LiveJournal 3/5/2003 –

While reading the New York Times online, I came across an article relating to the upcoming war in Iraq, about how shocking Iraq may lead to a short war. This quote caught my eye: “He said disarming Iraq would define victory, not capturing or killing President Saddam Hussein.” Allright, so, simply disarming Iraq is what we are after, then is this a war or is it just mopping up after what we tried to do in 1991? Won’t this be just like a can of worms, sure, we can clip, nip, and tuck Saddam’s forces here and there because all of a sudden they threaten us with their WOMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction, which by the way is nearing complete hyphenation because it’s quickly becoming a cliche phrase) but wouldn’t that be rather silly? I mean, if we’re just after weapons then technically Iraq becomes a unwilling manufacturer of WOMD, selling their wares to us by trading expensive WOMD for aerial bombing? I get this intense feeling that we aren’t going to actually listen to anyone else, ie, the United Nations, but we’re going to forge ahead like the brainless oxen we are, missing out on dealing with the reason *why* Iraq makes WOMD and doesn’t want to play fair like all the other disarmed lands out there, like Angola, France, and North Dakota. That by simply bombing Iraq we can “spook” them into behaving properly, ie, the way we want them to. How likely will the Iraqi’s be in finding agreement with the United States out of fear of some future bombing attack? And how do we feel if Iraq suddenly turns on terrorist organizations and fights the “War on Terror”, will we ignore their WOMD just like Donald Rumsfeld did in 1983 when Iraq was at war with Iran? Curious…

Yesterday I was talking with my mother and another thought occurred to me, that The Gulf War was just like Vietnam. We didn’t really win anything, we just declared it was won, declared our intent to be finished with it, and left. If proper wars are to have an ignition, a duration, and some definite conclusion then we haven’t had one of those in quite some time. We apparently have another kind of war, one with ignition, building, and lame-duck wobbling away. Another thing just now, if there is a definite and clear winner, doesn’t that make the loser feel like post WWI Germany, wouldn’t that lead to the contributing factor of WWII, ie, make the loser so sore they have no choice but to pursue some grander scheme?

And we’re still ignoring North Korea. Gah… we’ll treat the Koreans with diplomacy yet we’ll bully Iraq when the clear and present threat is just the opposite! 

It’s a good thing that presidents have terms and those terms are limited. I wonder how close George Washington would be to considering forming a militia and taking that boat ride across the Patomac River… Dubya is the best thing to happen to the GOP in years, I hope they reap everything they’ve sown.