US To Russia: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Well, in the sense that Georgia provoked the fight with Russia and Iraq didn't threaten us at all, you are correct. But in the sense of a larger country beating up on a smaller one to make a political point in the region, well, then you are incorrect: the goals are roughly similar. It's power politics. Doesn't make it right, but we must take the world as it is, not as we would idealize it.

Bless Maureen Dowd and her acerbic wit. Bless you for promoting a reality-based RealPolitik.

Well, if Iraq threatened us, then Colin Powell in February 2001 when he said the "Iraq threat was contained" was obviously out of the loop.

But, your criticisms have merit. So, I'll rephrase my comparison: as for Russia's invasion of Georgia, it's purpose was to put other countries in the region on notice. And they are, just look at the news out of Poland and the Ukraine the last few days.

Now, as for our invasion of Iraq: much of it was to put the other nations and jihadi groups in the region on notice. Would you not agree with that as being one of our war aims?

Russell - Perhaps this is best viewed from two lenses.

1) The US perspective: There is some argument to say that the US invasion of Iraq and Russian's actions against Georgia are different. The are different, since the two separatist regions used to be part of the Soviet Union and ever since the breakup have been trying to rejoin Russia. The vast majority of people in the those regions are of Russian ethnicity. Russia and Georgia have been arguing over this for years. And Georgia did attack South Ossetia first, to which Russia launched a disproportionate retaliation, taking advantage of Georgia's mistake and overwhelming them with force that had been preplanned and waiting for a catalyst. This, of course, is different from Iraq, where we had no direct connection to its people and acted unilaterally without an attack first. The one similarity is that we launched a disproportionate attack to take advantage of Iraq's weaknesses and bad decision making. And as Sean-Paul says, we did it to make what we thought would be a show of strength in the region.

2) The world perspective: No matter what we think is a correct interpretation for our motives in attacking Iraq, the world sees otherwise. They see it as an unnecessary and unilateral act of aggression on the part of the US against a blustery leader that had nothing to do with 9/11 (which they didn't). They see our own leader also as blustery. In fact, I have had some Europeans tell me to my face that Bush is "dangerous." [They see John McCain in this same light.] And by "dangerous" they don't mean in a powerful, influential, leadership sense. On the contrary, they see Bush (and McCain) as mindless saber-rattlers who are totally ineffectual in leading the world against any threats. They literally laughed at Bush's threats at Russia - more proof that the US talks out of one side of its mouth while doing another. They almost universally see the US as an aggressor out of control.

Ironically, they see us the same way that we indicate we see Russia. Right or wrong, the US has zero credibility in the world, zero influence, zero respect. And while it is easy to snap back that "WE run this country, not the world" it should be remembered that when all the Lilliputian's (along with a few of the neighboring streets bullies) band together, it's pretty easy to take down the self-righteous Gulliver.

"Never mind the fact that Georgia provoked the fight and Iraq didn't."

So, is Ms. Dowd saying that she would have preferred it if the U.S. and the rest of the world had just sat on their hands and patiently waited until Iraq actually did "provoke the fight"????

(By the way, would this happen to be the same Maureen Dowd that, in 2003, was accused by Spinsanity.com and James Taranto of inserting ellipses to change a quote's intended meaning, resulting in the invention of expressions such as, "dowdify,"
"dowdification," and "dowdified," used by bloggers and editorialists as derogatory terms to describe willful misinterpretation of a quote??)

When she nails it, she nails it. And nail it, Maureen Dowd did. I am quite worried about the future of the world, regarding these recent moves by Russia. Not to mention the stupid shortsightedness of Bush in recommending Poland install missiles in the first place. And that Poland finally complied. A new regime. Bad. Bad. Bad.

Your article is Featured in the Triple Name Club.

As Sean-Paul has explained in another thread, this could be a prelude to a larger problem in the Ukraine. Unfortunately, Bush will have even less influence between now and January, so we're pretty powerless to do anything significant.

I hear Joe Biden (Chair, Senate Foreign Relations Committee) is in Georgia this weekend assessing the situation.

Why can't we all just get along? It feels like I'm back in school. She said and they did but we aren't using dirt clods. People are dying.

Russell the WMD argument as justification is based upon constructed premise and politically motivated assumptions. The fact that Saddam had and used WMD is not in dispute. The claim he would give them to Al Queda is a complete fantasy unsupported by physical evidence or common understanding of the Middle East cultural and political dynamics and history. Saddam's obfuscation on WMD's was for local and regional consumption, a tactic in character for a Stalinist tin hat dictator. His invasion of Kuwait was obvious aggression but there is some doubt about signals given by Bush 1 diplomats on the ground. The actions to remove him from Kuwait were widely supported world wide. Not so with the invasion of Iraq. The "main front of the war on terror" also does not hold water. Al Queda is just as capable today as before 03.

