Joel over at Pax Nortona appears to have misinterpreted my last entry. I’ve decided to respond to it here so I can make some things clear.
Steve Jenkins quotes Scott Rosenberg, apparently appreciatively, about the impending doom that is one day going to catch up with the United States, maybe in Gulf War 2.
I am not as impressed.
Those who support peace have to think about what they’re saying. For many years, a favorite taunt of the left was that the Gulf War achieved nothing: Saddam Hussein remains in power. We got our answer to that one and it is called Gulf War 2.
When we win this one that some think we’re going to lose, what will we be able to say but “duh”?
First, my name is Les, not Steve, but nitpicks aside…
I don’t think Scott was predicting anything in the way of impending doom catching up with us in Gulf War 2, I think he was simply stating many of the concerns a lot of us have about the whys, whens, and hows about this war. He also cautioned against over-confidence.
Whether we’ll win this particular war or not is not anything I’ve given much thought to. I don’t hold any illusions that our armed forces won’t prevail at some point. My questions have more to do with at what cost that victory will come and what are the true motivations behind it. I am pro-peace at this point in time not because I fancy myself as some kind of pacifist, but because I honestly have not seen anything presented to the public that totals up to a justification for this action and there’s a pretty good percentage of the rest of the world that seems to agree with me. If the rumors of Saddam equipping his soldiers with chemical weapons turns out to be true and they actually try to use them then, much like France, my opposition to this war will reverse pretty quickly. Based on what’s been presented as “evidence” to date, however, I haven’t seen anything that justifies the actions our President is taking at this point in time.
I’ve never bitched about the fact that Bush I didn’t take the fight all the way to Baghdad. Unlike most folks, I understand why he didn’t. “The Madrid conference would never have happened if the international coalition that fought together in Desert Storm had exceeded the UN mandate and gone on its own into Baghdad after Saddam and his forces.”—Bush Sr.
It’s somewhat ironic to me that having Bush Jr in the White House now has actually made me appreciate his Father’s term in office much more than I used to. I’d much rather Bush Sr. were back at the helm at this point than his son as even he has publicly stated that going to war without international unity is the wrong thing to do.
War has its time and place and many good arguments can be made for it being a necessary evil. The arguments presented so far have been specious at best.
Posted on 03/19/2003 at 07:21 AM 
Blink blink. How did the name “Steve” get in there? Can I blame it on the computer crash I had last night? (I really did have one, operating system restoration and all!)
For clarification, I just don’t think we should be raising the concern that we might lose or that war is going to be tough. It is irrelevant to the larger moral argument. If we raise these issues even obliquely, we set ourselves up for “har har har” by the bomb-em-all-to-hell crowd. Or we run the risk of promoting the Black Hawk Down syndrome, where we gasp in horror because eighteen Americans died in a battle that also killed 1000 Somalis who get mentioned as a footnote to what is perceived as “the greater horror”. It takes away from the focus of the immorality of setting ourselves up as world policeman without the approval of other nations.
Finally, sorry if it seemed that I was implying that you were among the kvetchers about “Saddam Hussein is still there”. I meant to draw upon it as a parallel to the kind of thinking that seems to be driving Rosenberg’s article and use it to point out the consequences thereof.