sfbg.com
Peace talks
How to convince your conservative relatives to oppose the invasion.
By Lynn Rapoport
THE HOLIDAYS ARE upon us, and for the broad spectrum of people in the Bay Area who, for a broad spectrum of reasons, don't support a war in Iraq, the traditional familial
Reasons include knee-jerk contrarianism, unthinking idiocy, oil conspiracy theories, anti-semitism, intellectual dishonesty, shocking levels of naievity, and inability to support anything a Republican president does, not matter how good, right or sensible it is.
huddle around the turkey platter could be pretty grim. A few of you were raised by folks
Turkey!? You animal oppressing speciesist! You should be eating To-furkey. Please report for re-education.
who came to San Francisco wearing flowers in their hair, but many more are going home to attend a summit with relatives whose viewpoints on matters geopolitical haven't synched up with yours since you stopped building snow forts and playing with G.I. Joe.
Nice. So anyone who doesn't believe that we should sit idly by while an insane madman with dreams of conquest gets his hands on the worst weapon in the history of the world?
Conversation at such gatherings is a minefield at the best of times, and these are far from the best of times.
Read: things are bad b/c the GOP now controls, House, Senate and the Oval Office. Oh, if only Jed Bartlett were our real president...
But you have a captive audience (and chances are good half of them didn't even vote for Bush).
See, cause Al actually won the 2000 election!
Why not take advantage of the situation? The peace movement, this peace movement in particular, while it's made up of career peaceniks and social justice activists and anti-imperialists,
Peace movement = idiotarians.
Career peaceniks = hippies yearning for Vietnam war protest days.
Social Justice activists = wealth redistributionists
anti-imperialists = socialists and communists.
is also made up of people with concerns about national security, people who supported the war in Afghanistan but don't see any rationalization for this one,
Nobody but nobody in the anti-war crowd supported the war in Afghanistan. To say otherwise is revisionist history. They were pissing and moaning about the thousands and thousands of innocent civilians that died in the war.
people who never waved a sign in their life until sometime this fall, and people who used to think differently, maybe as recently as last year.
Translation: the peace/anti-war/idiotarian movement is growing. In reality, it isn't.
There are powerful arguments to make, arguments that might not get you accused of having your head buried somewhere unpleasant.
Yes, but oddly the most persuasive arguements against the war are coming from the isolationist right not the left.
Maybe one coherent point to convey instead of drinking too much and getting into a screaming match with your mother will inspire her to write a letter to her senator.
Maybe everyone else's family isn't nearly as dysfunctional as yours. Some of us have a glass of wine or a beer, and can talk like grownups. No screaming, no fighting. Just enjoying time with the family.
Maybe she'll get her work friends to write their own letters, or march on Washington. Maybe your greasy-haired, apolitical juvenile delinquent brother will become interested in the concept of direct action and explain it to all his greasy-haired, apolitical juvenile delinquent friends. It's one meal; it's probably worth a shot.
Yeah because we all know that the juvenile deliquents are apolitical. Sure. Tell that to the residents of Seattle.
Here are a few arguments to present:
We need a better reason to go to war The Bush administration has failed to offer a compelling explanation of why Iraq's actions warrant a military attack.
For the anti-war crowd, NOTHING would be a compelling enough reason for a war. Saddam Hussein could load up an oil tanker with a nuke and park it off the coast of DC and level the entire city and they would STILL argue against war. They would say that we can't go to war b/c the civilian casualties would simply be too great. The fact is we have an urgent need to kill Saddam and destroy his government. One because he supports, trains, and funds terrorism. Second because he is a threat to regional stability and is a war criminal of the first degree. He is a brutal tyrant who rapes, tortures, executes, gasses and terrorizes a nation of millions. The fact that this is not reason enough to destroy him speaks volumes of the anti-war crowd.
It has failed to draw a credible link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
The war is not predicated upon his links to Al-Qaeda. It is predicated upon his material breach of UN resolutions that the left holds so dear.
