Tech_Esq
Sic Semper Tyrannis!
I was listening to some interviews today. Richard Haas and Arnaud de Borchgrave were being interviewed on C-SPAN. For the first time, I think I have a somewhat clear picture of what led to the Iraq war. Previous to this, during the run up to the Iraq war, I had rejected the idea the war was justified because the Iraqi had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). I assumed, like most governments at the time, that it was in fact the case, but despite that fact, they posed little threat to their neighbors and almost no threat whatever the United States.
Instead, I believed that the cause of the war was that the US needed to “take the war to the enemy.” By “the enemy” I mean adherents of radical Islam. Since radical Islam is a transnational philosophy, the fact that this or that state is individually responsible for one or another act, is of little moment. It’s the current red herring of, “Saudi Arabia was the home of 19, of the 9/11 hijackers, so we should have attacked Saudi Arabia not Afghanistan or Iraq.” This is meant to be a “no blood for oil” attack. We’re not in Saudi Arabia, because they have the oil. My view, however, was that if the war was not to be fought on the terms of the enemy, with them deciding where and when each battle would be fought, then we needed to choose where the fight would occur and we would have to make sure the where was someplace the enemy could get to so they could engage in the fight. Iraq served those purposes.
There were obvious gaps in theory, however it seemed mostly satisfactory. The interviews with Haas and de Borchgrave, provided insights that both explained why I got the impressions that I got, filled in the gaps and added new concerns. Haas was not a Neocon and was a self described 60-40 against the second Iraq war. Both of the men indicate that Iraq was not on the mind of Bush as he entered the Oval office. Both describe how Bush was captured by the Neocons in his administration after 9/11. De Borchgrave described the background context of what the Neocons were thinking and doing in the 1990s and what they added to the discussion after 9/11.
As it turns out, although people don’t really talk about it, most of the neocon thinkers are Jewish. I view this as neither here nor there. They disagree with me though. Richard Perle wrote a white paper for Benjamin Netanyahu prior to the latter’s first administration describing how Israel should deal with its foreign policy options. Basically, the plan called for using Turkey and Jordan to support regime change in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Netanyahu had limited success implementing it with Clinton in the White House pushing Israel in another direction.
With Bush coming in, they had the opportunity to move into policy positions. Within a year after 9/11, the decision had already been taken to attack Iraq. However, it was not as I thought, to engage the enemy, it was in pursuit of the same strategy as Perle laid out for Netanyahu, six years before. So, the question is this, were the Neocons acting in Israel’s interest or the US’s interest?
Instead, I believed that the cause of the war was that the US needed to “take the war to the enemy.” By “the enemy” I mean adherents of radical Islam. Since radical Islam is a transnational philosophy, the fact that this or that state is individually responsible for one or another act, is of little moment. It’s the current red herring of, “Saudi Arabia was the home of 19, of the 9/11 hijackers, so we should have attacked Saudi Arabia not Afghanistan or Iraq.” This is meant to be a “no blood for oil” attack. We’re not in Saudi Arabia, because they have the oil. My view, however, was that if the war was not to be fought on the terms of the enemy, with them deciding where and when each battle would be fought, then we needed to choose where the fight would occur and we would have to make sure the where was someplace the enemy could get to so they could engage in the fight. Iraq served those purposes.
There were obvious gaps in theory, however it seemed mostly satisfactory. The interviews with Haas and de Borchgrave, provided insights that both explained why I got the impressions that I got, filled in the gaps and added new concerns. Haas was not a Neocon and was a self described 60-40 against the second Iraq war. Both of the men indicate that Iraq was not on the mind of Bush as he entered the Oval office. Both describe how Bush was captured by the Neocons in his administration after 9/11. De Borchgrave described the background context of what the Neocons were thinking and doing in the 1990s and what they added to the discussion after 9/11.
As it turns out, although people don’t really talk about it, most of the neocon thinkers are Jewish. I view this as neither here nor there. They disagree with me though. Richard Perle wrote a white paper for Benjamin Netanyahu prior to the latter’s first administration describing how Israel should deal with its foreign policy options. Basically, the plan called for using Turkey and Jordan to support regime change in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Netanyahu had limited success implementing it with Clinton in the White House pushing Israel in another direction.
With Bush coming in, they had the opportunity to move into policy positions. Within a year after 9/11, the decision had already been taken to attack Iraq. However, it was not as I thought, to engage the enemy, it was in pursuit of the same strategy as Perle laid out for Netanyahu, six years before. So, the question is this, were the Neocons acting in Israel’s interest or the US’s interest?
