Spoken like a true European (OK…low blow).

Although I disagree with a couple of your points, it is important for the United States to have an international compromise on Iraq. It will be the international community’s responsibility to rebuild Iraq after a war and help the Iraqi citizens recover from the 12 years embargo.

Everyone is asking why were aren’t focusing on al Qaeda. I’m sure we are, but the threat from Osama’s Crazies aren’t going to be solved by a large military action, but rather by special forces and cooperation from police around the world.

While the hunt for Osama continues, America is multi-tasking to remove Dictator Saddam from power, and keeping North Korea in line. It’s a big job, but who else will step up? France…

(Think Hookie Pookie)

Put your air force in,
take your air force out,
put your air force in
and shake Saddam about.

Use the special forces
and move dictators out,
That’s why we bomb Iraq.

I?m game for this one- I?ve been stuck in a lab with a cadre of peaceniks that can?t seem to justify war under any circumstance. They?d let the whole of the Iraqi Republican Guard pull train on their mothers before lifting a finger. I have to say that I?m personally on the fence, but only because of the droning mantra ?Give peace a chance? that seems to permeate San Francisco. It really feels like this city is trying to crawl back to its hippie heyday with the number of antiwar rallies I?ve read about. If rampant promiscuity, unchecked drug abuse and kickass musical revivals come with the ?69esque antiwar fervor, then I?m game. Otherwise, those smoked out hippies should focus their energies on their marijuana legalization crusade and their seeming inability to locate the grooming aisle at Safeway.

So here it is: We are giving peace a chance.

I know, it sounds absurd with the massive troop buildup. Hell, an additional 38,000 reserves were called up yesterday. But until a shot is fired, we are giving peace a chance. So far that peace doesn?t seem to have advanced our cause of disarming Iraq, hence my colorful comments.

So the UN won concessions from Iraq to let Hans Blix poke through their dirty underwear. Only instead of leaving the hamper out, it looks like neatly laundered and scented piles of clothes have been lined up while the skid-marked boxer briefs are carted out to camouflaged bunkers in the desert.

Were we na?ve enough to believe the farce that has been foisted upon us, we might be in real trouble. Fortunately, our intelligence has big ears and sharp eyes and managed to catch a few indications of deceit which Colin Powell so firmly delineated last week. Our inspections have only succeeded in peering over prepared and manicured sites. The program of deception that Iraq has instituted has succeeded in drawing out the finger pointing and name-calling within the UN that it was intended to.

If the current inspections are stymied by lack of compliance, what are our choices? 1) Send more inspectors. 2) Ignore it and hope it gets better by itself. 3) Impose pointed political and economic sanctions. 4) Bomb the shit out of Baghdad 5) Hire Bobafet to stick a shiv in Saddam.

Lets go through the choices-

1) More inspectors enter the country and look around a whole bunch more. Then, they figure out that the damn country is about as big and inaccessible as Texas. They also figure out that the expanded group of inspectors has led to additional security penetrations, giving Iraqi intelligence more much needed warning of inspection of real sites. Inspectors begin to notice the smell of Pine-Sol and other deep cleaning products at new sites, also see fresh tire tracks leading away from compounds. Strange. Finally, inspectors realize that a government intent on hiding items of interest in large inaccessible region will be successful without defections. Similarly, inspectors will realize that defections aren?t happening because would-be defectors fear for their family?s safety, their friend?s safety, and the safety of anyone they happened to do business with. Remember, we?re dealing with a man that used chemical weapons on his own civilian populations.

2) We wash our hands of this phantom menace and cockblock our eager armed forces. The world cheers and pats itself on its back for being so good. Lillies flourish. Five years pass and Saddam announces his production of a nuclear bomb with a test in the deserts of Iraq. He places conventional forces on the border of Saudi Arabia. And demands the annexation of Kuwait and Northern Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops strain for their chance to reclaim their country?s property and realize Iraqi manifest destiny. For fear of nuclear retaliation against Israel and Riyhad, the world watches in impotent shock as Saddam seizes the dominant share of Middle East oil production. Oil prices skyrocket. American industry staggers under the new elevated cost of energy and transportation of goods. Trade balances shift out of our favor and severe recessions are felt worldwide. Disenchanted American youth form militias and invade Canada citing our ancestral claim to Ottowa.