And while we need to take seriously the idea that Hussein is holding on to weapons of mass destruction, we also need to address the fact that credible experts doubt he has the means to deliver them.
Are you serious? He's been buying missile technology from everyone he can. North Korea, Lybia, Iran, Pakistan. Even without a missile to deliver the goods, he can still use non-conventional means of delivery. Why not (as stated above) load it into a cargo ship?
And it's not just the peaceniks who aren't buying Bush's reasoning. It's the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA didn't see the 9/11 attacks coming either. They are a bunch of bureaucrats who are more concerned with fiefdoms than doing any work that either makes them look bad or gets their hands dirty.
It's Colin Powell.
Powell seems to have taken leave of his senses of late. He is a State Dept. guy and now wants the power of State to supercede that of the Pentagon. He tried and failed. Bush advised him that he ought to support his president and has done so since.
It's Brent Scowcroft.
Sowcroft is an anomoly from the isolationist right.
It's Gen. "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf.
This one is news to me
It's 133 representatives and 23 senators (whose resistance hardly jibes with the "one voice" of America Bush spoke of).
Ok so the most radical leftists don't support the war, big deal. Many of the votes against the war are votes against Bush and have little to do with the war.
All of them, not to mention the bulk of the international community – Security Council resolution notwithstanding – are asking for military restraint.
So, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Syria and Luxembourg don't support us? Big deal. What do they have at stake? What have they done to add to world security lately?
Invading would make the United States a rogue nation There's been a post-World War II consensus among most industrialized nations on only a few points, and one of them is that you don't unilaterally attack another country just because you don't like whoever's in charge.
It does no such thing. Rogue nations are ones like Cuba, North Korea and Iran. Nations ruled by an iron fist, not freedom. With leaders who cannot be deposed and crush dissent, threaten their neighbors and even attack them on flimsy ground. Sometimes no ground whatsoever. Furthermore, this doctrine goes back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. We are not attacking Saddam because we don't like him. He is, as stated above, a bad guy.
It's been done, certainly, but largely to the tune of international outcry.
Sure like when NATO flagrantly violated the terms in Kosovo. Yeah, I remember all those leftists demanding Clinton's head on a pike for that one. Also, between 1945 and 1999, two-thirds of the members of the United Nations--126 states out of 189--fought 291 interstate conflicts in which over 22 million people were killed.
If Bush invades Iraq without strong United Nations support, the United States will be violating one of the most powerful rules of civilized nations – and losing massive credibility on the global front.
Yes but only because we are who we are. I seem to remember France nuking some islands in the South Pacific and being all miffed when people were upset with them.
What happened to the war on terrorism? One of Scowcroft's concerns, as stated in an Aug. 15 Wall Street Journal opinion piece, is that putting our energies toward Iraq would dangerously deplete our resources for Bush's avowed number-one priority – the war on terrorism – as well as cause a major breakdown in international cooperation regarding global antiterrorism efforts.
The author obviously isn't reading the papers much.
"A senior leader of Al Qaeda described as its chief of operations in the Persian Gulf has been captured, American officials said today."-- New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/22/international/middleeast/22TERR.html , Nov. 22
"An Iraqi man carrying explosives was arrested Friday in a posh neighborhood of Kabul where many foreigners have homes and offices, a government official said. It's believed Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim was the target."-- Associated Press http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA5ABG7U8D.html , Nov. 22
Invasion will only give Hussein a reason to use WMD Scowcroft also points out that if Hussein does have deliverable weapons of mass destruction, he hasn't used them yet – but might well consider it if provoked by a U.S. strike.
Actually, he has used them. Just ask the Kurds.
U.S. troops would certainly be targets. Worst-case scenario: he sends a nuke over to Israel, and maybe starts World War III. Another possibility: he sets the oil fields ablaze, leaving a scorched-earth disaster area (with horrible environmental consequences and a huge cleanup price tag) for the U.S. to deal with.
