Iraq Special Intelligence Estimate

[Toad]

So you'll impeach a President that makes a mistake? Even if he really does think he's acting in the nation's best interest?

I don't buy it, sorry.

Your example is flawed; what if you were a volunteer fireman speeding to a fire at an orphanage and got pulled over? Write a ticket? What if it turns out to be a false alarm? Write a ticket later?

This what if stuff is just carp. He screwed the pooch. If it was an honest mistake you want to hang him anyway. Pah.

As I pointed out earlier, Aquinas, Grotius, and Pufendo never contemplated nuclear weapons. Never could have imagined them, most likely. If they had, JWT would be a bit different.

But go ahead and be inflexible. You want your witchunt and Boosh is the witch. Wear yourself out.

I'll just be glad to see Bush go; after all this I expect it to be very similar to the feeling I had when Clinton finally left, more relief than anything else.

I'd rather look to the future and see if we can find a person with enough character, morality and intelligence to be President of the US. We've failed to do so in the last four elections... maybe we'll get lucky this time.

BTW, the Cold War... look up Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov and Able Archer 83. You'll see the world came very, very close to what you call preemptive war. I assure you, many of those involved did feel war was justified; it probably took a little luck to get past those incidents.

[oboe]

I would investigate thoroughly; impeach if warranted.   I suspect we might find it wasn't such an honest mistake.    

And yes, good intentions don't go very far with me.   Not when were talking about leading the most powerful country on Earth, with tens of thousands of innocent lives in balance and hundreds of billions of dollars cost to the taxpayer.   You gotta be right.  And Bush wasn't.   And I don't think I'd stop with just him.

Was it just luck that got us through the Cold War without preemptive war?   Or wisdom?    It doesn't matter whether a number of people back then thought it would've been justified.    A number of people now still think the Iraq War was justified, and you and I (and many more I'm sure) agree that it was not.

[Vulcan]

Originally posted by Toad
Vulcan, the suicide bombers were targeted on Israel, were they not? If anything, that would have been a matter for Israel, not the US.

Sorry, didn't realize supporting terrorism was "OK" if it was against israel.

[Toad]

What matters is what Bush thought.

What you or I think aside, I seriously doubt there would ever be definitive proof that would result in impeachment.

We got through the Cold War on luck, IMO.

I'll tell you this too: I was technically assigned to SAC during the Cold War and I had a SIOP mission, although it didn't involve the release of any weapons. Had the orders come down, I'd have performed my mission to the best of my ability no matter what. What I'm saying is I would not have questioned my orders after going through the authentication/confirmation process with positive results. I would have considered that I was going to a Just War.

I guess that gives me a different perspective.

You say "You gotta be right".

Well, there's no way to be absolutely sure until the enemy weapons start impacting your country.
 
And then it's WAY too late.

BTW, there are other interpretations of Just War in the nuclear age than yours.

Here's an interesting read for you that deals directly with Iraq. It features these guys and I suspect they are a bit more educated and more capable in this field than you or I.

Gerard Bradley is Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School. A noted scholar in the fields of constitutional law and law and religion, his books include Catholicism, Liberalism, and Communitarianism. He is the director of Notre Dame’s Natural Law Institute and is a former president of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

William A. Galston is Professor at the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland and Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. His books include Liberal Purposes and Liberal Pluralism. A widely respected political theorist who also participates in politics and policy, he served from 1993 to 1994 as President Clinton’s deputy assistant for domestic policy. His recent articles on Iraq have appeared in the Washington Post and The American Prospect.

John Kelsay is the Richard L. Rubenstein Professor of Religion at Florida State University. A noted authority on Islam, he is co-editor, with James Turner Johnson, of Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Tradition and Cross, Crescent, and Sword: The Justification and Limitation of War in Western and Islamic Tradition.

Michael Walzer is Professor at the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. He previously taught at Harvard and Princeton Universities. His writings address a wide variety of topics in political theory and moral philosophy. A broadly acclaimed authority on the morality of the use of force, he is the author, among other books, of Just and Unjust Wars, which has become a seminal text for just war analysis.

Enjoy.

http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=36

[Toad]

Originally posted by Vulcan
Sorry, didn't realize supporting terrorism was "OK" if it was against israel.

It isn't. However, we're talking Just War Theory here, are we not?

A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered.

What wrongs had the US suffered that are/were directly traced to Iraq? How was the US wronged by suicide bombers striking Israel?

It was Israel's place to respond to that, not ours. Further,

The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered.

What level of violence is appropriate for Israel to use against a despot that writes a $25K check to the families of suicide bombers killing Israelis?

[john9001]

a Just War Theory is just that a theory, some guys idea of how and when war should be fought, i would like to see him "discuss" his theory with a islamist terrorist.

don't try to over analyze things.
when you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk.

[Vulcan]

Hamas were a threat to the US, Hamas were being funded by Saddam...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas' military wing called Wednesday on Muslims around the world to attack American targets following reports that an Israeli tank strike killed 18 people in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun

[-tronski-]

Saudi Arabia funds Hamas, and substantially more than Saddam ever did...

 Tronsky

[VWE]

Some of you should really think about your posts, actually read what you are typing, before clicking on the 'submit reply' tab. There are soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines dieing over here every day serving your country to which your 'arm chair quarterbacking'. I'm not saying don't discuss it just use a little bit of your brain.

[Elfie]

As for the terrorist camps, I believe they were there. To date no one in this administration has been able to prove, either before or after the fact, that these presented an imminent threat to the US.

