We're being dumb. Going back to the UN, now, is just asking to have our face pushed in.
We're not going to get any substantial aid from anyone not already declared. None. Nada. Zilch. Zip.
Oh, maybe a couple tens of millions here or there, just to put a face on it. That way they can claim that they "helped" without doing anything that could materially affect the outcome. But nothing much beyond that.
What we will get is strung along, and embarrassed, and have our heels nipped. We will be exploited by every other country involved for whatever advantage they can get, even if only to look good at home.
Put yourselves in the shoes of any other Head of State beside Bush.
America makes the UN look bad in the run-up to the war by impugning their will, morals, etc. (and very rightly except we didn't go far enough). Then we go ahead anyway with those brave few countries with enough backbone to come along (thanks to all!). While most of the world is predicting, expecting, wishing, hoping, praying we can't pull it off, we mount the most successful military campaign in history, at marvelously low cost to all, and then, despite many admitted stumbles, do a pretty good job of getting Iraq back on its feet. No, we're not home free yet, by a long shot, but we're way out to the right side of almost anyone's pre-war betting on where we'd be 9 months after invasion.
So now, just as we're looking good and the war opponents are looking summat fools, knaves, or both, Bush comes along with the hand out, asking for money and/or troops.
What's in it for me, Mr. Head of State? My voters are resentful (at best) of America's victory, the chattering classes are aghast, my own political career may be called into question, my economy is in the tank, my armed forces are so weak as to be a national embarrassment, and you want me to donate money I don't have and troops I don't have for a cause I didn't support and whose success will make me look bad? Is that what you're asking for, Mr. Bush?
Let me think about that for a while. I'll get back to ya.
And that's about how it stands. What, do we think these other countries (the ones who mostly don't have money or troops) are going to cough up out of the good of their hearts? For The Greater Good Of The Innocent Iraqi People?
Fat chance.
Remember, these are the same folks who were perfectly happy to let Saddam's genocide continue during 12 years of UN wrangling.
The American people are going to have to shoulder 90% of the international burden in Iraq, no matter what. We might as well get used to it, suck it up, and dig in.
The time to go back to the UN is after we have a pretty stable Iraq, one that we have largely turned back to the Iraqis. That's the time to go back, when the outcome is no longer in doubt, and the anklebiters won't be able to do anything but quietly grind their teeth. Going back before then is embarrassing and even dangerous. We should not doubt for a moment that many of those clamoring for a "larger UN role" in Iraq want that for the express purpose of hindering our effort.
Wise up, Mr. President.
This is just too, too funny. Read the whole thing if you haven't kept up on the latest French spasm, but the money quote is in the last paragraph:
It is all pretty apocalyptic stuff. But in one respect the declinists may be right: that their political masters seem somewhat blinkered to the way in which many, from the Murdoch press to the Bush White House, regard La Belle France.And it is De Villepin who is most exposed in this regard. 'Abroad,' he writes in his answer to declinists: 'France rests a pole of thought and culture, a major economic, military and political power.'
Bwahahahahahahahahah!!!!!
snigger, guffaw, *really* ROFL
chortle, laugh, chuckle
That's too...
Bwahahahahahaha!
...sorry, excuse, me, I have to wipe the tears from my eyes.
I'll try and control myself.
As I was saying, that's too funny, the funniest thing out of De Villepin yet...and that's saying something, as this guy is the greatest French comedian since Jerry Lewis.
I found a good Norwegian blog today, the Bjørn Stærk blog. In the entry Discovering neo-conservatism, he has this to say:
One frustrating failure of the Norwegian media leading up to the Iraq war was lack of curiosity about the American motivation for planning a war. Why now, what had changed, what were they hoping to achieve? Answers, or rather assumptions, fell between two poles: At one end, taking what the Americans said at the UN at complete face value, ie. that it was only about Iraq's nuclear threat; and at the other end seeing it all as a cover for more traditional and selfish interests bordering on imperialism, ie. that there must be a clear benefit to the US of controlling Iraq, or they wouldn't bother about it. This wasn't so much incorrect as incomplete. It implied that the wmd's were the only possible legitimate reason for war, so if there was no wmd threat from Iraq it followed that everything had been a lie, and the war was wrong. This is the line now being taken as wmd's keep failing to turn up, (which btw I'm still concerned about - the impression Bush and Blair gave of Saddam's threat clearly was inaccurate, the question is what part deception, exaggeration and ignorance respectively played in it.)But anyone who followed debates in political mags and blogs would recognize other important factors - a combination of foreign policy idealism, and post-9/11 realism (the Middle East is in deep shit) and determination (their problems are now America's problems) that did not fall between those poles. Some have referred to this as neo-conservatism. I'm not sure that's a good label, but it's a common one. These views weren't hidden away in the back corridors of the White House, but out in the open, among regular pundits as well as influential thinkers, for anyone who bothered to look. And this did not happen. Only after the war does this line of reasoning, for instance the idea of introducing democracy in the Arab world as an antidote to radical Islam, seem to have reached Norway.