The Iraq war was fought EXCLUSIVELY to dominate Iraqi oil. The WMD myth was spun to trick American public opinion.

"The Iraq war was fought EXCLUSIVELY to dominate Iraqi oil."

Sounds good to me!!........

Ignore those Bushites!

Assumptions again Russell. Life would be indeed simple if the mythology of Iraqi WMDs were true and Bush did not intentionally deceive America into a war of oil imperialism. It is a great blow to this nation that we should have a President and Admin so callous as to use America’s sense of justice and freedom for the narrow economic gains for a few. It brings into question our entire system of governing and the dangerous gullibility of the American people. It also demonstrates how there are those who use patriotism as a shield to corrupt our system of check and balance in order to further their limited goals. The success of the Bush Admin demonstrates a tragic flaw in our national system of governing and unless we as a nation devise systems Constitutionally un-impeachable to prevent such excess and corruption we will ever be at threat from others who would exploit our nation to even greater evil.
Consider for a moment the nature of WMD. In this nation we recently exposed the alleged perpetrator of the anthrax attacks of 01. Ivans was apparently a socieopath yet had ready access to WMD. It can be nearly proven that the anthrax issued from his lab under his hand. If Saddam was as chaotic and vulnerable as claimed then the nation and world would be riddled with anthrax, VX, smallpox etc. Anthrax is naturally occurring and virtually every industrialized nation can produce it. We know that there were immense stockpiles in the former Soviet Union as well as our own stockpiles. It is reasonable to conclude that many 3rd world nations possess them. Certainly Pakistan and India, China and others. To claim that because Saddam used them against Iran, WITH the knowledge of the American government, that he and he alone is and can be the only source of “real” threat to America defies history and common sense. WMD’s are and were readily available to any organized group. Good grief, mustard gas and phosgene have been weaponized for over 100 years. Remember, Germany, France, England and the US used chemical weapons in WW1. To be effective battlefield weapons they had to be readily accessed by chain of military command, meaning the lanyards to fire chem weapon shells were in the hands of Sergeants and Corporals. We had SAS and Special Ops running all over Iraq during the run-up to Bush’s war. There was no evidence of WMD. And since despite the desperate efforts of the Bush Admin to find ANY WMD evidently Saddam did “come clean.” It does not matter if he as a paranoid manipulator and refused to “admit it.” We had virtually every intel asset that money could buy supposedly trained upon that place and every shred of evidence that cast doubt upon the Bush’s foreordained agenda was dismissed and every hint to justify his ambition was treated as incontrovertible fact.
There are reams of evidence illuminating the oil ambitions of the Bush Admin and the neo-cons far back before Dubya took office. We all know this and this is a tired argument. The average Iraqi is not fooled nor is the vast majority of the planet.
Every American President treated commodities such as oil, and in particular oil, as items of vast strategic importance and understood the market should be tightly regulated to prevent EXACTLY what has occurred during Bush. Bush came to office with the sole intention of lifting the restrictions upon the oil market regardless of the international consequences. It has been the mostly grossly incompetent use of the American executive branch in our history and we all will suffer long the results, but his buddies in the Gulf have made trillions. The next Pres has no other choice than rein in the oil market by any means possible to stop the monetary hemorrhaging and restore accountability, prosperity and sanity to the world stage. It will not be easy or painless. Those despotic nations like Russia or Venezuela who have reaped the fruits of Bush oil policy will fight to retain their prices and margins. Unfortunately as we have seen in Georgia the Russian pockets are deep, as are the Gulf states who now own much of our financial industry. They can wait or manipulate our economy at will due to this Admin’s policy. History will record the Bush years as when America lost her true financial independence and ability to impact world events. History will record the next Admins as those in the long struggle to get it back.

I don't see how Georgia provoked Russia, lets face it. Russia is gonna do what ever the hell they want to. Nobody is going to be able to stop them.

Evidently all these people quoted were wrong Russell. It was a failure of leadership and many of those quoted were upon a populist bandwagon fired up by the Bush Admin and demonstrate percieved poltitical oppourtunism. Now all of the comments were made during the Bush Admin's run-up to the Iraq invasion. The Republicans held the majority in Congress so it was their job to oversee the claims by the Bush Admin so this nation would not be set on a course of war without iron clad justification. They held the committee chairs and could insist upon hearings to check the credibility of Admin claims. They did NOTHING. They followed the orders given them by the Bush Admin which were to ask no questions, hold no hearings, make no challenges and go home to raise money for the next election. Had they done their job of check and balance, would we have gone to war? Had the American people been made aware of the serious doubts in our intel and military communities would Congress have authorized war? Had objective analysis been done of the post war realites of Iraq, would we have gone to war? The statements made by most of these people were based upon intel provided them by the Bush Admin, intel obviously inaccurate, poorly researched and cherrypicked to prove a pre-ordained mission to overthrow Saddam. Saddam's greatest sin was nationalizing his oil and throwing out the international oil companies. His days were numbered from that point on.

