Today is the 75th anniversary of the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, a document that outlawed war. The pact was designed to forever end the use of military action as an instrument of national policy.
Only a few years later, the most destructive war in human history broke out. Signatories of the treaty included Germany and Japan.
Such efforts to "outlaw war" were hopelessly naive in a world of threats. This is why the UN and treaties like the ICC aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. Does anyone think that a body that gives positions of authority to terrorist-sponsoring states like Syria and Libya is really serious about promoting a more peaceful world?
Naive actions such as the Kellogg-Briand Treaty don’t create a more peaceful world, they embolden tyrants. They don’t set a brave front against terror, they show that the resolve of the world is weak. They’re not actions of great morality, they’re actions of great ignorance and an unwillingness to stand for what is right.
And yet so many seem to fail to learn the lessons of history…
(Link via Dave Kopel in the Corner. He has some more cogent thoughts on this great historical mistake.)
I hope you still agree with the irrelevance of the UN when your draft notice arrives in the mail in a few months…the direct result of the US military overextending itself after already telling the UN to go to hell. Perhaps as a suicide bomber seeks to send you to Allah as you patrol the lawless streets of Baghdad, you’ll have an epiphany in the seconds before you’re incinerated that perhaps a little bit of UN troop support wouldn’t have been so bad after all.
If your argument is so poor that you have to resort to appeals to consequences rather than making a real argument, then you’ve already lost.
Back in the real world, there’s no such great need for troops that there would be a draft, the leaders of the military don’t want a draft, and putting more US troops in Iraq is a strategy that simply won’t work.
As I’ve stated countless time, and as the President has also said, what is needed are not more US troops, but more Iraqis guarding and leading their own country.
As I’ve stated countless time, and as the President has also said, what is needed are not more US troops, but more Iraqis guarding and leading their own country.
Yeah, why the hell don’t they get off their asses and help out? After all it’s their fault we had to invade and take over their country. We only bombed them because we love them.
They are helping, but it takes time to train a police force and reform a military.
If we hadn’t invaded Iraq, right now there would be more mass graves filled with women and children. Of course, liberals don’t care about such things as mass graves and all that if it gets in the way of their blame-American-first scapegoating.
If we hadn’t invaded Iraq, right now there would be more mass graves filled with women and children.
Yeah, and it’s beginning to look like we just pushed the mass grave-filling to other countries through a destablizing effect.
Look, if Iraq becomes a fabulous democracy, I’ll be happy. But let’s not suck each others cocks just yet (to quote Tarantino.) There’s a lot to do here, a lot of stuff that this president hasn’t demonstrated the slightest competence in terms of doing. He’s like Mid-Ass – Midas in reverse – everything he touches turns to shit.
What other countries? So far the Ba’athists in Syria are starting to feel the heat, the Iranian democracy movement is continuing to push for change, and the Saudis are finally doing something about terrorism.
More can be done (see the post above), but that’s more progress than has been made in decades.
Saddam Hussein is on the run, his sons are dead, and his regime will never come back. 2/3rds of al-Qaeda’s leadership are captured or dead. Tens of millions of people no longer under the bootheel of tyranny. Women can now return to school in Afghanistan. Shi’ites can practice freely in Iraq.
If Bill Clinton had done this, the left would be demanding he get a Nobel Peace Prize. But because the left is so blinded by partisan hatred in this country, they cannot see the big picture. Yes Iraq is unsettled, and Afghanistan has a long way to go as well. But if you’re seriously so naive as to believe that the reconstruction of these nations would be possible in anything less than decades they you’re kidding yourself. This is going to be no less difficult and expensive than rebuilding Europe at the end of World War II.
History will be written by the winners, and history will judge George W. Bush far better than his spiteful and narrow-minded critics will.
Number-crunchers seem to think otherwise. Unless we extend the deployments of most of our current servicemen and women into infinity, the numbers don’t add up to having sufficient troop capacity to cover Iraqi and Afghani occupation in the years, indeed months, to come…particularly if we embark on dozens more “pre-emptive” military entanglements as you and your ilk suggest we should.
I’ve noticed another pattern with you. If a statement is made in relation to foreign policy by one man who never saw combat (that’d be Bush), then doggone it, it’s good enough to be accepted as fact by another war-monger who has never seen combat (that’d be you). In other words, deploying more troops to Iraq would be expensive and require additional and unpopular deployments and probably the draft, so therefore, the inmates should by God take responsibility for their asylum themselves. Never mind the fact that America went in their with guns ablazin’ in an effort to forcibly “show them the even hand of westernized democratic societies”, they’d better damn well get off their lazy asses five months after we wiped out their government and pick up the pieces as we maintain our laissez-faire “don’t give a man a fish, but teach him to fish” arrogance after riddling their infrastructure full of holes.
Again, you don’t seem to get the point that additional troops aren’t what’s needed in Iraq. The Iraqis have to take control of their own country, and they have to do it as soon as they can. Our soldiers are not traffic cops, and it’s a waste to have them standing on streetcorners in the sun and directing traffic – especially since that’s a position where they’re vulnerable to attack.
The priority must be getting the Iraqis out there and doing these things for themselves. It’s their country, and our goal is to return it to them.
We’ve already trained thousands of soldiers for the New Iraqi Army, and we’re training thousands more right now in Iraq and soon in Hungary. These are the reinforcements that are needed, not more US troops.
Interesting theory. We take over the government that was signing the paychecks of workers to do these jobs, but now expect the work to continue being done by the same people minus the paychecks. Perhaps Uncle Sam intends to foot the bill for Iraqi peasants to become traffic cops, but if that’s the plan we must be offering Republican-style wage levels otherwise there would be a long line of people waiting to take these duties off of the hands of American soldiers. For one country to obliterate the infrastructure of another in the name of “liberation” and then give them the standard GOP “personal responsibility” lecture five months later when we decide we’ve done enough heavy lifting towards their “liberation” is just the kind of quarter-hearted nation building I expected from this President….and represents the broken promises that will enhance, rather than reduce, America’s long-term threat of Middle Eastern terrorism.
Mark, when the hell did I say that they wouldn’t be paid?
Iraq is sitting on the world’s second-largest reserve of oil. I don’t think they’re going to have any problems paying their police officers or military. The former regime certainly had plenty of money to build palaces with, and that income can now go towards the Iraqi’s infrastructure where it should have gone for the past twenty years.
If Iraqi civilians would receive sufficient payment for filling the jobs you speak of, what’s the problem then? Why aren’t there thousands of starving Iraqis standing in line waiting for these jobs? Or are you suggesting that Iraqis’ labor should be paid with IOU’s from Uncle Sam until we “get the oil pumping again”? Something doesn’t add up here. A billion dollars a week should be able to finance a couple hundred Iraqi traffic cops.
Actually, there are. If you’d try watching the news some time, you would see the reports of hundreds of Iraqis in line to join the new Iraqi Army.
Part of it is. We’re not only paying to keep our forces running, but train and equip the Iraqis. We’d get the oil pumping, but that’s difficult given the poor condition Saddam left the country in, and the militants constantly sabotaging equipment.
The first priority is getting the military and police trained and beating back the insurgents. This will take time, but it’s doable so long as we have the courage to see it through.
Mark,
..the direct result of the US military overextending itself…
Quagmire!!!