Posted by
rider237 on Saturday, November 04, 2006 6:10:41 PM
What if you had a really good plan and couldn't tell anyone what it was?
It has always bugged me that we chose to go after Saddam. It's not that he didn't deserve it. He surely did. He never live up to his end of the cease fire, and he definitely was a supporter of terrorist groups. We had every reason to believe that he had and would use WMD. Even so, the timing seemed wrong to me.
Last month I finished Stephen Tanners book on the history of Afghanistan. I also have been able to talk to my brother who is back in Afghanistan. I know, since I have been around for many years, that Rumsfeld, Chaney, and the rest of the gang are pretty smart people. They are to smart to make some kind of snap decision that is poorly thought out, to take us into a war. As the info came together, I began to see the war in Iraq from a different perspective.
If you study the history of Afghanistan, one thing becomes very clear. No one has ever successfully fought and held that country. Over the centuries, many have tried. Because of tribal division, terrain, and a weird sort of thinking that causes the people to swear allegiance to whomever is currently passing through the village, no outsider can conquer. And...no democracy will hold.
From more recent history, we saw what happened when the USSR tried to wage war in Afghanistan. The war became a magnet for radical Islamists from all over the world. In a country where you can only fight a few months out of the year because of weather, and where the radicals will be taken in by the tribes and protected, fighting in Afghanistan is a losing proposition.
What to do? Here is what I think happened: Bush, Rumsfeld, and Chaney came up with a plan. They needed another place to fight the radicals. They needed a place that they could legally enter and by being there, draw the radicals out of Afghanistan and into a more open war zone. Iraq was the logical place. A more or less legitimate case could be made for invading Iraq and without a doubt, radical Islamic fighters would be drawn there.
Not a bad plan when you stop and think about it. We could not have made much progress fighting jihadist when they were protected in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. By drawing off so many fighters, we could pick off Al Qaeda leadership one at a time and also kill those who ventured into Iraq to make a name for themselves.
Maybe I'm all wet with this theory, but from this perspective it makes sense. It makes more sense than thinking that otherwise brilliant men went off their rockers and invaded a second country with no plan.