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This Is Victory?

Thursday, March 27th, 2003

The Instaman lays out the scenarios for success in Iraq. I found this description of a “marginal allied victory” a bit dubious:

Short term: Casualties over 5,000. Oil fields seriously damaged. Secret police escape punishment. Weapons of mass destruction still unaccounted for.

Long term: Democratic elections unfeasible because of widespread discontent and growth of Islamic fundamentalism. Semi-friendly but non-democratic government with poor human rights record (a la Egypt), but good anti-terrorist cooperation.

Setting the victory bar awfully low, isn’t it?

We’ve been told that the reasons we’re at war now are a) the WMD threat, b) Saddam’s cooperation with terrorists, and, c) liberation/democratization of the Iraqi people.

Under Reynolds’ “marginal victory” scenario:

A) WMDs are unaccounted for, which means they’ve either been smuggled to al-Qaeda, or to another country — in which case they’re still a threat — or they never existed, which means this wasn’t a valid reason for war in the first place.

B) If post-war Iraq sees “widespread discontent and growth of Islamic fundamentalism,” it’s still going to be a safe haven for al-Qaeda. If the post-war Iraqi government looks like Egypt’s, it’s probably worse, not better, than it was before we went to war. At least one 9/11 hijacker came from Egypt. Lots more al-Qaeda recruits have come from Egypt. No 9/11 hijackers came from Iraq.

C) A “semi-friendly but non-democratic government with [a] poor human rights record” isn’t exactly “liberation and democratization,” is it? And if Muslim militants and widespread discontent are dispersed throughout Iraq, I wonder if the Iraqi people will really be better off than they were before the war.

Under this scenario, we acheive none of the objectives we set before going to war, and we lose 5,000 troops in the process.

That’s not a victory — even a marginal victory. That’s a waste of life.

I’m think (and hope) things will turn out quite a bit better than that. But if this is what’s coming, it’s certainly not success.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2003 at 4:58 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Responses to “This Is Victory?”

  1. #1 |  JASON REMNER |  March 27th, 2003 at 10:27 pm

    MY COMMENTS, YOU SUCK YOU PIECE OF CRAP. GET THE HELL OUT OF THIS COUNTRY. I BELIEVE IN FREEDOM AND THE WILL TO EXPRESS MY MIND BUT WHEN YOU SPEAK OUT AGAINST THIS WAR YOU SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE SACRIFICED THEIR LIVES FOR THE PAST 250 PLUS YEARS. I HAVE FRIENDS AND FAMILY IN THAT REGION AND I BEING A VETERAN AM WILLING TO GO BACK AND SPILL MY BLOOD FOR MORONIC LEFTIST SHITHEADS LIKE YOU. PRINT THIS FOR ALL OF YOUR BLEEDING HEART I HAVE NO CLUE BECAUSE IM A COLLEGE STUDENT AND HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO LIBERALS. PLEASE CONTACT ME SO WE CAN HAVE A BEAUTIFUL HEART TO HEART CONVERSATION, THAT IS UNLESS YOU MUST CALL COLLECT FROM PARIS, I HAVE NO STOMACH FOR YOU UNEDUCATED MISGUIDED THRONGS OF UN AMERICANS.

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  2. #2 |  Michael |  March 27th, 2003 at 11:34 pm

    Gee, I guess Jason woke up on the wrong side of pergatory this morning…..With all due respect to his opinion, his rant had nothing to do with what was posted above. I would like to know exactly what in the above article set you off, jason? To think that we will win this war in less than two weeks and that post-war Iraq will be some sort of “democratic” haven I think is a little short sided and naive. Unfortunately, I too believe that the war may be fought “somewhat easily”(maybe a few months) with a military victory, but the post war, well that to me is whole different can of worms. GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!!!!!!

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  3. #3 |  JustOne |  March 27th, 2003 at 11:43 pm

    “Uneducated misguided throngs of unamericans” WTF??????

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  4. #4 |  Joe Sims |  March 27th, 2003 at 11:51 pm

    Jason,

    See that key on the left hand side of the keyboard that says “caps lock”? You might want to clean out the Chee-tos dust from around it, because it appears to be stuck… C’mon, ditto-head, not everyone who is against the war can be classified a ‘liberal’, at least not in the perjorative way that you wield the word to mean ’socialist’ or ‘un-American’, just like not everyone who has the email address of JAYEREMNER1970@HOTMAIL.COM should get a ton of pornographic spam redirected to their email account…

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  5. #5 |  Joshua Claybourn |  March 28th, 2003 at 7:33 am

    Radley, I agree with most of what you say. (As a random side note, I must say that you should be the national spokesman for the anti-war camp. You’ve done more to further that cause in a rational manner than anyone else I know.) The only part I would not yet endorse is A, which I don’t think we can know either way just yet.

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  6. #6 |  Chip Taylor |  March 28th, 2003 at 8:37 am

    Apparently, Jason likes those victory conditions.

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  7. #7 |  Jon H |  March 28th, 2003 at 3:14 pm

    Apparently, Jason thinks that any reason to kill 5,000 Americans is a good reason.

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