Peace On That

Little Miss Chatterbox has a series of post, In Defense of the War and George W. Bush Part I and Part II. In Part III she is going to deal with the “doom and gloom” of the lefties and how our interpretation as to what is happening in Iraq is incorrect.

The support of the Bush doctrine of preemptive war and the Iraq invasion comes down to this: Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here. The world is better off without Saddam. Afghanistan is free. It starts the process of bringing democracy to the Middle East.

If it were this simple then I wouldn’t waste my time debating the issue. But it has never been that simple. In fact, it is getting more complicated. Let’s say Bus is the head coach of a football team. He and his staff develop a game plan for their next opponent. Sunday afternoon rolls around and it by halftime it becomes obvious to everyone watching that whatever strategy Coach Bush had coming in, it was time to discard and adjust. But Coach Bush comes out of the locker room at the end of halftime and says ‘We’re going to stick with the plan we had coming into the game.’

Iraq should be a wakeup call to everyone in the world that the philosophy of democratizing the Middle East through military operations should die a quick and painful death. What Iraq has shown is that we lacked an understanding of the complex cultural landscape of Iraq. Based on reports, it also shows the problems that arise when political ideology is the guiding principle in conducting a war rather than tried and true military tactics.

Bush’s response to the problems is public affair campaigns and blaming the media. To deflect any criticism of his policy he builds straw men and provides elementary talking points. This allows for Bush to claim victories on themes while ignoring the general defencencies of his guiding principles. For instance, the Righties generally claim that it was the Iraq war that convinced Muammer Gadaffi to end his pursuit of WMD’s. We now know that Gadaffi was negotiating with the US as early as 1999 to end his nuclear and WMD programs for entrance into the international community.

Bush supporters also point to Syria’s willingness to distance itself from Lebanon as a positive result of the Iraq war. But it was the assassination of Lebanon’s ex-Premier Prime Minister Rafik Hariri that sparked a revolt of Syria in Lebanon. But to this day, Syria still controls many aspects of Lebanon’s politics.

Claiming these victories is a way to deflect criticism and for a segment of the population it is working. However, I think many Americans are finally coming to the understanding that preemptive war and democratization of the Middle East comes with a cost that may be too much for us to shoulder.

And this goes back to Bush’s coaching philosophy. Let’s say Coach Bush stuck with his game plan and his team is losing. But because of a fluke play at the end of the game, his team wins the game. His reaction is that he coaching scheme is validated by the victory and he doesn’t intend to make any changes for next week game even though it is against a conference powerhouse. One would certainly expect changes when facing a stronger opponent when the scheme was inadaquate for a lesser team.

It does not make sense for a football game to stick with a flawed plan and it certainly doesn’t make sense for a foreign policy. Iraq is small potatoes compared to the issues we have with Iran, China and a new generation of terrorist. So the willingness to not want to debate the legitimacy of the Bush’s game plan for Iraq and the overall scheme of democratizing the Middle East is ludicrous.

Iraq may someday turn out ok but if it happens, it will be because they overcame the many mishaps of the Bush administration. The administration could take credit for putting the ball in play, but they certainly didn’t give the Iraqi people much to work with. We can debate the necessity of the Iraq war but implementing a poor post-war strategy is worse that going to war for a poor reason.

Does this make me a naysayer? I think not. I’m just asking more questions then some Righties want to explore. I believe we have come to a point where simplistic talking points and slogans are passé.