Posted by Jost on November 11, 2006, at 11:23:22
In reply to Re: The Ongoing Effects of War ***Trigger*** » zeugma, posted by Dinah on November 10, 2006, at 18:27:09
"...There were no weapons of mass destruction (why on earth didn't he cooperate with the inspectors?). ..."
There are actually a few answers to this question-- ironic as they may be.
First, he didn't cooperate because he may not even have known how weakened his defensive capability was. Bringing Sadaam bad news was not good for your health, you know.
Second, he wanted to maintain power. If you want to maintain power, within your own state, or within the international community, you don't admit that you have no weapons. Otherwise, you suddenly look like your power is built on a house of cards. No government is going to tell other governments what their defensive (or offensive, which is often also defensive) capability is-- it's not terribly reasonable to expect them to.
Third, he was telling the inspectors (and us) that he had no weapons of mass destruction-- remember? They (and we) didn't believe him.
So the problem is he may actually have been telling a lot of the truth-- but we either were so convinced that he had WMD, or were so insistent on invading, whether he had them or not-- for other reasons-- that it didn't matter.
I also think it may be the case that our army (and our private contractors-who are doing a lot of the fighting, interrogating, etc) may be making the violence worse, not better. I"m not sure. It maybe that we're shoring up certain neighborhoods, in the short term, and destabilizing every place for the long term. I don't think the situation now-- if we got out-- is at all the same as that at the end of Gulf War I.
Jost
poster:Jost
thread:702096
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20061009/msgs/702544.html