Actually the nuke over Israel is a distinct possibility WITHOUT a war. However, I'd put more money on poison gas or chem/bioweapons as they are easier to clean up.
There are still nonmilitary options It may not sound terribly satisfying, but the truth is, containment policies have worked in the past, if imperfectly.
Right. Sure. Containment worked to well in 1990. The only reason it's working now is that 1. He doesn't have a nuke, yet. 2. He is continually harassed by the USAF.
Even assuming Hussein was playing a shell game with UNSCOM up until the inspections stopped in 1998, U.N. officials say the vast majority of his WMD have been destroyed.
Yes because the UN wouldn't want to appear ineffectual or anything...
Carried out with strong U.N. support, the inspections could work again.
Sure. Just keep sending strongly worded letters to him. Give him a 7th, 8th and 9th warning and tell him this time you really really mean it. I'm sure he'll see the error of his ways.
A ground war in Iraq could make Vietnam look like cake Baghdad is comparable to L.A. in population, except that Baghdad's population, while it may not love Hussein, also has many reasons to despise the thousands of U.S. soldiers who would arrive in the event of a ground war.
Yeah the Iraqis would be pissed that we mean to spread peace and freedom around. I'm sure they're thrilled with the secret police watching their every move and wondering if they're going to disappear tomorrow.
And unlike the flat desert terrain of Gulf War I, an invasion of Iraq would likely involve house-to-house fighting in dense urban areas, where familiarity with the terrain will count more heavily than technological prowess.
Um, actually, we have really good satellites and GPS systems along with extensive maps of the city which were derived from our technology. Give me a map to any city in the world and I can find my way around. As for the urban fighting, we have people who train for it every single day of their lives. They are very very capable individuals. Combine that with a populace who hates Saddam and the fact that Saddam does not allow troops in the city b/c he doesn't trust them and it's going to be alot easier than you think.
The other option, of course, would be to carpet bomb civilian areas before sending in the troops – leading to the death of tens of thousands of civilians and certainly international condemnation.
We have no need to carpet bomb civilian areas. We will use the highly reliable JDAMs to weed out the military targets.
Why create more terrorist martyrs? If the U.S. invades Iraq without multilateral support (including the support of other Arab countries), the war will only inflame anti-American passions -- and give groups like al-Qaeda a great recruiting tool.
Why create more martyrs? Because the more of these guys we kill, the better. As for inflaming anti-american passions, they hardly need us for that. They get fired up all by themselves. Also, we heard this before when we:
1. Bombed Afghanistan
2. Bombed during Ramadan
Neither was the case. Why would it be so now? I hope the war in Iraq inflames many many young would-be jihadis and draws them to Iraq. It would advance our anti-terror efforts considerably.
What if we win? And what would Bush do if United States forces managed to successfully invade Iraq and depose Hussein? There's no real internal opposition ready to take control.
Sure there is. Check out this excerpt from Strategypage.com:
The CIA and Department of Defense are working with hundreds of [u]Iraqi defectors to collect the phone and fax numbers of senior officials in the Iraqi government. This contact list would allow quick communication with a large number of key Iraqi government and military leaders if an invasion was undertaken.[/u] Nothing like the personal touch. Unfortunately, the fact that this word of this program got out will probably lead to Saddam ordering all those phone numbers changed, and then changed again. But knowledge of the program also sends another message to Saddam and his cronies that they have yet another reason to be nervous. There is also the Iraqi National Congress that has been working together for over 10 years to change Iraq. While they are not technically insiders, they once were and many of them are recent defectors.
Would the United States give some general the authority to run a military government – repressing what would be almost certain, constant uprisings – for many, many years? And
Why would there be certain, constant uprisings? The Iraqis want to get on with life and do so in peace. Their oil revenues would help them get back on their feet very quickly. Improve their quality of life quickly and dramatically and see how much they rebel. (Suggested signs: Down with Progress! Bring back Poverty!") We did something similar in Japan, Germany and even California and they turned out just fine.
how will the United States pay for that government (and for rebuilding the civilian infrastructure of Iraq)? The war alone will cost billions, and almost certainly damage a struggling U.S. economy.
