Why are we in Iraq?
Feb. 27th, 2006 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pmbI 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 05:58 am (UTC)The best explanation I've gotten is that there was a diverse set of reasons that the evil henchmen wanted to invade Iraq, and the president wanted to do it because his dad didn't. But it's still frustrating that there does not seem to be an actual reason that we invaded. We have an excuse or two, but no real reasons.
Perhaps the takehome lesson is that it's not enough for people to agree on the action, they also have to agree on the action's goals. Otherwise when things start going poorly, everyone's reactions will be counterproductive and at cross purposes.