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

Comments

[cubetime]

Well, one take on it is we're there because we all believed there really were WMDs in Iraq.

From that perspective, your question must be restated as, "Why are we still in Iraq?"

[pmb]

I didn't! Sanctions and inspections (backed up with threats) were working, even if they aren't sexy. The example in that article is the one discovery of anything approaching chemical weapons, and it's nothing like what he was claimed to have, and it's basically a discovery of the stuff we sold him in the 80's.

[cubetime]

I didn't! Sanctions and inspections (backed up with threats) were working, even if they aren't sexy.I didn't believe it either. But many of the administration may have either believed it, or deluded themselves into believing it. Congress seemed to have believed it a little. And evidently, some people (probably many people) believe the administration believed it. Or want to believe the administration believed it

[pmb]

"You break it, you buy it." And boy did we break it. For as bad as life under Saddam may have been, I think it's safe to say we've made things at least as bad, if not worse.

Right. But do you think our continued presence will make things better or worse? I'm pretty sure it will just inflame tensions. We don't have the political will required to draft every able bodied young person into the army and ship them over to a desert country that is trying to tear itself apart. And failing extreme measures like that, I don't see how we can fix anything.

Wow, that guy's smart.

[canarasekal]

I found the following quote to be really fundamental:

"Nostalgic, resentful, and grounded upon unquestionable core liturgical teachings, each is driven by a sense of destiny and contempt for those who disagree."

I really think that hubris is the source of almost all human evil.

[clipdude]

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

[leech]

Oil, dude.

[pmb]

That was my hypothesis, but so far it's been shown a crappy and inefficient way of getting and controlling oil.

[cubetime]

crappy and inefficient

The hallmark of the government.

[pmb]

Not this crappy and inefficient. This is crappy and inefficient on a whole new scale. They've gone plaid.

[jes5199]

"But it hasn’t happened. Immediately after the nominal end of the war, Congress appropriated $2.5 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq, followed by an additional $18.4 billion in October. Yet as of July 2004, Iraq’s state-owned factories had been pointedly excluded from the reconstruction contracts. Instead, the billions have all gone to Western companies, with most of the materials for the reconstruction imported at great expense from abroad."