Truly excellent letter! It also illuminates the difference in the arguments for for US involvement in Iraq, as opposed to the current case for helping Ukraine. in 2002 the case was based mostly on conjecture and a shallow understanding of a religion, whereas now one nation invaded another soverign country; no need to read tea leaves.
Would that your argument had prevailed. The neocons’ advocacy of raw military force was arrogant in the extreme. One comment from
that period in particular sticks in my craw: “Every now and then we need to throw a crappy little country up against the wall to show them who’s running things.” This is the bravado of what some called the “chicken hawks” -- of men in the Bush administration, including Bush, who never saw combat, who indeed avoided combat (like General Bone-Spurs), and who saw war as simply another tool in their tool chest rather than a hideous hell that is the very last and regrettable resort of conflict resolution.
Truly excellent letter! It also illuminates the difference in the arguments for for US involvement in Iraq, as opposed to the current case for helping Ukraine. in 2002 the case was based mostly on conjecture and a shallow understanding of a religion, whereas now one nation invaded another soverign country; no need to read tea leaves.
Would that your argument had prevailed. The neocons’ advocacy of raw military force was arrogant in the extreme. One comment from
that period in particular sticks in my craw: “Every now and then we need to throw a crappy little country up against the wall to show them who’s running things.” This is the bravado of what some called the “chicken hawks” -- of men in the Bush administration, including Bush, who never saw combat, who indeed avoided combat (like General Bone-Spurs), and who saw war as simply another tool in their tool chest rather than a hideous hell that is the very last and regrettable resort of conflict resolution.