Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Agreed, that the Middle East wouldn't be stable anyway.

re: Agreed, that the Middle East wouldn't be stable anyway.
TB — (archived)

The US wouldn't be blamed quite as universally for the problem, though.

The U.S. and Israel have been blamed almost exclusively for all the problems of the Middle East for the past fifty years. What else is new?

We would probably not be on the outs with so many groups, including many allies, that supported us when we invaded Afghanistan. You may think that's insignificant, but I don't.

Make a list of all the major nations that supported us going into Afghanistan that did not support us when we invaded Iraq. How many do you end up with? Are the nations that condemn us loudly the same few every time?

The Iranian nuclear weapons program might also not be so intransigent, not because of Saddam (who would probably be looking for a way to get his own bomb to "balance" things, as with the Pakistani/Indian feud), but because the US would have more weight to throw around, economically, militarily, and diplomatically

The first part of your statement is a lot more significant than the latter. An eventual nuclear arms race between Saddam's Iraq and Iran would have been one likely result of leaving Iraq alone. We can already see in Iran how effective the U.N. is at stopping a nuclear weapons program. If a Democrat had been president for the past six years, no doubt Saddam would be bitch-slapping the U.N. as cheerfully as Iran is while brazenly going ahead with his own weapons programs.

As for throwing our economic weight around, this isn't working with Iran now, since other members of the U.N. are balking, and not just because we're in Iraq. Throwing our military weight around? Just how is that done? Would attacking Iran be an acceptable solution if our military wasn't in Iraq? Why?

I'm amused at the number of anti-war people who fret that we are "tied down" in Iraq so we aren't able to attack other countries.

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