I started to explain what was going on from one Regular American Guy's point of view, but it got really long, so I posted here with a link back over on Bjørn's site.
So here's my response:
I think Gil pretty much nails it. Go read "The Threatening Storm" to understand what America is doing. This case hasn't been made to the mainstream media because it won't fit into soundbites.
America has concluded that we will never be safe while Islamofascist terrorism is loose in the world. There is no way that we, as a free and open society, can defend against it. On the other side, the Islamofascists have sworn Death to America, and they are deadly serious. There is no particular grievance they have with us; our very existence is the grievance. Therefore, there is nothing to "talk them out of" or compromise on - their only goal is our extermination, or as close to that as can be managed. Hence our goal must be the destruction of their ideology, and all who would follow it.
The real root of the problem of Islamofascism is Saudi Arabia. Change will have to come there, and Wahabism will have to be stopped. Long-term, for the safety of the world, Islamic fundamentalism and Islamofascism will have to become banned and shunned ideologies, as Nazism and (still in progress) Stalinism have become. Since Saudi Arabia was founded as and remains a Wahabist state, this means the end of the current Saudi royalty and government. Not a project to be undertaken lightly. But that's the project we're on, because only by stamping out Wahabism and Islamofascism can the world be made safe.
Iraq was well worth doing for all the public reasons stated: WMD (now proven by Kay, in this American's opinion), human rights abuses by Saddam (to put it very mildly), upholding the authority of the UNSC, etc. But none of those were the real underlying reason. The real reason is to move forwards against Wahabist Saudi Arabia.
Establishing a stable democracy in Iraq that will likely be US-friendly does several important things in the war against Wahabist Saudi Arabia.
It gives the US a major supplier of Arabian oil besides the Saudis. Give us a year or two to ramp up the Iraqi facilities and that'll be hoppin'. And the Iraqis will make most of the money. We just want the access. What's important here is independence from the Saudi taps.
We are likely to keep US military bases in Iraq for some time. Just having the US Army sitting in Iraq doing *nothing* has a tremendous restraining and destabilizing effect on the nearby regimes we want to restrain and destabilize. And, should push come to shove, well, we're right in the middle of things. Again, we're trying to replace our former reliance on Saudi basing capabilities.
Finally, if Iraq becomes a free, prosperous country, this very fact will be a tremendous force for positive change in the Middle East. As an example, as a beacon, as a voice. Business as usual in the Middle East would be impossible in the face of a free and prosperous Iraq. The lies and failures of the other Arab governments would become so obvious that they would no longer be able to maintain the myth of the Emperor's Clothes in the eyes of their people.
Syria is next, then Iran, and then Saudi Arabia. We fervently hope that these countries will destabilize from within, given the combination of pressures they are and will be under. The continuing improvement in Iraq will prove an attractive beacon of hope for the rest of the Middle East. My opinion is that, barring any nuttery on the part of the other side, the majority of the rest of this war will be relatively bloodless. However, should bloodshed be required, bloodshed there will be. America sees this as a fight for her survival as a free nation.
There is no limit to what we will do to retain our freedom. My impression is that Europe, and several other countries around the world, don't believe that. They believe that there are things the United States would never, ever do, no matter how provoked - like first use of nuclear weapons, for example.
I ask that you consider this question: just what did the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), and the tremendous overkill capability the US developed during the Cold War, imply? Just this: the United States was saying to the world, quite clearly, that we would destroy the world many times over before we would suffer enslavement. Literally. And we spent hundreds of billions of dollars backing that statement up with military capability. So folks might want to keep that in mind when they decide just what the US will and won't ever do.
We sincerely want peace. But we have become convinced that the only way we will have peace at present is to take the war to those who have declared war against us. The war will stop when they stop, or are dead. Nothing else will stop us.
And that's the real reason we went to war in Iraq, sans the sugarcoating, imo.