What Would Have Happened Had We Not Invaded Iraq?

[NATO AIR]

safire's theory is one i can see a lot of truth in... we may be paying a heavy price for liberating iraq and transforming it, but we would have paid an even heavier price had we not...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/opinion/20safire.html?oref=login&hp

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Roth Plot II
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Published: December 20, 2004

Washington — In "The Plot Against America," the novelist Philip Roth imagined what might have befallen this nation if the appeasing Charles A. Lindbergh had defeated the anti-Hitler F.D.R. in the 1940 election.

Here's my idea for the sequel:

Opening scene in the Oval Office in winter 2001, after U.S. and allied forces crushed the Taliban in retaliation for their part in 9/11, with bin Laden not yet found in Afghanistan.

President Bush tells his national security aides he wants to continue to wage war against the web of terrorists, lest America be attacked again with nukes or germs.

The C.I.A.'s Tenet notes that Saddam's Iraq harbors the terrorists Nidal and al-Zarqawi. Adviser Rice adds that world intelligence services agree that Saddam seeks awful weapons. The Pentagon's Rumsfeld warns it is "only a matter of time" before Iraq shoots down one of our planes enforcing the no-flight zone protecting Iraq's Kurds from genocide.

State's Powell counsels relaxing U.N. pressure on Iraq by calling them "smart sanctions," hoping this will persuade Saddam to permit inspections. Bush glumly agrees.

Dissolve to a scene in a Tikrit palace where Saddam lays out his plan to (a) amass billions through a U.N. oil-for-food scam and his secret oil pipeline to Syria, (b) increase contacts with Al Qaeda, (c) take leadership of the Arab world by developing W.M.D. or pretending to have them already, and (d) openly challenging Bush.

Back in D.C., at a critical go-no-go meeting in the Situation Room, Bush sides with Powell not to invade Iraq. Wolfowitz enters with news of a shoot-down of our "Northern Watch" aircraft by Iraq. Kofi Annan, on CNN, asks: What do we expect - the U.S. flies over sovereign Iraqi territory. Bush decides against his aides' audacious regime-change proposal, and chooses a restrained, Clintonian pinprick response with cruise missiles.

Having gloriously faced down the U.S. - and gaining greater financial and weaponry strength every day - Saddam becomes an iconic, heroic figure in the Arab and Muslim world. Through massive kickbacks and smuggling operations involving France, Russia and China, the murderous despot ensures U.N. protection from inspections. Free from fear of retaliation, Saddam offers safe haven in Iraq to bin Laden and followers seeking a center of operations.

Cut to Libya, where Qaddafi has purchased nuclear know-how and fissionable material from corrupt Pakistani scientists. The Libyan dictator shifts his fear of the U.S. to fear and envy of Iraq, and presses ahead to produce a nuclear bomb of his own. Intermediate-range missiles being shipped to him from North Korea are seized at sea by Israel.

That Zionist entity is faced by a Hamas-dominated P.L.O. now heavily financed by Saddam. In 2003, he doubles his payments to the families of suicide bombers, ties the violent intifada tightly to Baghdad-based Qaeda, and sees to it that a Palestinian of his choice is ready to succeed Arafat.

The terrified royal families of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait demand that the U.S. and European nations station troops in their countries to act as a tripwire against Saddam's longtime lust for their oil and from bin Laden's vengeance. Bush, having rejected reforms to make our forces more mobile, is forced to decline. Europe, furious at the U.S. for failure to fulfill the leadership responsibilities of a superpower, passes. The U.N. resolves it is seized with concern.

OPEC, with Iraq's shrewd acquiescence, retaliates by doubling oil prices, its price-gouging supported by Russia's oil cartel, which triggers Western-world recession. Egypt, seeking protection from Saddam, merges with nuclear-armed Libya, and both embrace Islamism.

This disheartening train of events left the station, in my sequel to Roth's satire, with the fictional Bush's humiliating decision not to invade Iraq. But that's no proper ending for an optimistic, reconstructionist author.

In early 2004, a Wilsonian Democrat bursts upon the political scene. He wins the Iowa caucuses on the slogan "Send Our Boys Abroad," conducts a campaign inspiring us to extend freedom throughout the world, and routs the G.O.P.'s equivocating wimp in the White House. As president-elect, he emulates F.D.R. in wartime by appointing Republicans Rumsfeld to State and Wolfowitz to Defense, overthrows Saddam, wins the terror war - and the Plot Against America, Part II, is foiled.

