. However, that being said, I'm more concerned with the tendency of Americans to let their hatred of terrorists lead them down a self-compromising road, than I am with terrorists. I see the former as a much more serious threat to the country. When our desire for vengeance gets to the point where we start viewing our fundamental rights as quaint, and we poo-poo torture, then something has gone horribly, horribly askew IMO.

[sinecure]

Passive resistance only works when the entity being resisted doesn't feel like killing the passive.

I just recently came across this:

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers. All you have to do is hold your first dying soldier in your arms, and have that terrible futile feeling that his life is flowing out and you can't do anything about it. Then you understand the horror of war. Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for. -- General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

[dave404]

Sin,

What does your list of terrorist atrocities, committed by different groups with different motivations, at different times and in different places, have to do with a post about how politicians try to redistribute the blame for failures in handling the post-invasion "peace" in Iraq?

[w1che]

Bush & company have screwed the dog in this war ever since Saddam fell. The incompetent boobs they have sent over to run things since the fall of Saddam is outrageous and that includes some of the Generals. They have also allowed the liberals in this country to set the agenda & rules of engagement which has made it almost a crime for our troops to kill the enemy.. The enemy can kill as many of our troops as they can before they hold up their hands to get a home with A/C & three of the best meals a day they ever had in their life..

No one can tell me it takes over 3 years to train & deploy less than two hundred thousand Iraqi troops. It needs to be made very clear to the Iraqi's that time is running out for them to get their damn act together on protecting their own country. Turn the Iraqi troops loose, they don't all have to be trained to the level of our special forces. Bush has allowed us to become on the defensive in this war on terror because with the help of the the liberal wacko's in this country other countries in the middle east know they have very little to fear from America for helping our enemies in Iraq.

Am I happy with Bush as a leader? NO, but I would still vote for him over Kerry or Hillary...

[Dumbie]

List of U.S. foreign interventions since 1945
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ons_since_1945

1940s

* Occupation and rebuilding of Japan 1945-1952 after World War II, drafting Japan's current democratic constitution.
* 1945, USSR occupies North Korea and U.S. occupies South Korea after the surrender of Imperial Japan in World War II. USSR denies elections in North Korea, establishing a Communist government, while the U.S. supports UN-supervised elections.
* Occupation and rebuilding of West Germany after World War II. Merges U.S. occupation zone with the French and British zones to form the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.
* June 28, 1948: Flies supplies into Allied-occupied West Berlin over the Soviet blockade during 1948-1949, known as the Berlin Airlift
* U.S. financial and military support of the Republic of China, that began during the Sino-Japanese War and through World War II, continued against the Communist People's Liberation Army led by Mao Zedong.


1950s

* Korean War from 1950 until 1953: After Communist North Korean troops invade South Korea, the UN, with every nation voting "yea" with the exception of Yugoslavia (which abstained,) approves military support for South Korea, involving over a dozen countries including the US.
* The CIA, collaborating with the British MI6, successfully orchestrates the removal of elected Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh through a royalist coup. (see Operation Ajax [1]
* 1954: CIA-orchestrated overthrow of elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala (see Operation PBSUCCESS.)
* U.S. sends military advisors to assist President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam from 1955 - 1963. [2]
* Lebanon crisis of 1958: Supports President Camille Chamoun when Pan-Arabists supported by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser attempt to overthrow his government.
* After the 1956 Chinese bombing of ancient monasteries at Chatreng and Litang that kills thousands of civilians and violates the Plan for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, the CIA aids Chushi Gangdruk and Tensung Dhanglang Magar's resistance movement.


1960s

* 1961: CIA involvement in the assassination of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, their former ally in the Dominican Republic. [3] [4] [5]
* 1961: U.S.-backed abortive Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, led by Cuban exiles.
* 1961-62: CIA and Department of Defense covert plans and operations, The Cuban Project and Operation Northwoods, which included blowing up a Cuban industrial facility, to "help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime".
* 1962: Overflights of Cuba, followed by naval blockade as part of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
* 1963-64: CIA involvement in riots and violence in Guyana in order to undermine the Marxist People's Progressive Party and its leader, Cheddi Jagan.
* 1965: Dominican Republic military officers revolted against the junta to try to restore Juan Bosch, whereupon U.S. President Lyndon Johnson sent 20,000 U.S. troops to defeat the revolt so to avoid "another Cuba."
* 1964-75: Vietnam War
* CIA-organized military operation ends in capture and execution of Che Guevara by the Bolivian Army.
* 1968: Operation Commando Hunt implemented; the Ho Chi Minh trail, which runs through Laos and Cambodia, is bombed to disrupt logistical support given to the Viet Cong by the North Vietnamese Army.


