[Truthout] Naomi Wolf: A different perspective on the Tea Party

Batman Jones · Apr 26, 2010

durvasa said:

Remind me what his arguments were against the war.
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Happily. This is fun.

Obama said:

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances.

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don’t oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.
I don’t oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance, corruption and greed, poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.
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http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Barack_Obama's_Iraq_Speech

SamFisher · Apr 26, 2010

durvasa said:

I'm sure your knowledge of this subject surpasses mine, but nevertheless this is my perspective.

I can not overlook the fact that a disturbing number of liberals were pushing for the Iraq invasion. You had center-left analysts and commentators, like Ken Pollack, Tom Friedman, The New Republic, who were pro-invasion. The Bush administration was so disliked and so incompetent that its possible much of the "resistance" was a result of that. I think a Democratic administration that wished to invade Iraq could have made a more convincing case to other Democrats, and Republicans seemingly don't need much a case to go bomb another country so opposition from them wouldn't have been a great hurdle.
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Sure - a lot of people, obviously caught up in the moment and in the two year PR campaign, became cheerleaders and later admitted they were wrong. There's a substantial difference between them enabling, and people who were discussing Plans for a Post-War Iraq in February of 2001 at NSC meetings, or Rumsfield, over the objection of Clinton era holdovers like Richard Clarke, or other realists like Powell, wanting to bomb Iraq on the morning of September 12.

So, if the Obama administration wanted to attack Iraq, he would have had a much easier time drumming up support for it, which in in turn would reinforce his desire to attack. But why would he want to invade in the first place? That depends on what sort of policy we could expect from a sitting president after an event like 9/11. It happened with Bush in office, so there's this notion that only his administration would behave the way it did. Its sort of understandable, considering the sort of neocon extremists he had littering his administration. But put a Democrat in his place, and maybe that administration turns extremely hawkish too -- there was certainly a political incentive to do so.
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Sure, durvasa, it's possible in the sense that anything's possible - but substantially less likely when you have people like Clarke, Holbrooke, Albright and other foreign policy realists on board, appealing to a president who operates based on reason, rather than idealists with a known like Rumsfield, Perle Cheney etc who each had a preexisting agenda for war as well as a philosophy that was light years apart, appealing to a president who thought he was talking to god and operated on emotion.

You asked about Clinton's policy towards Iraq in the 90s. A couple comments. First, it was a ruthless policy entailing unlawful bombings and devastating sanctions. It was containment rather than invasion, but the same hysteria over the threat Iraq posed to the region was there.
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But it was containment rather than invasion, and that's the fundamental difference, and, in terms of the position you are advancing - dispostive one.

Anyway, this is all hypothetical. My view is that we can't just assume that because Obama campaigned on his "anti-war" position that he would have actually been anti-war if he was the guy in office. He'd do whatever he and his advisors think is advantageous, and when conservative and so-called liberal analysts alike are saying "We should invade Iraq, Saddam is too dangerous!" as they did, maybe that's the direction he goes.
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In the absence of the The Stovepipe , among other things, I don't see how this atmosphere is created in the first place. When nobody in charge has any motivation to listen to Ahmed Chalabi and all the other liars in order to use them as an excuse to enact long-held plans, the atmosphere is not created.

durvasa · Apr 26, 2010

Batman Jones said:

So you were saying that much of the opposition to the Iraq war, in Congress, was due to senators and congressmen personally disliking Bush? Man, this just keeps getting weirder.
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I don't think I said anything about the dislike being personal. The Bush administration was ideologically extremist. Naturally, they would meet some opposition, because the arguments they put forward was based on a cartoonish world-view that somewhat intelligent people familiar with reality wouldn't buy. Put a Democratic administration making the case for war in a more measured manner -- as Ken Pollack did in his book making the case for invasion -- and that government opposition from moderates and the left would drop. Not completely, of course, but significantly. Disagree?

Batman Jones · Apr 27, 2010

durvasa said:

I don't think I said anything about the dislike being personal. The Bush administration was ideologically extremist. Naturally, they would meet some opposition, because the arguments they put forward was based on a cartoonish world-view that somewhat intelligent people familiar with reality wouldn't buy. Put a Democratic administration making the case for war in a more measured manner -- as Ken Pollack did in his book making the case for invasion -- and that government opposition from moderates and the left would drop. Not completely, of course, but significantly. Disagree?
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The problem with your entire argument is that it's premised on Democrats ever wanting to make a case for war with a country that didn't attack us. Okay. We can play that game. It's also true that Republicans would have an easier time raising taxes on the rich, or expanding abortion rights, or legalizing gay marriage, but so what? They'd never try to do any of that. Likewise, the Democrats never, ever, ever, ever, never would have had any reason, in any reasonable view of reality, to push a war in Iraq.

As I said in a previous post, which you largely disregarded, the entire idea of preemptive strike was introduced into our nation's history by the Bush administration and only the Bush administration. No other president in the history of our country has tried to attack a country that didn't attack us.

Until you answer this point and concede how silly your idea of Obama getting us into a war that he opposed, I don't know what else to say to you.

durvasa · Apr 27, 2010

Batman Jones said:

Happily. This is fun.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Barack_Obama's_Iraq_Speech
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Thanks. I've read that speech, and its a fine speech. He lays out all the facts quite well -- Saddam posed no threat to the US or neighbors, the war would be costly, it would increase the threat of terrorism, it would increase anti-US sentiment.

But with all of that, notice how he describes the impending war. It is a "dumb" war. In the end, he can't say he opposed it because it is fundamentally wrong. He opposed it because, with all the facts he laid out, it wouldn't be smart.

Is that being anti-war in your opinion? When our enemies illegally invade another country that poses no threat to them, killing untold thousands, do we criticize them for engaging in a "dumb" war, or do we condemn them for committing a grave atrocity?

Anyway, this is getting off point. You think Obama is anti-war, and there's no way he would have invaded Iraq. I consider his position less principled, like most of his Democratic colleagues in Congress, and as such I can't say with confidence that he would not have chosen invasion. I fully acknowledge this as mere speculation on my part and as such I'm not going to push the point any further. You can take the last word.

Batman Jones · Apr 27, 2010

durvasa said:

You can take the last word.
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I took the last word a whole page ago. Or rather the last two words:

"Bush Doctrine."

Nothing you've said about the plausibility of Obama (or any other president) getting us into Iraq makes any sense at all in the face of that.

durvasa · Apr 27, 2010

Batman Jones said:

I took the last word a whole page ago. Or rather the last two words:

"Bush Doctrine."

Nothing you've said about the plausibility of Obama (or any other president) getting us into Iraq makes any sense at all in the face of that.
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Sorry for the oversight ...

Batman Jones said:

No other president in the history of our country has tried to attack a country that didn't attack us.
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Panama, Vietnam, Cambodia -- they don't qualify?

Batman Jones · Apr 27, 2010

durvasa said:

Panama, Vietnam, Cambodia -- they don't qualify?
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My bad. Should have said declared war.

durvasa · Apr 27, 2010

Batman Jones said:

My bad. Should have said declared war.
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Alright. Though in all cases it was an invasion, even if technically not a declared war. Even Iraq wasn't a declared war, I don't think.

Anyway, Good night.

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[Truthout] Naomi Wolf: A different perspective on the Tea Party

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