Thursday, July 29, 2004

War in Iraq: Have to vs. Want to

One thing John Kerry said tonight summed up my whole frustration with the Iraq war situation. That is when he said that our standard for going to war in the future should be only when we have to and not because we want to.
That is what I felt from the beginning and is the reason why I opposed the war. I never felt like we had to go to war. I never felt that there was an imminent threat hanging over us at any time. But I did feel like George W. Bush and the Republicans very much wanted to go to war.

* They wanted to go to war because it would take the country's attention away from the poor economy.
* They wanted to go to war to advance their ideological foreign policy goals of remaking the Middle East in their own image.
* They wanted to go to war because it would boost the president's popularity and make the Democrats look weak during the mid-term elections (and it worked!).
* They wanted to go to war because they were convinced that it would be a quick and easy victory.
And they thought this because they viewed the intelligence data through ideological blinders - ignoring intelligence that didn't match their predetermined beliefs and embracing that which did regardless of its strengths or merits.

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