Why are we in Iraq?

[pmb]

I was reading an argument and somebody suggested that if we disagreed with the Iraq war that we contact our legislators and tell them that we disagreed with the policy behind it. The policy was named in this post "strategic preemption". But that's not right.

Because it's not strategic preemption - that's the old rationale. Now we're there to free the Iraqi people and bring them democracy. But that's clearly not the whole story either. This leaves all of us who never bought the first reason scratching our heads and wondering what the hell the REAL reason is/was.

Because they never had any weapons of mass destruction, and we KNEW that, and we've pretty clearly preempted the hell out of any nascent WMD production in Iraq, but we're still there. And they've voted and have a nominal democracy that doesn't want us there anymore and we are still there. And Iraq didn't kill 3,000 people on US soil, but somehow the war in Iraq is/was crucial to the overall struggle in a way that has never been properly articulated.

So I would argue against the doctrine if only I knew what the doctrine was. Imperialism, maybe? Fascism? Corporatism? Stupidity? Bull-headedness? Crusadism? Anything besides the overly bland non-descriptor "neo conservatism".

I just don't know. I'm losing it, man.

Comments

[clipdude.livejournal.com]

I think along the same lines as cosyne. While I do think that terrorism poses a real threat to national security, the Bush administration wants to make us irrationally afraid of terrorism, because it yields them more public support, which makes it easier for them to pursue the domestic agenda. This, coincidentally, is also the goal of the terrorists (who want to drum up fear and intimidation)—although I don’t think their is an actual conspiracy going on, just an overlapping of interests.

However, in order for this strategy to work, the administration must appear to be “doing something” about the threat they play up. In reality, terrorism in a complex problem and will require a sophisticated, multi-faceted approach to conquer. Such an approach would, by the way, include putting the risks posed by terrorism in their proper perspective; the thousands of terrorist deaths, while horrible, is minor compared to the number of deaths caused annually by car accidents or cardiovascular disease. It would also include a massive boost in disaster preparedness, to minimize the havoc the terrorists’ actions can bring.

I don’t claim that the necessary approach wouldn’t include violence, but it certainly doesn’t consist soley of bombing the hell out of people.

Unfortunately, the administration doesn’t want to wait for a sophisticated mutli-faceted approach to work, so they decided to look busy by hyping the WMD threat in Iraq and bombing it. Alas, this approach is only likely to increase the threat of terrorism, by making Iraq a haven for terrorists and making people in the region resent us more.