Re: IRAQMIRED: The Arrogance of Power

Sean Burke wrote:

> Pat Hines <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>
> > Quote of the half-century: Senator J. William Fulbright, 1966: "Power has a way 
> > of undermining judgment, of planting delusions of grandeur in the minds of 
> > otherwise sensible people and otherwise sensible nations."
>
>
> Is this really your nomination for "Quote of the half-century"?
> One of my favorites is by Nikita Kruschev: "We will bury you."

	Kruschev's statement fits under Fulbright's quite nicely, I think.  It may have 
been the arrogance of power that persuaded Nikita to utter it.

> > The Arrogance of Power
> > By Jim Lobe
> >
> >     Two years after the passage by a unanimous House of Representatives and all 
> > but two senators of the August 7, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and amid 
> > continuing escalation of the Vietnam War, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 
> > Chairman J. William Fulbright published The Arrogance of Power (New York: Random 
> > House, 1966) in which he attacked the war's justification, Congress' failure to 
> > set limits on it, and the dangerous and delusional impulses which gave rise to 
> > it. Fulbright's critique, to which he had already given voice in unprecedented 
> > hearings on the war, legitimized the growing anti-war movement in a way that had 
> > not been possible before the book's publication and shattered what until then 
> > had been an elite consensus that U.S. military intervention in Indochina was 
> > necessitated by the Cold War geopolitics.
>
>
> The Soviet Union existed.

	As a direct result of decisions by Franklin Roosevelt.

> The Warsaw Pack armies existed.

	See the above.

> The Berlin Wall existed. The Korean war happened. It is 
> stupid talk about US foreign policy during the Cold War
> without making reference to these facts.

	Un-huh, and it's stupid to fail to note how the US created or had a major hand 
in creating those problems.  The key question today, is what problems is G. W. 
Bush creating for Americans in the future?

> >     Despite the Cold War, Fulbright, who died in 1995, perceived already in 
> > 1966 that the United States, with unmatched military power, was taking on 
> > imperial attitudes similar to those held by previous great empires like Rome and 
> > 19th century Great Britain, and that a unilateralist and war-like spirit had 
> > infected the nation in ways that it would live to regret. He especially noted 
> > how isolated Washington had become from its traditional allies in Europe.
>
>
> Traditional allies? Aside from Britain, who in Europe could be
> considered a traditional ally of the US? If we became distanced
> from some Europeans, it is because many of them manifested no 
> higher political or economic ambition than to be assimilated 
> into the Soviet borg.

	From the above statement, it's obvious you know nothing of foreign political 
structures or history.

> >     His observations and warnings at the time appear deeply relevant to the 
> > United States under George W. Bush, particularly in the wake of the publication 
> > last week of the administration's sweeping "National Security Strategy of the 
> > United States of America" and its request that Congress authorize a war 
> > resolution arguably as broad and as unilateral as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution 
> > approved in the early stages of the Vietnam War.
> > READ the complete article: 
> > http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=1096
>
>
> Here's a choice quote from the article:
>
>  Who woulda thunk it: Iraqis actually live in Iraq with ideas of their
>  own about how their world should be shaped. The imperial imagination,
>  even when it soars, is still a distinctly limited creature.

	Yes, that's a wonder observation; let's see if you understood it's meaning.

> So if the Iraqis were so capable of managing their own affairs,
> why were Saddam, and his reviled sons Uday and Qusay, still large
> and in charge?

	Nope, you don't understand it at all.  Key axiom, that was none of America's 
business.

> After involving Iraq in two ruinous wars with Iran
> and the US?

	Yes, Iraq at the height of it's military prowess, couldn't whip a country 
located next to it run by fanatical clerics.  Bush still maintains that Iraq was 
a threat to America, anyone believing that is not just ignorant, they are a fool.

> After suffering over ten years of UN economic sanctions?

	Iraqi's were coping as well as they could with a rogue superpower threatening 
them for 12 years.

> Is there any doubt that if the US had not intervened, Uday and Qusay
> would have taken over the family business, just as Kim Jong Il has 
> from his dad, Kim Il Sung?

	That falls under the axiom I stated above.  That was not, and is none of 
America's business.

> I'm not saying that it was worth the cost in American lives and
> money to liberate Iraq. But I will say that if the Iraqis had 
> taken it upon themselves to throw off the yoke, this war would
> never have happened.
>
> -SEan

	No, if slimy neo-conservatives had not seized control of the White House 
through a morally challenged president, this war would not have happened.  The 
US government invaded Iraq, not the other way around.

Pat Hines