Let Me Paraphrase President Bush's speech tonight:

[andyfox]

Well, I don't agree that we became more acutely aware of the potential dangers. I think we used the excuse of 9/11 to get Hussein (and I think excuse is the perfect word). I think we can disagree about whether that was a good idea or not, but I don't think there's any question about the rationale. I've posted many times before about this, so I won't bore you with it again.

I'm only concerned about the "hierarchy of motivations" insofar as they affect policy. I saw only one possible reason to justify the invasion of Iraq, and that was humanitarian. The president said he didn't consider the cost in human lives, so there was no humanitarian consideration on his part. A president who says that, yes indeed, makes me worry about a hierarchy of motivations because I worry that his motivations will lead to bad policy. We all would like to see the world be a perfect place, but at what cost, and whose definition of perfection?

The administration this week has essentially been saying you need us to protect you, trust us, we're doing the right thing. (After all, Mr. Cheney pointed out, we haven't been hit since 9/11.) Well I don't trust them. But maybe that's just me. It comes from a long history of watching the Kennedys and Johnsons and Nixons and Clintons betray our trust.

[MMMMMM]

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Well, I don't agree that we became more acutely aware of the potential dangers.

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Let's say you (or anyone) had had a bad fire at your house or place of business, but not so bad as to completey destroy everything. Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that you would likely be more acutely aware of future potential fire hazards, or fire safety issues? In similar vein, after 9/11, we became more acutely aware of the potential dangers of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

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I think we used the excuse of 9/11 to get Hussein (and I think excuse is the perfect word). I think we can disagree about whether that was a good idea or not, but I don't think there's any question about the rationale. I've posted many times before about this, so I won't bore you with it again.

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Ok, we agree to disagreee on that, as I don't think it was primarily an "excuse.


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I'm only concerned about the "hierarchy of motivations" insofar as they affect policy. I saw only one possible reason to justify the invasion of Iraq, and that was humanitarian. The president said he didn't consider the cost in human lives, so there was no humanitarian consideration on his part.

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Unjustifiable conclusion about his motivations. Bush was quite disturbed about the evils perpetrated upon the Iraqi populace by Saddam's regime, and correctly asserted that removing Saddam would be a great relief from tyranny for the Iraqi people. So, Bush was concerned with the humanitarian issue; just because he didn't make a model of projected Iraqi casualties does not contradict this. As I posted before, merely knowing that anticipated Iraq casualties would be far less than in Gulf War 1, would be sufficient comparison in that regard.

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A president who says that, yes indeed, makes me worry about a hierarchy of motivations because I worry that his motivations will lead to bad policy. We all would like to see the world be a perfect place, but at what cost, and whose definition of perfection?

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Never mind perfection; that's not the point: a mere minimum standard of absence of true tyranny, of regimes not torturing and killing their own subjects for political purposes, should be a bare minimum standard to aspire to; and which needs no query about "whose definition of perfection." If free countries see a way to change the evil governmental tyrannies in other countries, they should seriously contemplate working towards that end, which on occasion may even entail war.

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The administration this week has essentially been saying you need us to protect you, trust us, we're doing the right thing. (After all, Mr. Cheney pointed out, we haven't been hit since 9/11.) Well I don't trust them. But maybe that's just me. It comes from a long history of watching the Kennedys and Johnsons and Nixons and Clintons betray our trust.

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I don't think citizens should blindly trust in any government or administration.

[sweetjazz]

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I know you're not saying that Hussein = Hitler. But the idea that Hussein had to be stopped begs the question: stopped from what? Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice said Hussein was bottled up, incapable of causing much harm just a couple of months before 9/11. How did he suddenly become unbottled on 9/12?

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It's not that Saddam became "unbottled" on 9/12--rather, 9/11 made us far more keenly aware of our vulnerability to terror-type attacks and to assymetric warfare. The spectre of a Saddam selling/giving/bargaining WMDs to any terror group was simply too ghastly to allow, even if it was a small chance. We can't afford to take a "small chance" on things that could be far worse than 9/11. And again, the intelligence then was different than now.

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Unfortunately, we are going to be forced to take chances around the world. We are currently taking a chance that North Korea is not developing weapons to sell to terrorists. We are taking a chance that Iran will not develop nuclear technology and use it for military purposes. We are trying to prevent these from happening, but the reality is that we cannot always be 100% certain that these chances do not exist. Just because a danger exists does not mean that a military response is necessarily the best one.

So while I recognize that Saddam was a threat and that many critics of the war have sometimes underestimated this threat, it does not follow that a military response was our best option at the time we chose it.

I certainly agree with you that after 9/11 we (the American public) became acutely more aware of our vulnerability. However, I would argue that we have not become more aware of the strategic thinking necessary to best deal with the threat. In fact our acute sense of vulnerability has hampered our ability to understand how to deal with the threat of terrorism. Realistically, we cannot completely eliminate the threat of terrorism: the best we can hope for is to minimize the chance an attack will be successful, minimize the resources available to those who want to attack us, and minimize the amount of damage that would happen were an attack successful. Because of our heightened awareness of the threat we face, however, the public desires to eliminate any threat that we face. It's a noble goal, but unfortunately it is the wrong mentality to approach the problem with. That is how we end up spending a ton of money on an airport security system that is bothersome to many and only inconveniences terrorists to the extent that they need to use alternate plans to carry out an attack.

