Posted by SOAD:
Another Bush apologist who believes America is the worlds police.
I dont believe America is the worlds police, I believe we are sometimes forced into it. Back before the invasion, would there even have been sanctions or weapons inspections if America had not lead the effort for such?
America's Destiny Is to Police the World
Quote:
This stirs up opposition on both the left and right, at home and abroad. Why should America take on the thankless task of policing the globe, critics wonder? To answer that question, start by asking, does the world need a constable? That is like asking whether London or New York needs a police force. As long as evil exists, someone will have to protect peaceful people from predators. The international system is no different in this regard from your own neighborhood, except that predators abroad are far more dangerous than ordinary robbers, rapists and murderers. They are, if given half a chance, mass robbers, mass rapists and mass murderers.
There are, to be sure, lots of international laws on the books prohibiting genocide, land mines, biological weapons and other nasty things. But without enforcement mechanisms, they are as meaningless as the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which outlawed war as an instrument of national policy.
The hope of idealistic liberals for more than a century has been that some international organization would punish the wicked. But the League of Nations was a dismal failure, and the UN is not much better. It is hard to take seriously a body whose human rights commission is chaired by Libya and whose disarmament commission will soon be chaired by Iraq.
End Quote. Link:
http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=5559
Clinton played glob cop in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, and blasted Iraq every time Monica Lewinski went up to the hill to testify. It is an old game. What I believe is simple. If America is going to commit troops or go to war, fight it to win and then get out. But, the first casualty of war is often the battle plan. Or, as the historian Kolko once said:
War, in essence, has always been an adventure intrinsically beset with surprises and false expectations, its total outcome unpredictable to all those who have engaged in it."
I have never been a "Bush apologist".
By the way, your satire was not good.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But it seems you missed the point.
Posted by exotic walrus:
Saddam didn't stabilise the region he stabilised Iraq which was a borderline first world country along many indices before you tore it apart.
Before we tore it apart? Well, war has a tendency to break things, but I hardly agree that the Iraqi people were better off under Hussein. And the UN was never going to take any real action against the guy. However, reconstruction has always been a part of Americas post war efforts, which is why these people are around, I suppose:
Quote:
SIGIR, the successor to the Coalition Provisional Authority Inspector General (CPA-IG), was created by Congress to provide oversight of the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF) and all obligations, expenditures, and revenues associated with reconstruction and rehabilitation activities in Iraq. SIGIR oversight is accomplished via independent audits, field inspections, and criminal investigations into potential fraud, waste, and abuse of funds.
End Quote. Here you will find a link to this book:
Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience
Since the March 2003 invasion, the Congress appropriated
about $50 billion in taxpayer dollars for Iraq's relief and reconstruction. This generous provision funded a continuously evolving rebuilding program that sought, among other things, to
restore Iraq's essential services,
establish new security forces,
create a free-market economy,
and put the country on the path to achieving an effective democracy. Some of the initiatives succeeded but others did not. Hard Lessons, the first comprehensive account of the Iraq reconstruction effort, reviews in detail the United States' rebuilding program, shedding light on why certain programs worked while others fell short of goals.
Source:
http://www.sigir.mil/
I dont complain about the money spent to help the Iraqi people rebuild their country after the Hussein years and Americas intervention. Rebuilding is part of what we do.