WELL: Just a thought I had on my way back from church this morning, which I'll leave for y'all to think about (as I'll be in Midland galavanting with Claire through tomorrow-ish):
The common line of thought is that the situation in Iraq is going pretty badly: there are lots of domestic insurgents, lots of foreign terrorist groups operating out of there, difficulties in rebuilding infrastructure, and all sort of political groups with varying oppositions to democracy that look to be strong at any given moment. The blame for most or all of this state of affairs is generally given to the Bush administration for doing a bad job of planning for the post-war period.
But I wonder, even if they had done a good job of planning, what would that change? People who wanted to militarily destabilize the the country would still want to do so, even if there were more troops; foreign terrorists would still see a good opportunity to attack western interests in a low-risk scenario; and in-country political groups would still be vying for power. If I understand the arguments of people who complain about pre-war planning correctly, what would be different is not so much the situation, but the ease with which we could respond to it, correct?
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
No comments:
Post a Comment