It was the Bush Admins job to lead America into a JUST war, ONLY if national security was "a clear and present danger." It was the duty of Republican controlled Congress to insure that clear and present danger existed. They bothed failed in their leadership postions. It was NOT a series of unavoidable and innocent mistakes.

I talked to my friend, who is originally from Ukraine and asked her what she thought of the situation in Georgia.

She said she has read reports in the European press (an advantage she has over me - being able to read the news from the perspective of other countries in the language it was written). It is reported that the Georgian president is acting like a crazy person - seeing planes that don't exist and calling for security. He's appearing to be unstable.

Then she told me about Ossetia and how the providence wants to be independent of Georgia, but since it is the port to the Black Sea, Georgia is not willing to give it up. She told me the conflict is between Georgia and Ossetia.

I watched an interview with a 12 year old American who was visiting family when the bombs started dropping in Ossetia. She and her aunt escaped and both say the bombs were Georgian bombs and they wanted to thank the Russians for helping them escape.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d4f_1218758868

great article and discussion

"Note: Iraq was never a threat to the USofA."

Note: Kacie doesn't know what she's talking about.

Not one of those quoted considered invasion and occupation the answer. Containment was working. Saddam was dying on the vine and would have been overthrown in any case in due course. Invasion and occupation would yeild one thing only; the ability to dictate to the Iraqis how their oil would be used and who would exploit it at what profit and install a government under the thumb of the US. Invasion would allow Bush to create the 100 military bases across the nation, force the puppet government into "security agreements." Do you know why the Iraqi have yet to sign a "hydrocarbons law?" Because the legislation before them was written by US oil moguls before the first shot was fired. The draft law consists of an American mandate of how they distribute profits and production. If Saddam were left to the mercies of his own government and people the next leader would assume the same rights of any sovreign nation to exploit their national resource at their own choosing. Not good for neo-con oil imperialism. The Iraqis are quite aware of the trap of signing the oil law. In doing so Bush can claim that we MUST stay to "protect the free choice of the elected Iraqi government," currently cowering in the "Green Zone." That is why the Iraqi parliment heads for Dubai or someother vacation spot whenever the subject comes up.

No, Russell, Saddam was a very bad man going nowhere and sitting on a lot oil. There was no serious effort to discover if the WMD was "clear and present" and solution chosen dovetailed into known ambitions of the neo-cons when a continuation of sanctions would achieved the same ends. There were choices made and paths taken that more served the ends of oil industry than the national interest, lives and treasure of the American people. That is inexcusable.

Berf: the Iraq of 2003 was not a threat to the vital interests of the United States of America. Period. She does know what she is talking about. Vital interests: there were no al Qaeda-Iraqi links, there were no WMD as Hans Blix was discovering; the Iraqi army was a paper tiger of the the most pathetic sort and the Kurds retained their autonomy creating an impossible strategic situation in Husseins backyard he could not afford to ignore if he tried to break out of the US's containment regime. Those are the simple facts. Not a threat, not remotely.

Yeah, I gotta agree with Russell on this one, we don't seem to be controlling the oil in Iraq very well. The Kurds have theirs but the oil in the south, well, pipelines keep getting blown up and whatnot. And the oil that does get out has contributed to a $79 billion Iraq Federal government surplus. Some control. By the way: I thought the Iraqis were going to pay for their own reconstruction? Seems a lot of what the neo-cons promised hasn't come through.

Russell,

So nice to know there is another who remembers history as it happened.

As for Sam C....if he could recall that pre Iraqi war we got 0% oil from Iraq as it was illegal to buy thier oil and post Iraq invation we have increased that 0% to about 4% he might think WOW now thats what I call a controlling interest at bargan basement prices! Maybe we should have thought it out a little more and just removed the ban on buying Iraqi oil so we could have bought as much as we wanted when ever we wanted it. Pretty sure they would have welcomed our US dollars. Just think Iraq with its own indoor snow skiing rsort. Iraq could have been the number two tourist destination in the middle east!.

"..........and the Kurds retained their autonomy creating an impossible strategic situation in Husseins backyard he could not afford to ignore if he tried to break out of the US's containment regime."

That's a nice, tidy, sanitized way to shrug off the murder of between 50,000 and 100,000 innocent human beings............

Here's some factual information for you:

"Ron Suskind alleges that the Bush administration knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and eventually fabricated intelligence assets to support its case for war. Both the White House and the CIA deny his claims. [...] Then, in the fall of 2003, the White House decided that a letter should be fabricated, dated July 2001, from the Iraqi to Saddam Hussein establishing a link to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. And the letter should as well say that Saddam Hussein has been actively buying yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al-Qaida," Suskind says. He says that sources at the CIA remember seeing the order for that letter on "creamy White House stationery" and that the letter could only have come from the "highest reaches of the White House. ... It would have to come from the very top."

