Oh, thanks.

That’s why when I reply to someone I always try to address that person by name. Otherwise it can get very confusing to wade through a thread.

President Clinton, statement on signing the Iraq Liberation Act, 1998:
“Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else.”

President Bush, USMA, 2002:
“The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation.”

Check out Bush’s 2004 speech at the USAFA graduation:
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040602.html

Did you see my subsequent comments explaining more fully what I meant? This and this.

I am and I’m going to point out that Bush’s reasons (his June 2002 West Point grad Speech) were correct, and world changing ones.

It’s seems to be me alone, but no one in recent years has pointed out the FREAKIN OBVIOUS: “no Bush led war in Iraq = NO ARAB SPRING!”

The Arab Spring has been bloody and painful, but ever since Napoleon invaded Egypt the issue in the West’s view of the Arab ME has been: “Why can’t they modernize?”

It was the subject of the late-great Ernst Gellner’s PhD thesis in the 1950s, for instance – he’s the Cambridge philosophical anthropologist and expert on nationalism who wound up as the savant of civil society when Communism Fell in the 1990s.

Now it has begun. And remember, it took the US 20 to 45 years to get popular sovereignty workably correct. And Europe centuries. Obviously, in an age of galloping globalization, the Arab ME stands out as incapable of imitating the best place for Arabs to live, democratic Israel.

What Bush did was give Muslim Arab’s hope and example that they, too, can enjoy the fruits of democracy – and for people to see it with the proof of those purple stained fingers – proof of REAL democracy. And as the Arab spring proves, they did.

And it happened about a decade earlier than I or anyone expected. The reason for this Bush success is getting the timing of the Arabic demographic bulge – lots of young idle males becoming teens with nothing to do – right, combined with the domestic and FP disaster of 9/11.

The early positive result? A successful constitutional Morocco and Tunisia.

Experience with success, as opposed to the Islamist failure, takes bloody time. It takes time. And I share Neo’s fears. But let’s not loose sight of the Wisdom of our elders, including the visions of Bush – so re-read that seminal speech, June 2002 at west Point.

A dozen years have proved his rationale for war correct. Even if Iraq falls to AQ.

What’s different this time is something within Islam that’s very old, very ancient: the Sunni-Shia Schism.

That Iraq was able to keep this balance going for so long still amazes me. Lessons on how to overcome it remain to be learned, conveyed, and institutionalized. That’s what’s coming for the Arab ME and the world that surrounds it.

Thus, from my perspective. there’s lots of progress. But classic Arab ME regress will long, long persist and recur. (It’s their history to repeat failure a lot.)

The huge benefit of Iraq was the diminished appeal of AQ-style exporting terrorism.

When will the GWOT end? Thomas P. M. Barnett in his C-SPAN seminar of a dozen years ago on “The Pentagon’s New Map” argued that when women control their reproduction and can work outside the home – as opposed to traditional submission to patriarchy – is the game-changer. Even the AQ strategists, building on Qtub, agreed that this was the end-game they need to avoid to escape modernization and save their sacred doctrine from eclipse.

One measure of it is when reproduction in Arab ME reaches replacement levels (TFR=1 per person). So by that measure, the end game looked to be in 2040s.

But the decline in the Arab ME of fertility rates – especially within Iran, I know not technically Arab ME, already – it’s already closing fast, and close to 1 in Iran. And the level of church going within that Fundamentalist Theocracy is lower than England’s!

Thus, going by recent revisions to the end-game metric and diminishing fertility levels, it could be early 2030s that GWOT-terrorism becomes a small appeal. The appeal of terrorism will end with women’s empowerment within Arabic Islam, despite the ideological vulnerabilities within Islam itself. The sociological levers of family power will have shifted from Patriarchal inflammation to more Matriarchal pacifism.

Thus, there are multiple reasons to admire Bush’s foresight and idealism and his War in Iraq.

It changed the levers on Arabic Islam – and since among the universal religions – Islam is the only one to dominate its geographic birth place, and to have a deeply militaristic place, and potentially atavistic, doctrine of Jihadism (SEE “Understanding Jihad” by david Cook), my admiration for Bush’s timely vision is huge.

My bottom line is THIS: no Bush war in Iraq = no Arab Spring. Ergo, no long-0term diminishment of the appeal of AQ-style exporting of terrorism to the West to solve the problems of the demographic bulge (explosion of youth and testosterone driven young men). And their problem is “how to reform” their societies to provide jobs and economic growth consonant with modernity? – peacefully or through war?

This was Bush’s brilliant answer: give the Arab ME an example. Prior to Bush, they only had theocracies (Saudi or Iran), police states (like Egypt) or failed states (like Somalia). Now they have a new Contender on the block. And it’s there that their real needs can be met in time, with practice overcoming their tribalistic propensities for failure.

I’m not at all sure whom you were addressing in your above comment. If it was me, though, perhaps you missed the following fairly lengthy discussion yesterday about whether the Iraq war was the right thing to do.

Please see this, this, and this comment of mine on yesterday’s thread.

I don’t think anyone believes the Iraq War would have solved the sort of worldwide problems you describe. It’s not an either/or thing, though. There’s a lot more we should have done and should still do, and aren’t doing.

Russia has long been supplying our enemies, for example. We used to understand that; that’s at least part of what the Cold War was fought about. Russia has a big hand in the Middle East, and has had for a long long time. We don’t have an effective strategic long-term approach to that fact any more (if we ever did), I think, even before Obama came to power. And of course Obama isn’t interested at all in stopping Russia, to say the least.

of course i do, as i know a hell of a lot on this…
and all you and most others look at is the surface..

your tactical and strategical conceptual on it are pretty null and void as they are not there.

how do you stop Russia and China from transporting hundreds of thousands of pounds of weapons and explosives to Africa, the middle east, and across to Pakistan and India?

since this all goes by land in regular trucks that ride the roads, how do you know how much, when, and what to stop and keep out – and if the states along the way are not friendly to stopping explosives, and equipment, how do you do it then?

how do you finally end the weapons that prevent African people from bringing their raw materials to the market and improving their lives and world and ours as well, while not so good for Russia, who is supplying them weapons to suppress their market so they can sell raw materials, which is their economy

turkey waffles based on who has pressure on it… but it prefers the west over Russia… however if you combine it with Iran, Afghanistan, and the countries in conflict, what you have then is a one country wide friendly set of states that can stop land transport of material.

one one side of that line is Russia and china and all that material
on the other side of that line, is Africa, Israel, the middle east…

unless you can stop the supply of weapons and material practically handed out like candy so that the place never stabilizes and so threatens the economy of the maker of the weapons, your not going to get very far in terms of halting much of any of this stuff. Russia and its satellite leaders and such have BRAGGED openly that this crap is their stuff…

but lets say your right…
your about to see your fuel oil go up a heck of a lot
but your also going to see businesses cut back
at some point the state cant pay you welfare..
and then lenins quote comes in loud and clear
you dont work, you dont eat.

you see… if you cant stop the land bridge, you cant stem the tide
and if you cant stem the tide, your going to have to deal with the tide coming in.

just ask anyone here that knows me..
you really want to get into a debate with me on it. then let it rip
but it better be a real debate as i have better things to do than educate
you will find yourself wholly unprepared as to how deep this can get

and it will all boil down to whether you understand the poem by Martin Niemé¶ller…

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.

the long ending to the debate would be what would happen if not.
and that would end up being what we have now happening
and what will be happening soon if not…

the left has caused upscaled death tolls wherever it applies itself and ideas..
this includes the idea that you can bean count war to a win, and so on..

Given your not really going to bring anything interesting to the table in the debate other than an emotional appeal and some arbitrary moral position, its not really worth debating. without the ability to see the outcomes other than wishes by what happens tactically and strategically, your positions are going to conveniently ignore all the lives of africa, the middle east, and ultimately israel

It’s difficult to arrive at any other conclusion reading the Duelfer Report even by eliminating his presumption of guilt and gracing Saddam with the benefit of the doubt.

The only reason the Left’s propaganda arm is growing is because people won’t kill it.