Saddam Is From Mars. Is Kerry From Venus?

[AmyStrange]

Saddam Is From Mars. Is Kerry From Venus?
When it comes to Iraq, the president's critics need some perspective.

BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, June 2, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

FROM: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110005155
Next Tuesday, for the first time in 122 years, Venus will pass across the face of the sun--something no one now living has ever witnessed. In these troubled times, it strikes me as some comfort that above the fray, the planets at their own pace keep their appointments with the stars. It is at least a reminder to put down our TV remotes, look up from our keyboards (though you may want to catch the Venus Webcast) and marvel for a moment that in this universe there are still some forces that move to a tempo slower than the frantic beat of daily news.

Though in drawing any connections right now involving world politics--even in alluding to something as aloof as the track of Venus--there is the risk that U.S. foreign policy will somehow be weighed and found wanting. Had President Bush planned better on Iraq; had the United Nations had time to emit a few resolutions and a relief plan for the entire solar system, along with maybe another 17 resolutions on Saddam and another $100 billion or so in Oil for Food contracts; had Ahmed Chalabi and his allegations of WMD in Iraq never become a source either for the Bush administration or the New York Times; had the Pentagon zeroed in on Eve just before she bit the apple and pried it humanely from her hands, then surely Venus would already have accomplished its transit, bigger, better, faster and, no doubt, with the full approval of Russia and France, as well as with lasting benefits for world peace.

All right--I exaggerate a bit (though I do wonder if snatching the apple uneaten from Eve would these days constitute the sin of pre-emption). And the U.S. probably does wield more control over world affairs than over the movement of the planets. But by the yardstick of most criticism now leveled at President Bush for freeing Iraq, by the rhetoric of John Kerry, who has deemed the venture a failure involving "one miscalculation after another," by lights of the chronic dismay over every setback or mistake in the face of 1,001 uncertainties, one might start to think America and its allies had on a whim invaded Sweden, reducing the place to the kind of condition you'd expect after about a quarter-century under Saddam.

This omits what has been the real threat and problem from the get-go. The Middle East is home to a gridlocked array of highly repressive governments, with their attendant secret police and highly controlled economies. To survive, people must as a rule make terrible compromises--just as they did in the U.S.S.R.--built around the institutions of dictatorship, and reinforcing those same repressive (and terror-promoting) institutions.

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[jpgray]

1. Sorry, but downplaying the trauma we've caused Iraq is just wretched

The idea that the miscalculations of the Bush administration were somehow unknowable at the time the decisions were made is laughable on its face--anyone with any kind of knowledge knew that the way Bush carried out this war was an unmitigated disaster as it was happening. No benefit of hindsight is required for blunders of his particular brand of magnitude. Are you posting these articles for our amusement? They're just easily debunked apologist pieces for Bush, or obfuscating slants against Kerry in favor of Bush.

[RafterMan]

4. Not only were they knowable, they were known

Iraq disproves LIHOP.

[MikeG]

2. And Bush is from Uranus.

[AmyStrange]

3. hahahahaha - good one (n/t)