Additionally, while we have become more acutely aware of the threat of terrorism, we have failed to acknowledge their primary motivation. Despite President Bush's rallying theme that terrorists hate our values of freedom and liberty, the reality is that al Qaeda began its campaign against America because of the presence of our troops in Saudi Arabia during and after the Persian Gulf War. The rallying point for Islamic fundamentalists against America is that we are an imperialistic power trying to curb Arab sovreignty (including propping up governments that don't support the will of their Muslim population). Of course we don't accept these motives as justification for the actions, but we must consider them when deciding on our strategy to prevent terrorism.

Despite the good intentions behind democratizing Iraq, the perception among Muslims was bound to be one of skepticism toward our presence there. Many of the specific decisions made in Iraq would have been different if the people resopnsible for them had a better understanding of a winning strategy to combat terrorism.

Unfortunately, the American public thinks about terrorism in terms of silly platitudes and from their (understandable) position of fear, and we do not have a leadership that is willing to push us to rise above that and think about terrorism in a smart way that will do the most to protect us.

[BCPVP]

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Do you thing Bush was purposely using such a vague interpretation of 'grave' or do you think he was trying to convey the message of "we gotta do something quick cuz this [censored]'s crazy?"

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I don't think grave was Bush's word. I believe it was another poster who said you could substitute grave for immediate/imminent. I disagree that such a substitution means the same thing.

But yes, that was what Bush was getting at. Do something now before the danger is so great (so imminent) that we can't do much to stop it.

Another way of looking at it: in my martial arts classes, I'm not being trained to wait till the punch is about to land on my nose. I try to do something about it before the other guy gets that far. I don't wait for imminent danger; I do something about the grave danger to my face before it becomes an imminent danger.

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Iran building a gigantic hammer that can crush 50 square miles constitutes a grave danger to Isreal. But they're not in imminent danger of being crushed.

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Yes. Apparently you can't see why so I won't ask.

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I don't think grave was Bush's word. I believe it was another poster who said you could substitute grave for immediate/imminent. I disagree that such a substitution means the same thing.

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If memory serves, the exact phrase used in the speech was "a grave and gathering threat." Note that "gathering" suggests "not yet imminent." The entire phrase connotes foreboding.

[ACPlayer]

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I don't think citizens should blindly trust in any government or administration.

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As Sklansky would say it is not important to have the right answer but to have the right reason for the answer. If you dont prioritize and analyze the reasons offered by the admin for any policy you cannot judge the effectiveness of the administration. It is irrelevant whether a) you agree with the policy for other reasons or b) whether the program run by the administration was a success.

Your defense of the administration appears to boil down to your belief that the war was a good idea for humanitarian reasons. That is fine as far as it goes. However, the administration and you have had far different reasons for going to war -- that should be bothersome at a minimum, specially as the reasons offered in the first instance have been totally discredited. And the way the war was sold by the administration has been shown to be deceitful

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Your defense of the administration appears to boil down to your belief that the war was a good idea for humanitarian reasons. That is fine as far as it goes. However, the administration and you have had far different reasons for going to war -- that should be bothersome at a minimum, specially as the reasons offered in the first instance have been totally discredited. And the way the war was sold by the administration has been shown to be deceitful

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As I've stated, there were multiple good reasons for going to war. The administration, too, offered more than one reason. I don't think the administration was particularly deceitful in selling the war, although their areas of sales emphasis could have been been better.

[ACPlayer]

Your reasons (or mine) for supporting the war are irrelevant to my evaluation of the prez's policy.

And yes the prez offered a laundry list of reasons. But if you were to pareto the reasons based on the words that were coming out of washinton there was really on one main reason (by a wide margin!). And yes that reason can be boiled down to "he has WMD, we know where they are, we need to go and get them, we have pictures, we have hard data, we have invoices from niger, tubes from whereever, vials of white powders etc"

So, setting aside your personal agreement with the war for humanitatarian reason as the objective (there is that pesky word again) should lead you to the conclusion that the administration has poor policy processes(even if you agree with the outcome in this instance).

[MMMMMM]

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And yes the prez offered a laundry list of reasons. But if you were to pareto the reasons based on the words that were coming out of washinton there was really on one main reason (by a wide margin!). And yes that reason can be boiled down to "he has WMD, we know where they are, we need to go and get them, we have pictures, we have hard data, we have invoices from niger, tubes from whereever, vials of white powders etc"

So, setting aside your personal agreement with the war for humanitatarian reason as the objective (there is that pesky word again) should lead you to the conclusion that the administration has poor policy processes(even if you agree with the outcome in this instance).

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I think the war could have been better sold. I don't equate that criticism to the existence of "poor policy processes" except insofar as the marketing department or public relations may be concerned.

[ACPlayer]

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I think the war could have been better sold. I don't equate that criticism to the existence of "poor policy processes" except insofar as the marketing department or public relations may be concerned.

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I really hope you are kidding with this post.

You think the war could have been better sold. You are blaming the marketing department. The war policy is under criticism not the selling of the war. The selling job was superb. Bunches of people bought the snake oil as a cure to the evils of terrorism.

The marketing department did a bang up job.