3) Increasingly stringent sanctions are levied against Iraq. Iraqi ministers route funds necessary for the nourishment and medical treatment of Iraqi citizens to military use. Strong anti-western sentiment grows against the sanction enforcers. New terrorist organizations emerge. Saddam develops his nuke anyway with the money he robbed from his people. See 2) for the rest of this story.

4) American bombers immolate the Iraqi Military and Industrial machine. Millions of civilians are displaced in the effort, hundreds of thousands of young lives are lost. Saddam?s body is not recovered but he is declared dead. Rampant Iraqi unemployment produces a hateful and rebellious youth. Infighting dominates a decade of rebuilding and the first elections are rigged. Eventually the country settles back into peaceful existence punctuated by coup attempts and the discovery of Iraqi terrorist cells.

5) Bobbafet greases Saddam. The world cheers but deep down inside we know we?re bad because we?re not supposed to sponsor assassination. (side note- What genius came up with that policy? Rather than deal directly with the individual who is the root of the problem, we?ll slaughter hundreds of thousands of conscripted soldier in an orgy of western high-tech murder. Because that?s civilized.) Saddam?s bereaved family and henchmen war over the empty throne. Bitter internal fighting ensues culminating in a power grab by a young secret police captain. The U.S. convinces him to play ball lest he meet his predecessor?s fate. Western society continues to dictate oil policy because Arab states can?t seem to get over ancestral disputes. Our children grow up to eat ice cream and drive SUVs.

Of course, that?s just my opinion, but what else can I give? We?ll give peace a chance, but just that, a chance. It?s up to those naughty boys in the desert over there to take make use of this chance to prevent their own ruin.

Sam, proud product of an Army family.

Hold on! There are several major points in the quite humorous post above from Sam that I would like to comment on:

Although I hate to admit it, I am inspired by the show “24″ by this comment, but assassination although a solution of lesser bloodshed, is not easily justified for use as a political weapon for any democracy. The fact that you would like someone to not be there hardly warrants their death just because you possess the capability. On the other hand I won’t say never; there are absolutely situations where surgical military action will save many lives and could be justified in the eyes of the democratic world… In Saddam’s case you (the U.S.) are not quite there yet.

Another thing that bothers me is Bush’s use of God in his suggestions for an Iraq invasion. Not just any God, but the God that blesses America, the God that rebirthed Dubya, the God that is never more than a paragraph away from Bush?s lips in a major speech, the God that justifies America?s glorious crusade of being the self-declared Big Brother of the World.

Bush?s State of the Union speech, and his administration?s consistent rhetoric, evoke exactly the same view of the world as that which fueled Manifest Destiny and the White Man?s Burden. “It is only we who are wise enough and evolved enough (and saved enough, ed.) to decide who is and is not fit to rule [others?] lands - it is our divinely granted right to take ownership for ourselves.”

In the State of the Union address, Bush once again announced ? to thunderous applause, and little criticism afterwards ? that America stands alone in its responsibility to mankind, its faith in Providence, and its destiny. You are, in other words, the Chosen People in the Chosen Land, and those who displease you must die. [come on, there must be fuel for a comeback on that last line alone - anyone? :)]

That makes him, in other words, cut from the same cloth as our Islamic fundamentalist terrorist brothers. (If you are one of the religious peeps that believe in the one Creator of all and that humanity is fallen, this is hardly news)

It is this self-righteous, plank-eyed state you?re in, this grotesque distortion and misrepresentation of God and God?s Kingdom you?re promulgating, that you will work ?til your dying breath to set right that puts off the rest of the world. The reason you are not getting the support for an invasion is not because Saddam is not a bad man, but rather that you are being ridden by a religious cowboy on a crusade for personal vengance.

