PS, I find your statement that you have no strong opinions curious, given that all of your questions are based on an anti-war standpoint. You could ask, ‘How did Bush manage to overthrow 2 totalitarian governments, yet sustain casualties only 20% higher than Clinton in his first term?’
It is not only the US that is opposed to Iranian nuclear weapons. UK, France, and Germany have been negotiating for 3 years. While they talk, Iran has continued to develop its program. These nations are all concerned because Iran, unlike the US, UK, France, Russia, China, or India, shows signs of being run by fanatics who believe bringing on a nuclear holocaust will bring their god to earth.
The US is also concerned with nukes in North Korea. Clinton negotiated with them for years. It is now believed North Korea went back on their word and developed nukes anyway. Present negotiations have a very different dynamic than negotiations with Iran – NK is surrounded by large, powerful countries (China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan) each of which have strong interests in the Korean peninsula.
We went into Iraq for many reasons. If I asked you about the housing bubble (remember that?) you may point to interest rates. Or demographics. Or the job market. If BB stops raising interest rates, does that demolish your argument for a housing bubble? Or are the other factors enough? WMD was one reason to enter Iraq, like the need to close down terrorist funding and training and the need to provide the Arab world with an alternative to totalitarian rule. Bush was wrong to pin so much of his argument on WMD, but he made the other arguments all along.
When you say the war in Iraq is long and unsuccessful – compared to what? The war has taken as long as it has because 1) the initial invasion plan called for a second front through Turkey (we negotiated with them, they wouldn’t let us through) without which the enemy had time to scatter; 2) counterinsurgency is hard and takes a long time. By what standard is the war unsuccessful? Because we haven’t won yet? Was the war with Japan unsucessful in Jan 1945?
We get along fine with the present government of Iraq.