Um...I'm not policy wonk but the fact that the Iraqis are sitting on the second largest oil reserve in the world might be a good way to pay for stuff. They could like, put it in barrels and sell it! Second, if the war is going to cost billions that means the government is going to be spending money on things like bullets, bombs, guns, oil, food, nylon and the like, right? Well, by lefty logic that should give us a HUGE economic boom. Leftists are always telling us that only the government can spend itself out of a recession.
If you think these arguments might make a dent in anyone's political consciousness, consider doing a few minutes of research on the Web before you go home. Bring information on community groups in the area that are holding educational forums, coordinating letter-writing campaigns, or staging rallies.
Yes, and in your reading, be sure and read Instapundit, strategypage.com, Little Green Footballs, memri.org and stories about Iraqi Americans who desparately want us to bomb Saddam rather than staying in your little leftists cocoon.
Find out where the politicians in your relatives' districts stand on the war and get their contact info. Make it easy for people to write letters to their representatives at the national level.
Do the grunt work for them! Just get them to sign letters you've already written up. Who cares if they don't know WTF they're talking about?
Lastly, pass on the advice Pentagon Papers author Daniel Ellsberg gave at the Oct. 26 rally in San Francisco, a tactic sure to win the hearts of congressional members all across the land: All they have to do is send a check to the reelection campaign of any member of Congress in their state who voted Oct. 11 against giving Bush the power to invade Iraq; include a letter praising that decision; photocopy both check and letter; and send the copies to the pro-war politicians in their state, along with a note explaining why that check isn't going into their campaign bank accounts.
E-mail Lynn Rapoport at lynn@sfbg.com.
Sad but true. The only thing that really motivates politicans to move is campaign money.
Peace talks
How to convince your conservative relatives to oppose the invasion.
By Lynn Rapoport
THE HOLIDAYS ARE upon us, and for the broad spectrum of people in the Bay Area who, for a broad spectrum of reasons, don't support a war in Iraq, the traditional familial
Reasons include knee-jerk contrarianism, unthinking idiocy, oil conspiracy theories, anti-semitism, intellectual dishonesty, shocking levels of naievity, and inability to support anything a Republican president does, not matter how good, right or sensible it is.
huddle around the turkey platter could be pretty grim. A few of you were raised by folks
Turkey!? You animal oppressing speciesist! You should be eating To-furkey. Please report for re-education.
who came to San Francisco wearing flowers in their hair, but many more are going home to attend a summit with relatives whose viewpoints on matters geopolitical haven't synched up with yours since you stopped building snow forts and playing with G.I. Joe.
Nice. So anyone who doesn't believe that we should sit idly by while an insane madman with dreams of conquest gets his hands on the worst weapon in the history of the world?
Conversation at such gatherings is a minefield at the best of times, and these are far from the best of times.
Read: things are bad b/c the GOP now controls, House, Senate and the Oval Office. Oh, if only Jed Bartlett were our real president...
But you have a captive audience (and chances are good half of them didn't even vote for Bush).
See, cause Al actually won the 2000 election!
Why not take advantage of the situation? The peace movement, this peace movement in particular, while it's made up of career peaceniks and social justice activists and anti-imperialists,
Peace movement = idiotarians.
Career peaceniks = hippies yearning for Vietnam war protest days.
Social Justice activists = wealth redistributionists
anti-imperialists = socialists and communists.
is also made up of people with concerns about national security, people who supported the war in Afghanistan but don't see any rationalization for this one,
Nobody but nobody in the anti-war crowd supported the war in Afghanistan. To say otherwise is revisionist history. They were pissing and moaning about the thousands and thousands of innocent civilians that died in the war.
people who never waved a sign in their life until sometime this fall, and people who used to think differently, maybe as recently as last year.
