Posted by Sigismund on May 30, 2008, at 16:04:18
In reply to Re: Time to change the subject heading, posted by fayeroe on May 30, 2008, at 7:36:52
The self regard I was thinking of was closer to narcissism.
On the faith and resources front, Andrew Bacevich had something quite interesting to say in response to the question
'Why did we invade Iraq?'
Here is his answer as best I can recall and reconstruct it.
The decision to invade Iraq was made my six or seven people with quite different priorities. Cheney or Rumsfeld could care less about the spread of liberal democracy. What Wolfowitz wrote after was interesting. He said that 'weapons of mass destruction was something we could all agree on'. When he was first elected Bush was a squishy kind of realist, but after 9/11 the scales feel from his eyes and he became a Wilsonian liberal who believed in the projection of democracy by American power into the Middle East.
Later Bacevich said that he would not have wanted the responsibility of appearing before the American people and explaining to them why this happened and what he was going to do about it.If you prohibit historical explanations of events like this, then you end up with (what are the right words here?) Manichean ones.
I suppose the American people were in no mood for a lesson on the history of Saudi Arabia.
poster:Sigismund
thread:831986
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20080312/msgs/832103.html