(didn’t know I liked politics, but this is fun…)

The big question that I’ve heard in all of this has been what the situation will be in ten or fifteen years.
(An aside: no matter what happens - ignoring international law will be a greater long-term disaster than any results that come directly from the Middle East- good, bad or otherwise. Ask Slobodan Milosevic)

A number of possibilities in my book, with each hinging on the attitude of the Middle East toward the US and the prevaling governmental form:
1- US bombs Iraq. Which is almost certainly going to be happening around the time of the full moon. Late February. Two different paths from here.
a. US succeeds. Secular moderate democracy in Iraq. It goes smoothly and becomes a permanent feature. It catches on. The autocrats throughout the Middle East gradually cede power. There is never any mass-backlash of anti-US sentiment. 10-15 years from now and the whole region shifts
from autocracy to democracy.
Not what I believe is likely. This is, however, the only valid long-range vision that I have heard that is genuinely possible and serves a good purpose. War justified. Me and my peacenik friends look like fools. Albeit 15 years down the line. But maybe we’ve rocked enough ganj to satisfy Sam.

b. US succeeds. Liberation of Iraq. Two years of US military dictatorship. (This is currently the plan.) Reaction by religious extremists and possibly Iraqi patriots (does anyone know how we are going to percieved by the Iraqis after the war?). US doesn’t have stomach for nation building and does a half assed job. (Afghanistan?) Iranian democracy gets pushed back 5-10 years as a result of US presence. Kurdistan ends. Iraqi democracy has mixed results as the US’s role is treated very ambivalently. Meanwhile extremist fervor is increased by constant contact with US and by minor successes. (Does anyone believe that during that whole 2 years there won’t be a major reprisal that succeeds?) Further the US has firmly established that it now controls the oil of Iraq and has even stronger influence over neighboring states. The mass of the populations of the Middle East react to this and to the ever-worsening situation in Israel (combined with the US continuing to ignore it while claiming quasi-neutrality). Autocrats continue to shift blame to US. 10 years down the line Middle East autocracies begin to fall and Iran ‘79 style revolutions put Islamic extremists in charge. Now there are US and Israeli troops bordering these countries. Boom. Oh, and all that oil is cut off. No democracy. Bad. But on the plus side W. is reelected due to the low price of oil next year and the subsequent improvement in the economy. And watch for a new version of Total Information Awareness once he gets that second democratic mandate.

Or:
2- We leave things alone. As things are now Saddam continues having the same weapons of mass destruction that he has had since we first started giving them to him in the 80’s. Since he’s always consistently stayed in line as long as his dictatorship wasn’t on the line there is no reason to believe that anything has changed regarding his direct use of WMD against the US. What about him funneling them through terrorists? Well, he’s supported Hamas and Hizbollah for a couple decades. But never supplied them with any WMDs in all those years. And remember that he did have ample supplies thanks to our generosity. It also helped that we never marched into Baghdad in ‘91 to take him out or to dismantle any of his production facilities. So what has changed now that wasn’t true in the past 20 years? He’s still an asshole dictator with WMD. But he’s also still self-centered enough to not give a shit about anything but his personal harem and palaces.
Oh, and meanwhile Kurdistan continues as a democratic outpost in the middle east. As does Turkey. Kurdistan provides the secular option while Turkey is currently showing that moderate religious parties can be trusted. Meanwhile, Iran gets fed up with the clerical autocrats in 5-10 years and becomes a European-style democracy. Plus its standard of living becomes on par with Eastern Europe- a pretty good start. So does Turkey’s. So three examples will now exist of democracy in the middle east. The populace of the autocratic gulf states continues to get increasingly fed up. The US either continues to support the regimes that currently shift all the blame to us, or we get fed up, force a gradual transition from autocracy to consitutional parliamentary monarchy- Bahrain is providing that example- and 15 years from now finish the full conversion to democracy. Maybe the US throws in a propaganda campaign and tells the world that based on our values we have decided to wage democracy. Oh, but then what about control of the oil? And its hard to be reelected on long-term waging peace.

Wage peace not war.