Translation: the peace/anti-war/idiotarian movement is growing. In reality, it isn't.
There are powerful arguments to make, arguments that might not get you accused of having your head buried somewhere unpleasant.
Yes, but oddly the most persuasive arguements against the war are coming from the isolationist right not the left.
Maybe one coherent point to convey instead of drinking too much and getting into a screaming match with your mother will inspire her to write a letter to her senator.
Maybe everyone else's family isn't nearly as dysfunctional as yours. Some of us have a glass of wine or a beer, and can talk like grownups. No screaming, no fighting. Just enjoying time with the family.
Maybe she'll get her work friends to write their own letters, or march on Washington. Maybe your greasy-haired, apolitical juvenile delinquent brother will become interested in the concept of direct action and explain it to all his greasy-haired, apolitical juvenile delinquent friends. It's one meal; it's probably worth a shot.
Yeah because we all know that the juvenile deliquents are apolitical. Sure. Tell that to the residents of Seattle.
Here are a few arguments to present:
We need a better reason to go to war The Bush administration has failed to offer a compelling explanation of why Iraq's actions warrant a military attack.
For the anti-war crowd, NOTHING would be a compelling enough reason for a war. Saddam Hussein could load up an oil tanker with a nuke and park it off the coast of DC and level the entire city and they would STILL argue against war. They would say that we can't go to war b/c the civilian casualties would simply be too great. The fact is we have an urgent need to kill Saddam and destroy his government. One because he supports, trains, and funds terrorism. Second because he is a threat to regional stability and is a war criminal of the first degree. He is a brutal tyrant who rapes, tortures, executes, gasses and terrorizes a nation of millions. The fact that this is not reason enough to destroy him speaks volumes of the anti-war crowd.
It has failed to draw a credible link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
The war is not predicated upon his links to Al-Qaeda. It is predicated upon his material breach of UN resolutions that the left holds so dear.
And while we need to take seriously the idea that Hussein is holding on to weapons of mass destruction, we also need to address the fact that credible experts doubt he has the means to deliver them.
Are you serious? He's been buying missile technology from everyone he can. North Korea, Lybia, Iran, Pakistan. Even without a missile to deliver the goods, he can still use non-conventional means of delivery. Why not (as stated above) load it into a cargo ship?
And it's not just the peaceniks who aren't buying Bush's reasoning. It's the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA didn't see the 9/11 attacks coming either. They are a bunch of bureaucrats who are more concerned with fiefdoms than doing any work that either makes them look bad or gets their hands dirty.
It's Colin Powell.
Powell seems to have taken leave of his senses of late. He is a State Dept. guy and now wants the power of State to supercede that of the Pentagon. He tried and failed. Bush advised him that he ought to support his president and has done so since.
It's Brent Scowcroft.
Sowcroft is an anomoly from the isolationist right.
It's Gen. "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf.
This one is news to me
It's 133 representatives and 23 senators (whose resistance hardly jibes with the "one voice" of America Bush spoke of).
Ok so the most radical leftists don't support the war, big deal. Many of the votes against the war are votes against Bush and have little to do with the war.
All of them, not to mention the bulk of the international community – Security Council resolution notwithstanding – are asking for military restraint.
So, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Syria and Luxembourg don't support us? Big deal. What do they have at stake? What have they done to add to world security lately?
Invading would make the United States a rogue nation There's been a post-World War II consensus among most industrialized nations on only a few points, and one of them is that you don't unilaterally attack another country just because you don't like whoever's in charge.
It does no such thing. Rogue nations are ones like Cuba, North Korea and Iran. Nations ruled by an iron fist, not freedom. With leaders who cannot be deposed and crush dissent, threaten their neighbors and even attack them on flimsy ground. Sometimes no ground whatsoever. Furthermore, this doctrine goes back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. We are not attacking Saddam because we don't like him. He is, as stated above, a bad guy.
It's been done, certainly, but largely to the tune of international outcry.
Sure like when NATO flagrantly violated the terms in Kosovo. Yeah, I remember all those leftists demanding Clinton's head on a pike for that one. Also, between 1945 and 1999, two-thirds of the members of the United Nations--126 states out of 189--fought 291 interstate conflicts in which over 22 million people were killed.
If Bush invades Iraq without strong United Nations support, the United States will be violating one of the most powerful rules of civilized nations – and losing massive credibility on the global front.
Yes but only because we are who we are. I seem to remember France nuking some islands in the South Pacific and being all miffed when people were upset with them.
What happened to the war on terrorism? One of Scowcroft's concerns, as stated in an Aug. 15 Wall Street Journal opinion piece, is that putting our energies toward Iraq would dangerously deplete our resources for Bush's avowed number-one priority – the war on terrorism – as well as cause a major breakdown in international cooperation regarding global antiterrorism efforts.
The author obviously isn't reading the papers much.
"A senior leader of Al Qaeda described as its chief of operations in the Persian Gulf has been captured, American officials said today."-- New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/22/international/middleeast/22TERR.html , Nov. 22
"An Iraqi man carrying explosives was arrested Friday in a posh neighborhood of Kabul where many foreigners have homes and offices, a government official said. It's believed Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim was the target."-- Associated Press http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA5ABG7U8D.html , Nov. 22
Invasion will only give Hussein a reason to use WMD Scowcroft also points out that if Hussein does have deliverable weapons of mass destruction, he hasn't used them yet – but might well consider it if provoked by a U.S. strike.
Actually, he has used them. Just ask the Kurds.
U.S. troops would certainly be targets. Worst-case scenario: he sends a nuke over to Israel, and maybe starts World War III. Another possibility: he sets the oil fields ablaze, leaving a scorched-earth disaster area (with horrible environmental consequences and a huge cleanup price tag) for the U.S. to deal with.
Actually the nuke over Israel is a distinct possibility WITHOUT a war. However, I'd put more money on poison gas or chem/bioweapons as they are easier to clean up.
There are still nonmilitary options It may not sound terribly satisfying, but the truth is, containment policies have worked in the past, if imperfectly.
Right. Sure. Containment worked to well in 1990. The only reason it's working now is that 1. He doesn't have a nuke, yet. 2. He is continually harassed by the USAF.
Even assuming Hussein was playing a shell game with UNSCOM up until the inspections stopped in 1998, U.N. officials say the vast majority of his WMD have been destroyed.
Yes because the UN wouldn't want to appear ineffectual or anything...
Carried out with strong U.N. support, the inspections could work again.
Sure. Just keep sending strongly worded letters to him. Give him a 7th, 8th and 9th warning and tell him this time you really really mean it. I'm sure he'll see the error of his ways.
A ground war in Iraq could make Vietnam look like cake Baghdad is comparable to L.A. in population, except that Baghdad's population, while it may not love Hussein, also has many reasons to despise the thousands of U.S. soldiers who would arrive in the event of a ground war.
Yeah the Iraqis would be pissed that we mean to spread peace and freedom around. I'm sure they're thrilled with the secret police watching their every move and wondering if they're going to disappear tomorrow.
And unlike the flat desert terrain of Gulf War I, an invasion of Iraq would likely involve house-to-house fighting in dense urban areas, where familiarity with the terrain will count more heavily than technological prowess.
Um, actually, we have really good satellites and GPS systems along with extensive maps of the city which were derived from our technology. Give me a map to any city in the world and I can find my way around. As for the urban fighting, we have people who train for it every single day of their lives. They are very very capable individuals. Combine that with a populace who hates Saddam and the fact that Saddam does not allow troops in the city b/c he doesn't trust them and it's going to be alot easier than you think.