If Saddam was such a threat, why forge the material to justify invasion?

Berf in case you haven't noticed the world is a nasty place. People and nations do nasty things to others and rarely do we have the power to intervene. Nor at times should we.

Did we intervene when the Mao was committing his atrocities? Would it have been prudent? Did we do the same when Lenin and Stalin were starving millions in the Ukraine? Would it have been prudent?

There are limits to power. Something people seem not to realize these days. They think smart bombs and the exportation of 'democracy' are the solution.

The standard for intervention should be roughly like this:

A.) Is it in our vital national strategic interests to intervene?
B.) Do we have the capacity and national means to intervene?
C.) Is the cause just?

Only when all three can be answered in the affirmative should the answer be yes.

But then again, I'm an old fashioned pragmatist, no a neo-con fellow traveler.

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Boys I was refering to the rationale for war, Iraq as a "threat" and Iraq as a nation who nationalized it's oil interests, chucked out the internationals and sits upon untold resources. History is FULL of warfare waged by the powerful to gain the wealth of the weak and at EVERY turn moral justification of threat or atrocity was used as justification. Why would Iraq be any different? American has spent most of the last 60 years trying to impose "friendly" regimes in areas of her economic interest. Why is Iraq different? Bush and McCain idolize TR Roosevlt, a unabashed imperialist. Study the Phillipine conflict if you want to understand the thinking.

No, we are NOT effienctly raping Iraq's oil wealth because we are caught in a trap of Bush's making. He expected the Iraqis to play ball but they are NOT STUPID and will NOT voluntarily cede over their sovreignty to international oil giants. The will NOT agree to permanent military bases to protect those oil moguls. Bush gambled they would and lost. My argument is Iraq's oil is PRIMARY reason we went to Iraq. (Read PNAC.) The vauge potential of Iraq as a international source of terror and destruction was a convienent excuse.

Consider what we are asked to believe: Iraq, under Hussain and the Baathists, was bent upon granting to any radical weapons that could inflict apocalyptic causalties upon the American homeland and there was "evidence" to prove it. Yet there was no evidence and any casual examination of the political dynamic reads Saddam was bent upon preserving Saddam first in his own dangerous backyard. Then we are asked to believe that this danger, WITHOUT proof or any logical reason was a ticking "mushroom cloud" that required armed intervention by American forces under the guise of combatting terrorism because a shadowy stateless group, sworn enemies of Saddam, sent 19 fanatics to crash airplanes. Sounds absurd dosen't it?? WOuld you buy a novel with a plot like that?

Russell you have provided quotes of political officials caught within a public relations firestorm generated by the Bush admin drive to war, all of which proved false. You then provide a list of pre-Bush cautionary warnings NONE of which endorsed Bush's invasion. They prove nothing. This invasion and occupation is about oil. THe Iraqis know it. THe entire world knows it and most of America knows it too.

Russell, an old, faithful and trustworth adage is that in pursuit of a crime or crimminal, follow the money. If you follow the money since Bush took power it leads to exploitation of Iraqi oil in some form to the benefit of personal cronies and constituents, dovetailing nicely into an ideological drive to dismantle FDR's legasy and engage in world wide social engineering, the effects of which are dangerous and unpredictable. Like most egomanical despots suddenly holding enormous power and oppoutunity to use it, the neo-cons attempted to paint history with a broad brush. ALL such attempts at ALL points in history NEVER end in the way the painters dreamed, and usually for the worse for everyone. Try to approach the entire Bush agenda with an eye toward who has made money and how. Forget about terrorism, just follow the money.

I must say that if we could have a REAL investigation about what went on pre-Iraq invasion I would bet there would be a lot of the administration in jail. Not just Libby. Again if we had a REAL investigation about pre-9/11 again impeachment would be at Dicks door.

Your follow ons Sean were more on point then your original posting. We COULD never have made any difference that close to Russia once she decided to do something. There was no military or political option at all in this matter for the US at any period of our history. Its just too far away from our bases and way too close to theirs. That Russian assault/counter attack (depending on whether you believe they were justified in going that far into Georgia) was big enough to show this was a desired incident and one they planned for.

You points on this as a warning are spot on too. We will see some serious reapproachment back to Mother Russia from her former satellites and I think that will cool Ukraine's moves towards the West too. NATO is revealed as being indecisive at best and not too far thinking about what its treaty expansion over the last few years really means.

My God Charles, that was actually thoughtful, rational and NOT the conservative line. You have some sort of epiphany or a brain tumor removed???