Bush's invasion of Iraq finally accomplishes its goal.

Remember how, after all of their other lame justifications for the Iraq war failed, the Bush administration fell back on the "Creating a Democracy in Iraq will inspire the people to rise up and create more Democracies in the region" argument?

Broken Engagement

The strategy that won the Cold War could help bring democracy to the Middle East-- if only the Bush hawks understood it.

During 2002 and early 2003, Bush administration officials put forth a shifting series of arguments for why we needed to invade Iraq. Nearly every one of these has been belied by subsequent events. We have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; assuming that they exist at all, they obviously never presented an imminent threat. Saddam's alleged connections to al Qaeda turned out to be tenuous at best and clearly had nothing to do with September 11. The terrorists now in Iraq have largely arrived because we are there, and Saddam's security forces aren't. And peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which prominent hawks argued could be achieved "only through Baghdad," seems further away than ever.

Advocates of the invasion are now down to their last argument: that transforming Iraq from brutal tyranny to stable democracy will spark a wave of democratic reform throughout the Middle East, thereby alleviating the conditions that give rise to terrorism.

Washington Monthly


It looks like current events show that Bush has finally succeeded in one of his goals for that stupid war.

[sarcasm]YAY BUSH![/sarcasm]

I guess they forgot to take the law of unintended consequences into consideration when they rammed that war down our throats.


So, when is all that terrorism supposed to end now that we have Democracies all over the Middle East?

Think they'll shut down the TSA now that we're safe?

Yep, my feelings exactly.

It's easy, when you are empowered, to see all your truths as "THE" truth and that only your judgments matter and other people's are irrelevant. But we can easily be deceived and be weak when we think we are strong and another be strong when we think they are weak. So here we are on the way down as the all exalted casual judges of men thinking Judge Judy, cop shows, and the general degradation of our children is just o so fine. How does one avoid the path of ruin? Can people do it? Can nations, governments so it? How about the world as a whole?

Yep, what is happening is the pendulum swinging back when some dumb ahole gave it a push.

This article came out in 2004 after Mr. Clark ended his presidential campaign. I actually supported him in his campaign. In the article,

I liked his analysis of the differences between the fall of the Soviet Union and US attempts to change the Middle East . And I cringe with embarrassment remembering the "Freedom fries", when he mentioned need for allies.

Talk about cherry picking. The authority of the Pope was welcomed for Poland, but politely turned away for Iraq invasion.

Progress may come from a beneficent king, from enlightened mullahs, from a secular military, from a women's movement, from workers returning from years spent as immigrants in Western Europe, from privileged sons of oil barons raised on MTV, or from an increasingly educated urban intelligentsia, such as the nascent one in Iran. But if the events of the last year tell us anything, it is that democracy in the Middle East is unlikely to come at the point of our gun. And Ronald Reagan would have known better than to try.

"From an increasingly educated urban intelligentsia", sounds like Egypt.

Mr. Clark, while supporting war in Afghanistan, was against the Iraq invasion.

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."
George Orwell

and another GO quote

"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac."