Since many people just don't know their US history and others just like to demonize W (even when he's not even involved), I want to point out one very obvious perspective to those of us who do.
Post-Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, some portions of the US military leadership were rather "questionable" on how they respected their civilian leadership. The people involved with Tonkin and the attitudes were quite different back in the '60s. And some general just "wanted their war," including "cleaning up the mess the French created" (I still can't believe how hypocritical the French can be -- from Algiers to Suez to Vietnam).
Back then, the US still had drafts and sending quarter, half and even, eventually, 650,000 troops to Vietnam was significant, but doable. The US actually lead a very successful set of engagements in Vietnam, just like the French, winning every major battle, and even developing technologies that neutralized a lot of NVA and many VC actions (e.g., Puff the Magic Dragon eliminated smaller US firebases from being overrun).
But finally the military became depleted, and lessons were learned -- militarily and politically -- and the US did not want a protracted engagement in an area that had no strategic interests other than the philosophy of "containment." When the genocide began in Cambodia, both the US civilian and military wanted nothing to do with it, much less everything else going on. We reserved ourselves to fighting "from afar" in everything from China's invasion of Vietnam to Afghanistan against the Soviets.
Fast-forward to 2002-2003. There were no "eager generals" for a protracted "occupation." In fact, many who argued that deploying anything less than another quarter to half million troops wouldn't work, because of the post-invasion "occupation" and the difficulties in building a democracy. And in the case of the "small invasion *****" idea -- this wasn't the civilian and military leaders who came up with it disagreeing, but agreeing -- all while ignoring the occupational aspects many, many military leaders were warning both of them about.
Now skip to 2007. We are entrenched in Iraq with extremely stretched resources. The US military is trying everything it can to get additional resources -- from local citizens to even reaching out to Iran with unofficial, but recognized talks. The Iranians have even helped stop their own people from flowing weapons to Iraq, as even the US has admitted it has come down. At the same time, one division of Iran's own military keeps on-going, and they also control portions of the navy.
The US cannot even fight another front in the Gulf. We're just trying to "survive" the hornets nest we started in Iraq and we can't pull out of, in addition to securing our allies in NATO and the EU's super-majority (again, 80%) of petroleum resource, especially since the Russians are eager to charge them even more should it become unavailable to them. And we need to secure our own markets, or the prices will only go up for us (as we tap our own even further or in the western hemisphere).
We don't want anything to do with Iran right now, other than trying to get them to stop staring us down and doing what we all know they are doing. That's the reality. I can't stand W either, but it doesn't mean he or the military are inventing these things. And the sooner people **** up to the sole purpose what 3,000-10,000 centrifuges are designed for (probably not, because they don't even know the difference between a NASA RTG, a nuclear power plant and a nuclear weapon), the sooner this is exposed to be political BS.
Just like missile defense. Mass ignorance breeds political opportunity.
Post-Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, some portions of the US military leadership were rather "questionable" on how they respected their civilian leadership. The people involved with Tonkin and the attitudes were quite different back in the '60s. And some general just "wanted their war," including "cleaning up the mess the French created" (I still can't believe how hypocritical the French can be -- from Algiers to Suez to Vietnam).
Back then, the US still had drafts and sending quarter, half and even, eventually, 650,000 troops to Vietnam was significant, but doable. The US actually lead a very successful set of engagements in Vietnam, just like the French, winning every major battle, and even developing technologies that neutralized a lot of NVA and many VC actions (e.g., Puff the Magic Dragon eliminated smaller US firebases from being overrun).
But finally the military became depleted, and lessons were learned -- militarily and politically -- and the US did not want a protracted engagement in an area that had no strategic interests other than the philosophy of "containment." When the genocide began in Cambodia, both the US civilian and military wanted nothing to do with it, much less everything else going on. We reserved ourselves to fighting "from afar" in everything from China's invasion of Vietnam to Afghanistan against the Soviets.
Fast-forward to 2002-2003. There were no "eager generals" for a protracted "occupation." In fact, many who argued that deploying anything less than another quarter to half million troops wouldn't work, because of the post-invasion "occupation" and the difficulties in building a democracy. And in the case of the "small invasion *****" idea -- this wasn't the civilian and military leaders who came up with it disagreeing, but agreeing -- all while ignoring the occupational aspects many, many military leaders were warning both of them about.
Now skip to 2007. We are entrenched in Iraq with extremely stretched resources. The US military is trying everything it can to get additional resources -- from local citizens to even reaching out to Iran with unofficial, but recognized talks. The Iranians have even helped stop their own people from flowing weapons to Iraq, as even the US has admitted it has come down. At the same time, one division of Iran's own military keeps on-going, and they also control portions of the navy.
The US cannot even fight another front in the Gulf. We're just trying to "survive" the hornets nest we started in Iraq and we can't pull out of, in addition to securing our allies in NATO and the EU's super-majority (again, 80%) of petroleum resource, especially since the Russians are eager to charge them even more should it become unavailable to them. And we need to secure our own markets, or the prices will only go up for us (as we tap our own even further or in the western hemisphere).
We don't want anything to do with Iran right now, other than trying to get them to stop staring us down and doing what we all know they are doing. That's the reality. I can't stand W either, but it doesn't mean he or the military are inventing these things. And the sooner people **** up to the sole purpose what 3,000-10,000 centrifuges are designed for (probably not, because they don't even know the difference between a NASA RTG, a nuclear power plant and a nuclear weapon), the sooner this is exposed to be political BS.
Just like missile defense. Mass ignorance breeds political opportunity.
