A simple exercise that I find useful in considering what politicians are likely to do in any given circumstance is to imagine that the politician is standing at a podium announcing the policy.
So, for example, imagine that you’re the President, you’re standing at a podium, you’re making a speech to the American people. Then imagine you’re the press asking follow-up questions or the President’s political opposition or political ad-writers for the President’s political opposition, poking the obvious holes in the policy.
If you can’t imagine any way that a policy can be announced without opening the speaker up to political attack, it probably won’t be. It’s generally a lot easier for me to imagine the President or Majority Leader of the Senate, for example, saying one thing and doing the opposite.
As me auld mither puts it, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
Okay, now that you’ve got that under your belt imagine that we’ve withdrawn our forces from Iraq. Try to imagine the President giving a speech advocating a re-invasion of Iraq. If you can’t imagine that (as I can’t), do you think it could actually happen?
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Yes, if AQ establishes sanctuaries in Sunni Arab Iraq, which are used to attack Americans.
Fortunately this becomes less likely every additional week our troops are present.
dave,
honest question: how do you (or do you at all) square that statement with the recent reports that aq is stronger now than it has been at any time since 9/11?
TallDave, I think that’s fanciful. Following a U. S. withdrawal even if al-Qaeda has bases every bit as open as their pre-2001 bases were in Afghanistan, we wouldn’t invade. We might bomb; we might conduct raids; we wouldn’t invade.
Again, go back to the exercise. Imagine the questions from the front row: either leaving was a mistake or re-invading would be a mistake. The campaign ads practically write themselves.
Dave,
You say potayto, I say potahto.
Imagine the Sears Tower lying on its side and dead Americans all over Michigan Ave. The front row is going to want to know what the hell we’re doing about AQ.
I’m imagining… the World Trade Center here… In ruins… hmm… No, no, that didn’t work so well as ‘motivation’ for kicking terrorist ass. Unless you’re saying we should let a skyscraper get knocked down every year or so – and that’s verging on Truther territory.
how do you (or do you at all) square that statement with the recent reports that aq is stronger now than it has been at any time since 9/11?
There are conflicting reports. It appears they’re talking about AQ generally. Also, even if AQ-I is stronger in an absolute sense, the ISF have grown much faster, so AQ can still be weaker in a relative sense in Iraq.
The great underpublicized accomplishment in Iraq is that we have 350,000 Muslims fighting AQ with us.
No, no, that didn’t work so well as ‘motivation’ for kicking terrorist ass.
Hmm? We invaded Afghanistan right after.
I’m certainly not saying we should let them do it. But leaving AQ sanctuaries in Iraq will allow them to plan such attacks.
How about a nuke going off in SF, or a major chemical attack on Philadelphia? How about a half-dozen attacks–each with half-dozen perps–on the major shopping malls in the US?
Or maybe just an assassination of a President or a few members of Congress, say the Jewish ones, just to make sure that everyone understands that this is religiously motivated terrorism….
I think that those things would provoke a bombing attack, John, but not an invasion.
I continue to believe that, once we’ve gone, we’ve gone. And that’s why I think it would be very imprudent for us to leave until things are a lot more secure in Iraq than they are right now.
Re-invading Iraq would incur responsibilities (just as invasion did, although it looks like an increasing number of American politicians are willing to ignore that) and I don’t see any way, once we’ve left Iraq because we don’t want to deal with those responsibilities.
I also think that if a nuke went off in San Francisco that we’d probably nuke Tehran. But I seriously doubt that we’d invade.
I’m with Dave Schuler. In the event of another serious attack on US soil, I think a Dresden like response is far more likely than an attempt at nation building.
No responsible Commander in Chief will allow themselves to be hogtied into a nuke-or-nothing response. I think we might re-invade given the right circumstances and motivation. After all, it hasn’t been that long since Desert Storm.
Long term, the constant Congressional sniping and second- guessing against the President will have the opposite effect from what they expect. Whoever the next President is, they’ll go into office knowing that Congress wants to run the military, and that if they want to run a war successfully they’ve got to start by locking Congress out of it. The traditional deference that the President has shown to Congress brings no benefit and carries impossible risks. Executive power will end up stronger, not weaker.
And we didn’t abandon Desert Storm after a collapse of poliical support. Otherwise I think this is a good, succinct statement of why it would be imprudent for us to withdraw from Iraq before it’s a lot more secure than it is now.
If another American city is attacked, can we bomb Paris or Brussels? Maybe at least with stinkbombs?
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