The Glade 4.0

I believe you're missing Coro's point.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Perhaps you should explain what you perceive me to be missing, then, instead of a single line telling me that I'm wrong.

But then the poster can't appear superior and more educated.

From my perspective, his administration had no plan past invade Afghanistan. Once the realities of both how to deal with the Afghan people/country and the fact that he wasn't going to be able to easily find Bin Laden became apparent, he found something else to try and distract everyone with.

I think that"s an unfair characterization, Aizle. My impression is that there were two dominant schools of thought in the Bush military and foreign policy apparatus - the Neo-Cons and the Realists. The Neo-Cons thought the way to fight terrorism was to transform the Middle East by overthrowing enemy regimes and installing friendly democratic ones. The Realists never bought the transformational rhetoric, but they too felt that overthrowing enemy regimes and installing friendly ones was the way to go, though they definitely had no interest in those regimes being democratic.

The upshot was that both schools of thought were very state-focused and strongly favored hard power over soft power. Afghanistan was a necessary first target for obvious public-relations reasons and because that really is where al-Qaeda was based at the time. However, after the initial dismantling of the Taliban and scattering of al-Qaeda, there wasn't much added benefit to being there, from the perspective of the Neo-Cons and Realists. Their theories/strategies required that we change a major regime in the Arab world, and Iraq was the obvious target. That's why they pushed for the second front/war. It wasn't about distracting the public or lack of a plan. On the contrary, it was their plan from the very beginning, and I'm still not convinced they were wrong (in theory, that is, since the execution was obviously lacking).

As for Bush himself, I agree he was out of his depth on all this. He, I think, had a fairly simplistic view of America and its capabilities and reputation, and his personality was both egotistical and insecure, all of which left him open to an echo-chamber effect and manipulation by his staff and advisors. From the accounts I've read, he was firmly in the "Afghanistan first and only" camp initially, and had to be convinced that going after Iraq was strategically wise/necessary.

Hmm well I dont really disagree in principle but I'd add some pertinent things to that. One would be that to my recollection, the neocon thought process was getting one (or two) democracies settled in the region and the domino effect would spread. I dont think it was a take it one by one approach, not sure what you meant there so I thought I'd throw that in. For Realists I'm guessing you mean the more Kissenger type realpolitik solutions to other hostile, powerful, non-democratic, but practically important nations (i.e. oil =p) Probably fair but I wouldnt say no interest in them being democratic, I dont know that to be true, unless you mean they didnt think it was worth the effort.

As for favoring hard power over soft, well, yeah. Soft had so many chances did it not?

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

As far as establishing Western-friendly states, the distinction I've generally run with is that the Neo-Conservatives absolutely did want little Americas: representative democracies with free elections and whatnot. Where I think the Realists differed is that they wanted self-determination as well, but that self-determination didn't necessarily have to mean "in our image". Get rid of the despot in Iraq... if it turns out the Shi'a want a theocracy? Hey, knock yourselves out, we just wanted you to be able to choose for yourselves. There's something to be said for the rationale, really. If you want a pro-Western state, are you likelier to get it by defining the framework within which people are going to be allowed to be free, or by leaving it totally up to them?

I'm fuzzy on what you think is an inaccurate characterization.

I don't disagree that there were at least those 2 camps, however I believe that both are short sighted, and suffer from exactly what I stated. Go in, kick ***. There is no plan or idea of how to ensure that you're effecting change after kicking ***. In point of fact, typically we pull out, leaving a HUGE power vacuum and complete lack of structure, so that we:

a. have to come back in to try and clean up the mess that's boiled over AGAIN
b. pissed off those who originally have thought well of us for coming in
c. created a ripe pool of recruits for the very organizations we're trying to get rid of
d. cost the tax payers a **** ton of extra money

Aizle:

I think you seriously underestimate the geopolitical value of invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Strategically speaking, there are few, if any, better options for maneuvering Russian and China into opposition against the Iranian regime. It's also provided impetus for changing U.A.E., Yemenese, Pakistani, and Syrian positioning with regard to terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism. Granted, the Syrians are still slow on the uptake, but the geopolitical impact of having the U.S. in the backyard has been pretty interesting. The immediate "goals" of regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan are for headlines and platitudes; the real goals are much more far reaching.

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What exactly are the "realities" of dealing with the Afghan people and country, how would they have come up with this extended plan in such a relatively short time frame, and what was this supposed "distractor"? Iraq?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's probably the most insightful geopolitical analysis on the topic ever posted here, and in 1 paragraph. I'm impressed.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That allowing for "interpretation" wholly undermines this entire forum.

One person's offensive is another person's kid gloves. I found what he said wholly offensive, as I also do Aizle's post following your question.

