Ed Rasimus wrote:
On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:23:17 -0500, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote:
On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 01:16:20 -0500, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:


Certainly I'll categorically deny that being bogged down in Iraq is good
for any American, candidate or not. Many Americans, lately including
members of the Republican Party as well as Democrats, are starting to
regret that our nation allowed itself to get involved in this military
adventure for non-existent reasons in the first place. In hindsight, we
may someday conclude that we would have been better off letting the UN
handle the mess their way, instead of going it alone.

George Z.


(Snip)

Recent editorials have been comparing the Iraqi democratization to the
aftermath of WW II in Europe. Five months after V-E day, the region
was lawless, with looting, refugees, sniping and disorder.

I was in Italy until June 1946 and, other than the presence of some refugees,
there was little looting, sniping or disorder visible to the naked eye.
Maybe the birthplace of the Mafia was more law abiding than was defeated
Germany, but I didn't see the things you inferred were endemic. And I do
not remember any reports of ongoing resistance to the end of the war in
Germany as is apparently in progress in Iraq today. There may have been
isolated instances of rifle fire but nothing more.

There's a whole big mountain range between Italy and central Europe.

Yes, they're called the Alps, and they do indeed separate Italy from the rest of
Europe, but no more so than the same mountains separated Austria from the rest
of Europe. Anyway, we were talking about Europe, and not a specific part of it.

The war rolled through Italy a year and a half before Germany
collapsed.....

My unit was staging for an airborne invasion of the Po Valley in the Spring of
'45, which was about the time that Germany collapsed. I wonder why nobody told
us that the war was over so that we might have been able to save the lives of
the guys in our unit who were killed in an accident by a battle damaged B-17
that crash landed at our staging base and ran into a couple of our airplanes.

......and the level of destruction as Berlin was caught between
the two oncoming armies from East and West was considerably different
than Italy.

I guess you've never seen what the Anzio beachhead or the abbey at Montecassino
looked like, but I can tell you that Italian rubble looks just like German or
any other kind of rubble. You're probably right about the fact that the Battle
of Berlin produced a monumental amount of municipal rubble, while the rubble in
Italy was more rural in character and took a lot more time to produce than the
battle for Berlin did.

(Snip)

"Non-existant reasons"? Gotta say at the most superficial that
bringing democracy to an oppressed dictatorial nation is a pretty good
one.

If that's a reason to go to war, then we must have a veritable grab bag of
eligible sites for the next adventure. The world is full of oppressed
dictatorial nations, as is that region, and we are even allied with a good
number of them.

Certainly there are a number of nations that might benefit from
"regime change" but foreign policy is inextricably linked to national
self-interest. While we might not much care what goes on in Liberia or
Myanmar, the stability of the middle-East is clearly within the
interest of America. We pick and choose where we get involved.
Sometimes it is easily and clearly supportable, but more often it will
be dissected in the political process of America's two-party system
and lots of folks will disagree, many for simplistic and even
incorrect reasons.

.....Ditto for demonstrating US support for an Arab people. Ditto
again for stabilizing the region and building a staunch presence
beyond Israel.

That's another way of saying that "this is going to hurt you more than it's
going to hurt me" isn't it? All we have to do is to beat them into
stability, even if it doesn't suit them.

That's an excellent rhetorical gambit, but what the hell does it mean?
It doesn't at all mean what you've implied. Does improving the
governmental process of an authoritarian nation imply some sort of
punishment? Hardly. For that matter, the birth of the USA was
revolutionary and arguably quite painful. And, it only took us eleven
years after the revolution before we beat out the Constitution that
has worked for the last 216 years.

"Letting the UN handle the mess their way..."? Gimme a break. Any
examples of UN successes in handling this sort of mess?

I confess that I would sooner have them firing their RPGs and detonating
their land mines when UN forces go by than when the targets are solely
American. So, if the policy fails, it's a UN policy that fails, and if
there are casualties, they are UN casualties. Let's face it, we're not in
this out of the goodness of our national hearts.....we're in it because,
whether or not it's yet clear to us ordinary Americans, we're going to
profit in some way for our involvement. Some of us suspect that it won't
involve much more than oil or big business in some way. In any case,
anybody who swallows the proposition that we are altruistic in our foreign
affairs has got to be the world's most gullible guppy.

That's great reasoning. You first urge us to abandon the region (or
roll back the clock and never have gone in the first place) so that
the "UN handle the mess their way" clearly implying that a UN solution
would be somehow effective, then when pressed seem to admit that the
UN would bugger it up completely, but at least we wouldn't have
responsibility.

It's somewhat better than your reasoning in that you assumed something (and you
know what happens when you assume) that I never ever said. I think that for us
to pull out of Iraq would be a disaster for our national interests and a total
waste of the human, materiel and fiscal assets we've expended on it so far. In
point of fact, I was merely using my super-perfect 20-20 hindsight in
envisioning how the problem might have developed had we chosen to pursue some
role other than that of Rambo.

Gotta say that while you seem to be ideologically committed, you seem
to be rationality impaired. Your logic doesn't seem to stand up to
scrutiny.

It's all in the eye of the beholder. I don't think too much of the logic of you
knee-jerk idealogues, either. However, I must say in closing how much I admire
your arrogance in sitting in judgment of my ability to rationalize and exercise
logic. Are you sure you don't have a strain of Israeli chutzpah hidden in your
familial background somewhere? (^-^)))

You don't have to answer that, it being just a rhetorical question. Does
answering one's own question stand up to your logical scrutiny? Oh, well.

George Z.