This dark side has always existed in the American electorate. Bush's poll numbers are down because too many American soldiers are getting blown-up. Otherwise, the American people as a whole don't really care about Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or Iraqis. I'm not sure how this myth of American benevolence ever got started.
Remember Albright's famous words, "Are sanctions worth the death of half a million Iraqi children?"
Her answer: an emphatic "Yes." How can one begin to address that answer?
There is and was a huge difference between John Kerry and the Bushies. Kerry alone would have made a major difference in Iraq. How? Simply by not being Bush. That means he wouldn't be working for Halliburton, and he'd cut the pie enough for the EU and the UN to share the burden. Remember, this was a Senator who conducted some of the most serious criminal inveestigations in the history of the American Senate.
We are much worse off in the US because Kerry didn't win for a good number of reasons.
The obvious is dawning on progressive Americans. Our democracy is a rather vulnerable thing, and though we like to think we "export" it to the rest of the world, we really have no mechanism for reigning in a power-hungry executive branch, especially when the majority of our elected members of congress are happily shredding our civil liberties and the constitution. In other words, people apparently missed the fact that not only is it very possible for the US democracy to be dominated by powerful interests who do NOT represent the majority of the country (under our unbalanced system of representation, the so-called majority party represent fewer constituents than the minority opposition), but they can also commit crimes, and as long as their cronies are in power, no one will investigate them. They can lie, they can take bribes, they can torture, they can start illegal wars, they can steal money: they have done all these. Not a one of them is in danger of going to jail.
Quite simply: it's a breakdown in our democracy.
Under any other circumstance, if even another branch of the American gov't had any poewr, George W. Bush would have already been impeached: yesterday.
No, that doesn't cut it. This may have worked in the summer of 2003, and even then only if Kerry had been willing to give up control completely - that means military control, too.
But Fallujah I, Najaf I and II preceded the elections, and Fallujah II fell into the interregnum. By 2004, the wide majority of Iraqis wanted us (us the West) out, even according to CPA polls. And even had they not, just to ensure security, up to a million troops would have been needed - the EU doesn't have that many, nor the money to keep them there. Nor the population's willingness to send some - so while it would have been more difficult for the French and German governments to reject demands for Kerry, they would have done so anyway.
Kerry was either not bold enough to declare that pullout is the only option, or he was naive. Either way, the Repubs would have blamed failure on him after his victory[], I'm certain with success. To return to the original theme of the thread, the Democrats' failure to go with Dean and later the anti-war movement's failure to force Kerry to get really aboard are instances where much of the world would say to US liberals, "not enough". [] BTW, I am growing ever more certain that it was victory. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
To return to the original theme of the thread, the Democrats' failure to go with Dean and later the anti-war movement's failure to force Kerry to get really aboard are instances where much of the world would say to US liberals, "not enough".
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The US public was not going to vote for an anti-war candidate in a post 9/11 atmosphere. I firmly believe that.
I'm not even sure that leaving Iraq is a good thing right now. What happens if...if ultraconservative Shiites take over, control the oil, a civil war starts and untold hundreds of thousands are slaughtered? Iraq can get worse.
I'm not saying it will, but it can.
As for Kerry and the last election, I thought he straddled the line well. You had to say, I;m willing to start a war to defend the US after 9/11. If you weren't willing to say that, you were marked out of the game. 40% of the electorate believed Saddam had a hand in 9/11. That's how deluded we were. And that's why an appeal to that 40% would have been extraordinarily difficult if you were anti-war.
I think the case is more viable in 2008, but unfortunately our most prominent candidates so far voted for IWR.
This is what I mean when I say that America did not learn the lessons of Vietnam, and now has to re-learn them in Iraq. When it does, being anti-war--and pro-diplomacy--will become respectable in the US. But I fear this is a long ways away. It's part of a long-term process of cultural maturation. Pogo: We have met the enemy, and he is us.
It's going to take some serious diplomatic talent, and some substantive gimme's to Europeans and others to help us out.
Great comment, Upstate. Pogo: We have met the enemy, and he is us.
The fighters from outside Iraq are there for another reason. But the insurgency of former Baathists and Iraqi Army can be quelled once their leaders are cut in. The Iranians would cut a deal as well, so the Shiites would play ball.
Right now, American policy is hostage to Halliburton.
Once you cut the Iraqis in, however, the idea that Iraq will become a democracy modeled on NeoCon deluded fantasies is completely dead, if anyone actually believed it in the first place.
I think 2008 may be just long enough for the American public to realize how insane our foreign policy is. At least I'm hoping this is true.