 

[dilloduck]

safire's theory is one i can see a lot of truth in... we may be paying a heavy price for liberating iraq and transforming it, but we would have paid an even heavier price had we not...

Speculation is always difficult but Safire did a pretty good job. Main point is that this region of the world NEVER had any intentions of acting peacefully toward America and just be satisfied with any status quo. That's what anti war folks can't get through their heads.

 

[Mariner]

scenario:

Riding the wave of good will towards the U.S. following 9/11, we devote twice the resources we did to rooting out Al Qaeda, and capture Osama bin Laden based on intelligence provided by a Muslim community who did not see us as an anti-Muslim empire. We do not shy away from taking on Saudi Arabia, a kingdom as dysfunctional as Iraq's dictatorship, and fully investigate the origins and support for Al Qaeda there. We do not reduce taxes catastrophically, and therefore have more freedom to act in criticizing our "friends" there, since we do not need their financing to prop up our economy. Meanwhile, in Iraq, Hussein continues to cheat the oil-for-food program. However, we have fired George Tenet for misinterpreting intelligence and we have acknowledged that the Energy Dept., which provided a negative opinion within 24 hours of CIA reports that WMD evidence was found, was right. Therefore we know Iraq poses us no risk yet. We wait a year, during which we assemble a coalition of 300 nations that agree Hussein needs to be taken out. The costs are shared, as are the casualties, and support within the neighboring regimes is high, reducing their willingness to let Baathists flee and hopeful insurgents enter through their borders into Iraq. We listen to the generals, and invade with far greater forces, securing arms and museums, not just oil fields. Etc. In the end, we're $200 billion richer, 1000 American lives are saved, we have no budget deficit, and we enjoy the admiration of the world's Muslim nations. Our approval rating in Indonesia rises from 76% instead of falling to 16%, and recruiting for madrasas and terrorist camps slows to a trickle. We try bin Laden in an international court of law, where he is convicted and placed in prison for life along with hundreds of Al Qaeda followers.

Libya, North Korea, and Iran then face pressure from an energized and far more united world community in 2005. They relent, seeing that force is inevitable if they do not.

Mariner.

 

[NATO AIR]

scenario:

We wait a year, during which we assemble a coalition of 300 nations that agree Hussein needs to be taken out. Mariner.

there aren't nearly 300 nations in the world, barely 200 if that many

and russia, france and china would never, ever have allowed UNSC approval for the invasion of iraq, even with the rest of the world supporting it. they stood to lose too much money, power and influence. thinking otherwise is, as i discovered myself a few months earlier, very dilluted wishful thinking

 

[Mariner]

You're probably right about France, Russia, and China, but that still leaves 189 other sovereign nations (yes, I was exaggerating for poetical effect, multiplying Bush's 30 by 10).

If what we're doing is so obviously right as most on this bullletin board claim, then why have other nations been so slow to see the light? Why has the coalition shrunk rather than growing?

Mariner.

 

[NATO AIR]

You're probably right about France, Russia, and China, but that still leaves 189 other sovereign nations (yes, I was exaggerating for poetical effect, multiplying Bush's 30 by 10).

If what we're doing is so obviously right as most on this bullletin board claim, then why have other nations been so slow to see the light? Why has the coalition shrunk rather than growing?

Mariner.

the worldwide media and EU have done a grand job of convincing much of the world every soldier over there is a war criminal, america wants iraq as a colony and that the terrorists/insurgents over there only want freedom

 

[no1tovote4]

Libya, North Korea, and Iran then face pressure from an energized and far more united world community in 2005. They relent, seeing that force is inevitable if they do not.

Mariner.

LOL. :rotflmao:

They sign a treaty which they promptly disregard. While the world community is giving them food they are taking and selling the food and using the money to buy the equipment and plutonium necessary to give them Nuclear capability. They continue to thumb their noses at the International Wimp Committee (otherwise known as the UN) as they wipe their asses with 100 dollar bills that they get from selling the food we give them and laugh about the stupid Americans that cannot learn from History, even recent History and realize that the treaties that they sign are not worth even the ink to write them.

America is later attacked by a suitcase nuke because of the total lack of foresight and even hindsight of those that work for the status quo and towards treaties over action even with those that have shown to bargain in bad faith in the past.

Thank the gods it is only a nightmare and didn't happen.....