The other option, of course, would be to carpet bomb civilian areas before sending in the troops – leading to the death of tens of thousands of civilians and certainly international condemnation.
We have no need to carpet bomb civilian areas. We will use the highly reliable JDAMs to weed out the military targets.
Why create more terrorist martyrs? If the U.S. invades Iraq without multilateral support (including the support of other Arab countries), the war will only inflame anti-American passions -- and give groups like al-Qaeda a great recruiting tool.
Why create more martyrs? Because the more of these guys we kill, the better. As for inflaming anti-american passions, they hardly need us for that. They get fired up all by themselves. Also, we heard this before when we:
1. Bombed Afghanistan
2. Bombed during Ramadan
Neither was the case. Why would it be so now? I hope the war in Iraq inflames many many young would-be jihadis and draws them to Iraq. It would advance our anti-terror efforts considerably.
What if we win? And what would Bush do if United States forces managed to successfully invade Iraq and depose Hussein? There's no real internal opposition ready to take control.
Sure there is. Check out this excerpt from Strategypage.com:
The CIA and Department of Defense are working with hundreds of [u]Iraqi defectors to collect the phone and fax numbers of senior officials in the Iraqi government. This contact list would allow quick communication with a large number of key Iraqi government and military leaders if an invasion was undertaken.[/u] Nothing like the personal touch. Unfortunately, the fact that this word of this program got out will probably lead to Saddam ordering all those phone numbers changed, and then changed again. But knowledge of the program also sends another message to Saddam and his cronies that they have yet another reason to be nervous. There is also the Iraqi National Congress that has been working together for over 10 years to change Iraq. While they are not technically insiders, they once were and many of them are recent defectors.
Would the United States give some general the authority to run a military government – repressing what would be almost certain, constant uprisings – for many, many years? And
Why would there be certain, constant uprisings? The Iraqis want to get on with life and do so in peace. Their oil revenues would help them get back on their feet very quickly. Improve their quality of life quickly and dramatically and see how much they rebel. (Suggested signs: Down with Progress! Bring back Poverty!") We did something similar in Japan, Germany and even California and they turned out just fine.
how will the United States pay for that government (and for rebuilding the civilian infrastructure of Iraq)? The war alone will cost billions, and almost certainly damage a struggling U.S. economy.
Um...I'm not policy wonk but the fact that the Iraqis are sitting on the second largest oil reserve in the world might be a good way to pay for stuff. They could like, put it in barrels and sell it! Second, if the war is going to cost billions that means the government is going to be spending money on things like bullets, bombs, guns, oil, food, nylon and the like, right? Well, by lefty logic that should give us a HUGE economic boom. Leftists are always telling us that only the government can spend itself out of a recession.
If you think these arguments might make a dent in anyone's political consciousness, consider doing a few minutes of research on the Web before you go home. Bring information on community groups in the area that are holding educational forums, coordinating letter-writing campaigns, or staging rallies.
Yes, and in your reading, be sure and read Instapundit, strategypage.com, Little Green Footballs, memri.org and stories about Iraqi Americans who desparately want us to bomb Saddam rather than staying in your little leftists cocoon.
Find out where the politicians in your relatives' districts stand on the war and get their contact info. Make it easy for people to write letters to their representatives at the national level.
Do the grunt work for them! Just get them to sign letters you've already written up. Who cares if they don't know WTF they're talking about?
Lastly, pass on the advice Pentagon Papers author Daniel Ellsberg gave at the Oct. 26 rally in San Francisco, a tactic sure to win the hearts of congressional members all across the land: All they have to do is send a check to the reelection campaign of any member of Congress in their state who voted Oct. 11 against giving Bush the power to invade Iraq; include a letter praising that decision; photocopy both check and letter; and send the copies to the pro-war politicians in their state, along with a note explaining why that check isn't going into their campaign bank accounts.
E-mail Lynn Rapoport at lynn@sfbg.com.
Sad but true. The only thing that really motivates politicans to move is campaign money.
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