Message to hawks:
ITS A SHAME
It's a shame, because George W. Bush could have had his cake and eaten it too. He could have concentrated on Afghanistan (thereby establishing a strong position in the coming New Great Game in Central Asia). With the world's support and with Europe begging to be allowed to do anything, anything at all to help, we blew them off, never even allowing the presence of enough peacekeepers to keep control beyond Kabul. If only he had waged peace as well as he waged war. It's a shame, because just when it seemed as if this minimalist approach might succeed, the President picked a fight that many, many people thought had to be fought some day. We all knew that the president desperately wanted regime change in Iraq a long time before 9/11.
It's a shame, because he didn't wait until he had done a better job in Afghanistan before starting a new war. A successful Afghanistan with sixty-thousand NATO peace-keepers and a corresponding amount of effectively administered aid, and the country might now be in a much better position. The president would be virtually guaranteed reelection.
It's a shame, because a second term Bush could then have used his immense international authority deriving from the successful intervention in Afghanistan to orchestrate a more broadly based and more legitimate invasion of Iraq.
There's more:
It's a shame, because a properly done invasion of Iraq, with UN and NATO support, which truly sat on the country with nearly half a million troops, which immediately secured suspected WMD sites and ammunition dumps, all ministries and disarmed the population while flooding the country with money and aid workers and redirecting the Iraqi army to security would a been a good test of the neo-conservative dream of change in the Middle East.
It's a shame, because even without the support of the UN or NATO, the president and his only substantial ally, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, could have made a viable proposition of Iraq by purging and retraining the Iraqi army. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops on the streets could have dampened the insurrection, not added to it.
It's a shame, because even without the help of the only organization in Iraq which could have helped impose order, the Iraqi Army, and without enough friends or forces, the President could have ordered our troops to secure all the ministries and their files, all the suspected WMD sites, all the ammunition dumps, the most important cultural sites and try to prevent looting. It's a shame because the President could have sent the soldiers and the world the important message that the Iraqi people are not our enemies, our fight is not with them and they are to be treated with respect.
It's a shame, because of Abu Ghraib.
It is a shame, because it is probably too late for anyone to salvage Iraq and it is definitely too late for George W Bush to do so.
It's a shame, because the president's credibility is burnt, his bluff has been called.
It's a shame, because George W. Bush could have had it all and still thinks he does.
Thinking dangerous thoughts in the birthplace of democracy