Neither contribute anything to the discussion, both are flaming, and according to the "rule" of "don't be an ***," they've violated it.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Well, part of the problem here is that how you're going to ensure change after kicking *** isn't known until the *** kicking is done. You can make educated guesses and have a general idea, which we did, but in point of fact we just didn't have the experience with the culture we needed to make a good plan until after getting in there and working with it.

You can't just not kick someone's *** when it needs kicking for lack of a perfect plan. That just ensures they get to sit around in safety thinking of ways to kick your ***.

I also don't know where we've "pulled out leaving a power vaccum". Certainly not Iraq or Afghanistan, and in those cases, it's been constant complaints that we aren't pulling out fast enough or solving the problems fast enough. Certainly not Bosnia or Kosovo. Maybe Somalia, but that had no coherent power structure when we went in. Thinking back farther, Korea, Japan and Germany had no such problems and in Viet Nam there was no vaccum, and enemy nation just took over. We haven't been back either.



To what case are you referring?



In which case it would have behooved us not to listen to those advocating a pullout



There was already a ripe pool of recruits or the organization wouldn't have existed to do the things that caused the invasion. In fact, it seems that almost any course of action is objected to by this "we'll create more terrorists" line. Our objective isn't to avoid creating terrorists because we can't directly say "We did this therefore X number of terrorists were created"; there may have been more if we did something else. Our objective is to defeat them.



Again, which would behoove us not to pull out in the first place.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Perhaps.

As an aside, I'm always amused at how folks here will trash the government as being too stupid to be able to do figure out how to put together monetary policy, govern businesses and in a host of other ways manage the country, yet they are smart enough to be able to subtley affect the course of political actions all across the world.

Aizle:

I think our government is too invested in failed political models. It's not so much that they are stupid, it is that they are ideologically opposed to creating economic freedom.

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Which political models are you refering to? I thought you might be refering to Keynesian economics, but that's an economic model not a political model.

Can you define for me what you mean by economic freedom?

Haiti, Panama, Somalia I'd say (even though we refuse to go back someone should if you believe in interventionism), I'd also count Iraq from Gulf War I because we should have pushed into the nation proper and dealt with the problem then and there. I'd say Korea too because again we never resolved the issue and are still technically at war.

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Haiti, we didn't actually invade, nor did we come back to clean up our mess. We're cleaning up an earthquake.

Panama is stable. I was down there 3 years ago for a contruction mission and we didn't even take weapons.

Somalia was a waste of time in the first place, and we haven't ended up going back.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

DE:

Afghanistan would be a pull out with power vacuum, twice in fact. Once back when we were helping them against the Russians, and then after we ousted the Taliban. Although perhaps "pull out" is bad terminology. More that we didn't put much effort/planning to what to do after we were done kicking ***. I'll accept that perhaps we can't know for sure what those plans need to be until after we're done kicking ***, but to date the US has a really bad track record for being able to actually put together those plans. And we didn't re-engage in Afghanistan until the situation again became dire. It seems like we spend so much time fighting fires, instead of really nation building. And yes, I know that nation building has some negative connotations in our current political climate, but that is what needs to happen.

I agree that those advocating a pull out are often short sighted. I haven't ever advocated for a unilateral withdrawl.

Yes, there often are some ripe opportunities for recruiting extremists. However, I believe that our actions in some of these military engagements, specifically after the *** kicking, have made matters worse and increased our risk, not the other way around.

Pretty much this. But if you want a more cynical answer, when it comes to government: never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

"Pulling out" is singularly bad terminology in both cases, sinece simply helping them fight the Russians by supplying SAMs hardly gives us any obligation to help them do anything else, and not putting much "planning" into what to do after an invasion that was an immediate response to an attack on us really is just reflective of the short timeframe.

As for having a "bad track record" of putting together those plans, I'd say it's actually pretty decent. Kosovo, Bosnia, Germany, Japan, and South Korea (albeit a place we didn't invade) all turned out reasonably well.

Moreover, there's simply an upper limit on what we can do. There's a certain value in saying "we've done all we can for you people.. don't make us come back again."



I know you haven't. I'm pointing out that claiming things will go down the crapper when we leave isn't compatible with advocating a withdrawl, and other people are doing that.



Without knowing specifically what these engagements are, what was done, and how it increased our risk, there's not much to say. That's the problem with this position; it always refers to a vague "increase in of risk/number of terrorists" but it's really just an unfalsifiable and therefore unverifiable assertion. In other words, it assumes that because someone could get pissed off by what we've done and become a terrorist, that this has necessarily happened, and that this isn't countered by gains in other areas.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Still waiting on that whole "kinder, gentler" forum moderation here. Twice, actually, in this thread.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

*snugglebunniges DFK in the huggiebubble*

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Really? I'm curious what you think needed modding. PM me if you don't want to call someone out. I'm honestly at a loss for what you think is breaking the rules.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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