Originally posted by MrFatBooty
Modifying battlefield tactics when already engaged in conflict is not the same thing as modifying legislative policy about when to initiate said conflict. After 9/11 the change was that we need to defend our country from outside threats more than before. This administration has interpreted that need as justification for initiating preemptive strikes against enemies that pose a threat but have yet to initiate any direct contra-US action. This however is not justified, since defense is by its very nature a reactionary posture while the our current Hawkish government has decided that "the best defense is a good offense" so to speak. This is not true however, when the entity doing the defending is the US.
I've been saying "al Qaeda" for the very reason that it is a specific entity. They were the ones who carried out 9/11. Terrorists are not one entity. The fact that Saddam supported "terrorists" and not "al Qaeda" (because al Qaeda's fundamentalist Muslim beliefs put them very much at odds with Saddam's way of going about business) is exactly why we cannot use 9/11 as a justification for going into Iraq. The fact of the matter is that our government used WMD as its main reason for going into Iraq and as of yet no WMD have been found.
Bush is a Republican and this was his administration's "pet" war. Congress has a Republican majority. It would have passed even if it got down to pure party-line voting.
"My" first strike precedent is in fact not my own, but common knowledge that has conveniently been forgotten or omitted by proponents of this war due to their inability to justify it through traditional means.
With the exception of Vietnam there was huge public mobilization for every major conflict this country has been involved in during the 20th century. We didn't initially stay out of those wars because the government was looking to find some reason to unify behind in order to get the people to shut up long enough to go to war; we stayed out of those wars because our government wanted to avoid involvement in a conflict that was not necessarily our business (at least at the outset).
We knew that Iraq had the potential to initiate action against us or one of our allies. However I doubt that Saddam was holding the proverbial gun to our head. Why this administration had a huge rush to remove him from power and why it was such an urgent matter is still a mystery to me.
Dubya in keeping with current party-line rhetoric would most likely label me one of his "revisionist historians." I'm not trying to revise anything. The administration said that we were going into Iraq to get rid of their WMD. Not only did we not do that, we haven't even found the WMD months after the main conflict ended.
:blah:
either way it's a two sided coin that neither side will ever agree on.
and you still sound like the rosie o'donnell of HAN