It's been a while since I've had some fun with my favorite humorist, Molly Ivins. So Without further ado, let's go to work on this column about war and peace.
"Jaw, jaw," said Winston Churchill, "is better than war, war."
Unless dealing with Hitler, Hitler. Or Saddam, Saddam.
I bring up the not-often-contested notion that peace is better than war only
because it seems the Bush administration is incapable of grasping the
self-evident.
The self evident is that peace is better than war, but war has been declared on us.
According to The New York Times,
All the news that's fit to distort.
President Bush has directed his top security people -- a
happy nest of neo-con hawks -- "to make a doctrine of pre-emptive
action against states and terrorist groups trying to develop
weapons of mass destruction.
And this is bad because...
" This means, we declare war first. This dogma "will be the foundation of a new national security strategy."
No, once again, war has been declared on us. We're just going after the bad guys before they nuke us.
Let's see, we already have our military in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Georgia and the Philippines. We are also deeply into Colombia as part of the Drug War and have fairly regular deployment by special ops in Somalia, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
And coming soon, to a theater of ops near you Iraq (and maybe Syria, too).
Good thing for India and Pakistan they made it into the Nuclear Club before the deadline, eh? Let's see, add Iran, North Korea and some of the nuttier princes, kings, sheiks, presidents-for-life -- I make that between 20 and 30 wars we'll have to fight under the new doctrine.
India and Pakistan did not declare war on us. Anyway, they're too busy fighting each other. And guess what, Iran is starting to suck up to us. Betcha they get real friendly if we knock Saddam off. Just like all the 'nuttier princes, kings, sheiks, presidents for life'. Just a couple of military operations and I think the little pissant countries will fall in line.
Then you have to add in all the "failed states."
I thought we covered that with the 'nuttier princes, kings, sheiks, presidents for life'.
The administration says it is "fine-tuning" the
doctrine to include joint operations with other powers:
If the Euroweenies want to help out OK. If not we'll do it ourselves.
"Potential targets include weak states that have become,
in the words of one official, 'petri dishes' for terrorist groups."
Like Afghanistan, maybe?
You can't exactly have a war between, say, Sierra Leone and
the United States. When there's no actual government, we end
up trying to control a bunch of warlords -- and, as we have learned
in Somalia
Bush is not Bill Clinton.
and Afghanistan, it ain't easy.
Did I miss something? I thought Afghanistan went pretty well.
The trouble with such non-wars is that there's no exit
strategy; we're in for indefinite occupation.
Go in, kill the bad guys and leave. If it works in Afghanistan, (and we'll see if it does) we oughta be able to make it work elsewhere. Don't know unless we try.
Do we really think this is a good idea?
Yep!
OK, what we're really trying to do here is set up some policy rationale for
attacking Iraq
We've already done that.
and possibly the other Axes of Evil, as well.
Have you heard the news out of Iran? They're sucking up. Plus the mullahs are losing control. If we successfully take out Iraq, I don't think we'll have to worry about Iran. As for North Korea, its economy is in shambles and its people are starving. It just may implode like the Soviet Union did.
It's not that easy to argue against taking out Saddam.
Good. Let's not bother.
But as Joshua Marshall
Who's he?
points out in the current issue of The Washington Monthly,
the people who are urging us to attack Iraq are either dishonest
or simplistic, or both, in their arguments.
Are these the same people who wanted to go after Afghanistan?
They are failing to ask, much less answer, some basic questions
about the risks. Their cheerful premise that it will relatively easy
to take out Saddam is based on their equally cheerful ignorance.
I'm sorry, I missed that Defense Department strategy meeting. Was it on MSNBC? No one watches that network. Molly, no one said it would be easy to take out Saddam. If it were, we would have done it already.
What the hawks hope is that the Iraqi people hate Saddam Hussein
They do.
and will be delighted to see us show up and liberate
them.
The people of Afghanistan were pretty happy to see us.
Unfortunately, we'll have to bomb them first. In case you
hadn't noticed, this tends to make us unpopular.
Depends on how many people we kill. Our bombs have gotten pretty selective. Not too much collateral damage in Afghanistan. I know the Kurds and the Shi'ites will be happy to see us. They hate Saddam. He gassed 'em.
Marshall reports, "When asked what would happen if America
encountered an embittered civilian population after fighting a grisly
battle for Baghdad,
We're hoping that doesn't happen. Iraqis surrender better than the French. At least they did in 1991.
Perle replied with a question, 'Suppose the Iraqis are dancing
in the streets after Saddam is gone?'"
Could happen. Lot's of Afghanis were doing it after the rout of the Taliban. Cue the music.
That non-answer is based on the false premise that
if the Iraqis hate Saddam, they're bound to love us, which is
nonsense.
Actually, we don't care if they love us. Just don't make weapons of mass destruction and be good little Iraqis.
Asked about the possibility that an attack on Iraq would so upset Arab
peoples they would overthrow now-friendly governments in Jordan, Egypt
Ain't gonna happen. And if it does, we got Israel to cover our flanks, thanks to Bush's latest policy on the Middle East. Pretty neat, huh?
and Saudi Arabia,
Mustn't forget out 'friends' the Saudis.
the neo-cons dismiss the question. "All the better if
you ask me," Adelman told Marshall. What's better about
having Islamist fanatics running Egypt and Saudi Arabia?
Egypt loses $3 billion a year. The Saudi's? That's a good question. The regime couldn't be worse than what they got now. What regime do you think sponsors most of the terrorism?
If we're going to do this, I suggest the administration prepare the
country for exactly how big the risks are.
I seem to remember a few speeches about that. Maybe Molly missed 'em. They were on all the networks. One of them was the State of the Union.
Unfortunately, it seems more inclined to question the patriotism of
anyone who asks questions.
Depends on the questions and who asks 'em. If it's Barbra Streisand the administration would probably just burst out into hysterical laughter.
As for the longer menu of war and near-war under the Bush Doctrine,
why not try peace instead?
All we are saying is give peace a chance.
The hope of the world has been the slow growth and
development of international law.
Stop it! Your killing me! International law? Who enforces it? The United Nations? Pass me the bong. I need a real good hit after that one!
Announcing that we will declare war "pre-emptively" whenever
we feel like it does nothing to promote peace.
Huh? She lost me there. We're not trying to promote peace. We're trying to prevent lunatics from killing us.
What makes us think our intelligence is good enough to learn
if and where such weapons are being developed?
After eight years of Clinton it's not. But we're working on it.
When Clinton tried to go after Al Qaeda,
To distract us from Monica.
he missed Osama bin Ladin by an hour
Dammit! Just missed! All I got were a few goats!
and destroyed a harmless pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.
The FBI, the CIA and the rest of them managed to ignore the
warning signs on 9-11.
And even if we did, we couldn't have stopped it because it would have involved profiling men of Middle Eastern descent which you liberal twits won't let us do.
We're not competent enough to go around declaring
"pre-emptive war."
For the millionth time, the war has been delared against us. If you sponsor terrorism, you are against us.
Why not announce in advance that we plan to work with other
countries on solving the problem of terrorism.
Saddam, we'd like to talk to you about terrorism. Could we come over next Tuesday. Let's do lunch.
Why not try waging peace first?
Kumbaya.
A.J. Muste said, "There is no way to peace: Peace is the way."
George Bush said, 'In the war on terror, you are either with us, or against us'.
What can this doctrine possibly achieve except creating more
hatred of the United States?
Ya know Molly, I don't really care if they hate us or not. I just don't want to see any more 9/11's.
Posted by denny at June 26, 2002 08:04 PM Category: Molly Ivins Fisks