I don't think the administration had/has to prove those particular terrorists were an imminent threat. A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist and I don't particularly care which group they belong to. Terrorists are a threat to the Free World in general and the USA should be leading the Free World in the fight against all terrorists. Terrorists killing the innocent needs to stop.

America didn't declare war on Al-Qaeada after 9/11 that I recall. I recall America declaring war on terrorism. All the WMD, Saddaam was a bad man etc aside, I think just having terrorist training camps in his country was justifiable enough for us to invade.

[Hap]

Oboe,

I've not reread Weigel's essay yet, but I did just finish it.

It is certainly worth rereading.

I'll pull a sentence or two leading up to and from his conclusion.

The challenge today is quite similar to that faced by Truman, and Acheson, Marshall and Vandernberg, confronted by an ideological enemy with global ambitions in the late 1940's..

Quoting Charles Frankel, The heart of the policy-making process . . . is not the finding of a nation interest already perfectly known.  It is the determining of that interest: the reassessment of the nation's resources, needs, commitments, traditions, and political and cultural horizons -- in short, it's calendar of values/

Then the last three sentences: As Bernard Lewis has argued, "the war against terror and the quest for freedom are inextricably linked, and neither can succeed without the other."  We may be sure that the war against terror will suffer communsurately if the Iraqi phase of the quest for freedom and a new politics in the ArabIslamic world is frustrated.  No one -- in the Congress, the churches, in the academy, or on the street -- can wish for that and still claim the mantle of moral seriousness.

I really hesitate pulling those parts out because doing so will tend to give people the mistaken notion that they now know what Weigel is about in this essay.

The fish he wishes to fry is large -- that is it is important (perhaps more important or at least as important then Communism)-- and flippancy does no one any good.  Culling out a few sentences to give a sense of what he writes invites haste.

In short, from my vantage point, it's chocked full of truth-telling, no invective, and all shrillness is thankfully absent.

Regards,

hap

[cpxxx]

Originally posted by Toad
Let's use Ireland as an example then.

What brought the IRA side to the table?

Without getting into longwinded irrelevant details. Essentially people, leaders on both sides realised that neither side was going to win militarily. The IRA could not be beaten because of the support they had in their consituency. Their political leaders realised the IRA was never going to defeat the British forces and the British were never going to pull out. It was stalemate and all that was left were pointless terrorist atrocities. Just like Iraq at the moment.

It was a long process of negotiation through intermediaries with constant setbacks. The US played a big part in facilitating this as they tended to be seen as honest brokers by both sides.

The final piece of the jigsaw fell into place recently when Sinn Fein/IRA agreed to support the police. A few years ago they were murdering police in the streets.

Eventually we have got to the situation where essentially the IRA as represented by it's political wing, Sinn Fein is now about to share the local government with it's bitterest rivals, the DUP lead by firebrand presbyterian cleric Ian Paisley. Both parties having being duly elected by the people of Northern Ireland last week. Both sides have compromised, Sinn Fein still wants a United Ireland and the DUP want to remain in the UK. Both intend to use politics to achieve that goal.

The lesson for Iraq are these:  The US military must remain in Iraq. They will contain the terrorists but they won't be defeated because there is support for them in Iraq.

Like NI, Iraq's troubles are now mostly sectarian in nature, Sunni versus Shia. Like NI it's less about religion and more about power and who controls the country. At the moment both sides believe they can win this. Both are wrong. Eventually they will have to sit down and talk and decide how to share power. An Iraq where one side or other dominates won't work. At the moment their leaders lack the acumen to realise this and it might take years to get to that stage. I think the real problem that there is no real strong Sunni leader who can carry his people through this. Lately any Sunnis who show their head above the parapet have had them shot off for their trouble (literally).

So shake off any illusions that the US military can defeat the insurgents. Petraeus knows this and is acting accordingly. But the insurgents must know the Americans are not for leaving and will not be defeated. This must not become another Vietnam. Unfortunately that means a lot more dead Americans and an awful lot of dead Iraqis until both sides sicken themselves into sitting down and talking.

It will be a long road.

[Toad]

Originally posted by cpxxx

So shake off any illusions that the US military can defeat the insurgents.

I think you'd also agree that we can shake off any illusion that a brokered peace will occur without the US military?

After all, like all wars, there was no end in Ireland until either one or both sides decided that a military victory was no longer possible.

[oboe]

Thanks for the pewforum link, Toad - it was an interesting read.   Worth a reread, too, if I can adopt Hap's excellent habit.

One thing that I took from it, pertaining to our discussion of imminent threat and the doctrine of preemptive war, is that Iraq's threat was not imminent.    So again, Iraq seems to fail the Just War theory.  

The panel was loaded with academic credentials but it might've been nice to have a voice from the military in the discussion as well.

I do have to question the usefulness of Just War theory if,

a) Both the U.S. and USSR would've been justified under them in launching a preemptive nuclear attack that would have annihilated the other, and

b) there are no negative consequences for leaders who fail to abide by the principles.   (There is no enforcing body)

cpxxx - I note in your remarks the importance of an honest broker acting as intermediary between the parties.   Is there a reasonable candidate out there for the Iraq War?    

Hap - I will try to get my hands on Weigel's article.    I don't know anyone who is not wishing for a better situation in Iraq, or who is hoping for frustration of the new politics in Arab world.

VWE - no disrespect towards our servicemen and women is ever intended in my remarks.   Apologies if that's the way it came across.

[Torque]

well....that was the plan cpxxx, to never leave and build permanent viceroy bases there.

either that, or they're the most inept clowns on the planet.