Reading (For Dummies)

While I don't particularly like Bush (or necessarily trust him for that matter) I have to disagree with you slightly on how he is proceeding. Sadam is clearly dangerous - how he got that way is a not a moot point in quite the way you think; he is our responsiblity, from creating him under Bush sr. tenure w/ the CIA, to the failure to protect the Kurds (who revolted because they hoped for our open support),failure of the UN to enforce its own weapons inspections (w/ the US as chief security council goombah), and allowing him to continue to support disruptive terrorism in the mid east peace processes. Also, we have a double responsiblity with our ridiculous sanctions program which has done nothing short of cementing his dictatorship -uniing many Iraqis in a distrust of us. The sanctions are ridiculous; however the brinksmanship is not - even if the Iraqi people don't support him, they are certainly not going to revolt unless Sadam has a real threat - us; whether or not we invade is irrelevant, we have to behave as if we are going to. Eisenhower said after leaving office: "I never would have dropped the bomb on the Soviets, but I never would have told them that." In my mind the best thing would be to both lift sanctions, and threaten to invade; however it most likely way too difficult to determine weapons compliance before lifting sanctions. My sincere hope is that this is all the right things for all the wrong reasons? Perhaps some good could come out of lining your friends pockets with oil money kickbacks and cleaning up after your dad.

Hey Jas -
Yeah I know what you mean. I'm fairly vocal against the war in Iraq, but I guess at the heart of things I think Saddam *does* need to go. But I don't like this veiled reasoning for doing so...it just makes the administration look like liars.
The big thing I hate about it, and it's a perspective I find a hard time arguing against with myself, is America's overall foreign policy.
People are defending the actions of Bush as humanitarian, but if the administration were truly humanitarian they would not just be changing the Iraq government; they'd also have been fixing up governments in Afghanistan (prior to two years ago), North Korea, Iran, and Congo to name a few places. It's hard to deny that there is an economic interest and that the decision to overthrow Hussein's government is based heavily on that economic interest. Otherwise we'd see action in these other countries (North Korea especially) to perform "regime changes."
So America is trying to act like the world moral police in a sense, but it's only going after people who will give it some financial interest when they're hauled to jail. That doesn't exactly make it look like a good moral police officer to me...