catapult magazine

GOERRING “Of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece.
Naturally, the common people don’t want war — neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America; nor, for that matter, in Germany. That is understood. After all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a Fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship.”

GILBERT: "There’s one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives. And in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

GOERRING: “Oh, that is all well and good. But voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

—From an interview during the Nuremburg trials (Goerring with psychologist Dr. Gustave Gilbert)

I don’t care that you reposted the New American Century Document again. I agree that it’s a very interesting document and deserves our attention. And it is eery that these writers fore-saw many of the threats that would be more tangibly evident in 2001.

But I’m still not convinced that the Bush administration used intentional misinformation to convince Americans to go into Iraq. I remember hearing Colin Powell and the rest of them over and over again citing the U.N. proposition which, they claimed, made it necessary to invade Iraq. I really don’t know how 70% of Americans polled thought Saddam was directly involved in 9-11. Iraq is clearly part of a long-range, far-reaching war-against-terrorism plan to make the world peaceful by democratizing the mid-East and by preventing other nations from getting nuclear or biological weapons. Perhaps this poll of Americans proves that people hear what they want to hear when they want to go to war against an enemy.

Nothing about the Iraq invasion was far-sighted. The administration was clearly naive in believing they could do this whole thing by themselves without the help of other nations, naive it its expectation of how they would be received by the Iraq people, naive about how long it would take to transform Iraq into a liberal democracy (if that can be done at all), naive about how the invasion of Iraq would go over in other Arab countries… I could go on and on. This invasion has been an unqualified disaster.

But if Americans continue to believe their little fantasies of the domocratization/americanization domino effect in the Middle East, of Saddam’s love-in with Osama, or of the effectiveness of screw-the-world-we’re-going-in diplomacy, then the disaster will be even greater.

I’m glad President Bush has now had his crash course on world geography, politics, and culture, but at what cost to the world! I’m really uneasy about the new world order we’re seeing develop. The world is being polarized into camps, both of which can’t see reason. The stand-off between the Arab world and the US is starting to take on similarities to the Palestine/Israel conflict, in which each side responds to the wrongs of the other with knee jerk aggression. We should do everything we can to avoid that cycle.

One thing, however, that I don’t think anyone could have predicted is that the prestige of the United Nations has actually been bolstered by this crisis. In the mind of many, the disastrous Iraq invasion has only confirmed how dangerous it is when one nation, no matter how well meaning, takes matters such as this into its own hands.

grant,
if it wasn’t intentional misinformation and it really was part of a long-range, far-reaching war-against-terrorism plan, how do you explain the fact that the push for war went on, despite the fact that the intelligence of both the u.s. and british clearly stated that, even if he had WMD, there was little danger of saddam providing them to terrorists unless his regime was under attack? and why would they edit those parts out of the documents they presented? also, are you saying you think that the ongoing mention of saddam and 9/11 in the same breath was just coincidence? (cheney’s still doing it.)

I agree that Bush and Blaire pushed the WMD terrorism thing too much. I would rather the public pronouncements remained focussed on their over-all belief that getting rid of Saddam would be better for the region and would make it easier to deter and prevent terrorism against the U.S. in the long run. (Again, I do not agree with this core belief of Bush about how to ultimately achieve peacewithjustice in the world, but I think the reasons for going to war were more principled than just the WMD-terrorism connection)

I do believe Bush’s plans are far-reaching and long-term, even if the reality of building a democracy in Iraq has been more difficult than he initially thought. Bush’s long-term vision can be seen in the fact that he has been constantly telling the American public that this will be a very very long war with battles won and lost. If anyone is thinking too short-term, it’s those who are quick to say the War with Saddam’s regime was a failure less than a year after the end of major military action. It took several years to realize the effects of post-WWI reconstruction in Europe and there’s still much rebuilding taking place even after WWII.

I’m sorry to keep harping on this but where is the similarity to WWI or WWII? The invasion of Iraq has more in common with:
-invasion of Grenada in 1982 or
-the American ‘colonization’ of the Philippines after Spanish American War or
-the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or
-dare I say, the Vietnam War or
-any number of lopsided military victories that had all sorts of outcomes, mostly negative.

Concerning Bush’s emphasis of the long-term nature of this struggle, I don’t recall him saying that sort of thing a couple years back. Iraq was advertised to the American people as a quick war and a short occupation. I was hearing 6 months to 1 year maximum…if not from the president himself, then from others near him. I don’t doubt that there is some long term thinking going on now, but the damage of short-term thinking is already done.

I think that the references to long-term thinking applied to the “war on terror”, not so much to Iraq. I agree with Dan that the only thinking done about Iraq was short term. The lack of preparation for post war Iraq is tragic and obscene.

It makes sense that Bush is warning the American people that the war on terror will be long. He is going to need lots of money and patience from the American people for this “war” since there really is no end in sight when it comes right down to it. Terrorists are not some species of animal that we can eradicate a step at a time. I don’t see how the US can rush over to bomb any country that “harbours” terrorists. It’s about as pointless as the war on drugs. It keeps the public in general fear of some general and unpredictable threat which I think is extremely dangerous (and very advantageous to rich powerful folks).

Who’s calling Bush a Nazi?

post quote from laryn "anton—the iraq/al qaeda connection is nebulous at best. "

But he did present quite a few points concerning Iraq, terror, etc. worth considering.

I think that one’s opinion on Pres. Bush & Iraq has more to do with

• whether one was in his political camp or not
  ***whether one is angry over the vote mess or not

than with t he actual facts.

Now, time may well change this for better or worse. Maybe the Iraq stuff will come together, in some years (as happened with japan Germany)… or maybe it will be Vietnamized & be a big mess we pull out of.

But right now, most persons (with a few exceptions) are reacting based on their previous views of this admin. I liked Bush; I trust him so far. I despised Bush, therefore his motives are rotten.

Maybe (over some time) reality will settle in.