1970s

* 1973: US supported Chilean coup of 1973 against Salvador Allende. This coup was never officially admited by US government, but Colin Powell referenced US intervention on it in an interview in 2003 [6].
* Following overthrow of the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, the CIA supports the Contras from 1979 - 1989. resolution. [7]


1980s

* 1981: The Reagan administration sends military advisors and assistance to El Salvador and supports President José Napoleón Duarte during the country's civil war.
* Invasion of Grenada, thwarting an attempted Marxist coup (Operation Urgent Fury) -
* Operation Earnest Will: 1987-88 escort of reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
* Operation Prime Chance: 1987-88 covert anti-Iranian operations in the Persian Gulf.
* Operation Praying Mantis: 18 April 1988 strikes against Iranian naval and air forces.
* Operation Just Cause: In late 1989, the US invaded Panama and arrested Manuel Noriega for drug trafficking after a U.S. Marine was killed and Noriega declared war against the US.


1990s

* Intervention in Colombian civil war, 1990s
* After Iraq invades Kuwait in 1990, King Fahd, fearing Saudi Arabia would be Saddam Hussein's next target, invites a UN sanctioned coalition led by the U.S. to use the country as a base in the Gulf War following Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, 1991
* Operation Provide Relief, a 1992 US lead humanitarian relief for Somalia. After looting of the aid, it was reorganized as Operation Restore Hope, an American military operation with the support of the United Nations to deliver humanitarian aid and restore order to Somalia, that eventually lead to the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993.
* U.S. removal of Raoul Cédras from office in Haiti and temporary occupation of the country, following the disintegration of civil order 1993.
* NATO bombing of Bosnian Serbs, 1995.
* U.S.-led bombing campaign, called Operation Desert Fox, against Iraq in enforcement of the UN designated No-Fly zones created to protect Kurds and Marsh Arabs, 1998.
* Iraq Liberation Act, 1998.
* Operation Infinite Reach: a US cruise missile strike on terrorist bases and targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, including the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, after al Qaeda bombed two US embassies in 1998.
* NATO's bombing of Serbia in the Kosovo Conflict. Officially aimed at preventing ethnic cleansing of Albanians, 1999.

2000s

* U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, overthrow of Taliban when the government refuse to deliver Al-Qaida leaders located in the country after the September 11th attacks in 2001.
* Coalition led by the US invasion of Iraq, overthrow of Saddam Hussein, 2003


Beyond these interventions, the United States has developed a great deal of economic influence over many developing states. Some claim that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have assisted American foreign policy in this area. (If correct, this would also require the implicit co-operation of other countries, as the US has only 18% of the IMF's voting rights. [8])

[dave404]

the US has only 18% of the IMF's voting rights

Which can nonetheless be quite handy when major resolutions need 85% of the vote to be passed...

[sinecure]

Originally Posted by dave404

Sin,

What does your list of terrorist atrocities, committed by different groups with different motivations, at different times and in different places, have to do with a post about how politicians try to redistribute the blame for failures in handling the post-invasion "peace" in Iraq?

You truly can't see any commonality amongst all these "terrorist atrocities"??

Huddled in your comfortable home, you don't believe that we're actually at WAR?

Am I to believe that you seem to think that there actually IS a "post-invasion peace" in Iraq?

Iraq is only a skirmish... a battle... while that's where the focus currently seems to be, the WAR is on a much greater front.

[RK.]

Originally Posted by Dumbie

Ops you've must have posted the wrong list Sinski, no where does it mention Iraq.

The thing you libs seem to conveniently forget is that the USA was engaged in patrolling the 'NO FLY ZONES" in Iraq for 12 years after the first gulf war. During that time we were fired at on an weekly basis by Iraqi troops. It was costing the tax payers of the US between 1 and 2 billion a year to keep Saddam contained so he could pay off his European cronies in the UN with Oil for Food dollars. Libs seem to forget that we were being shot at by Saddam for all of those years. The idea that he was at peace and not threat is absolute garbage. Just because the main stream lib media didn't report on it much doesn't mean that it wasn't happening. The 12 yr list of attacks against US troops by Iraq during those years is very very long.

[Dumbie]

I'm well aware of the No Fly Zones there RK, and if we weren't there flying over Iraq, would Saddam attacked the UK, the US with his flattened Army? Was Israel really threatened or did they just fabricate intelligence to feed to the world?

Saddam used what little resources he had to maintain the insurgents in the north and south after Bush 1's invasion. We protected those insurgents and the Oil reserves with our Jets. Saddam took pay off's for oil deals, and with those moneys he built Castles, not bombs, and teased Bush with rewards to Homicide Bombers against Israel with $25,000 dollar rebate checks. Big Whoop. We paid Israel Billion to steal land and kill Palestinians. Hello, I must be going.

[dave404]

Sin, If you want to make something out of it, go right ahead. But kindly construct an actual argument rather than pretending the whole thing is obvious.

Even if my home were cold and uncomfortable, I would still think the idea that we are at war quite ridiculous. But that's not the topic.

What does all this has to do with how politicians try to redistribute the blame for failures in Iraq?