One of the oddities of the news for the past some-odd weeks has been the growing analysis, polling, and punditry on a US war on Iraq.<\/p>\n
The US, traditionally, has been reactive in war, or else has acted out of the blue. While the first war on Iraq in ’91 was deliberated and debated beforehand, it still sprang from that nation’s invasion of Kuwait and endangering of other nations in the region. The comic opera assaults on Grenada and Panama took place without warning. The war on Afghanistan was considered by many to be a foregone conclusion, deriving from an attack on the US. Korea was a reaction to an attack, as was WWII. Viet Nam was a creeping, incremental morass, a slow, undebated escalation over a period of years.<\/p>\n
You have to go back to pre-Pearl Harbor WWII (if not all the way back to WWI) to find a full public debate, without the apparent confines of time or immediate threat, about whether the US should go to war.<\/p>\n
Steven Den Beste has a brilliant series of essays on his site regarding the prospects of war on Iraq. I won’t quote from them, and I won’t comment, but they should be required reading for anyone discussing the issue, whether they agree with such a prospective war or not.<\/p>\n
One of the oddities of the news for the past some-odd weeks has been the growing analysis, polling, and punditry on a US war on Iraq. The US, traditionally, has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10403,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/01\/26\/war_comparisons.html","url_meta":{"origin":3136,"position":0},"title":"War comparisons","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 26-Jan-07 12:31pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Like the vast majority of Americans, I concur that the Iraq War has been horribly bumbled in its execution. But there's plenty of basis for criticizing the war effort without...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3795,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/27\/when_was_the_wa.html","url_meta":{"origin":3136,"position":1},"title":"When was the war decided upon?","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 27-Mar-03 2:17pm","format":false,"excerpt":"There's another little mini-brouhaha blowing through about whether there was a decision to go to war with Iraq all the way back a year ago. I really don't get it....","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":43410,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/09\/george-takei-on-wwii-and-patriotism.html","url_meta":{"origin":3136,"position":2},"title":"George Takei on WWII and Patriotism","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 9-Jul-14 2:08pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A remarkably moving and inspiring talk from a man who was interned during the Second World War as an \"enemy non-alien.\"\ufeff Why I love a country that once betrayed me When he was a child, George Takei and his family were forced into an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, as a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3815,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/26\/disturbing_thou.html","url_meta":{"origin":3136,"position":3},"title":"Disturbing thoughts","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 26-Mar-03 8:13am","format":false,"excerpt":"I know that one of the \"It's a war crime!\" thangs going on lately has involved Iraqi military dropping their uniforms and, amongst the civilian population, taking pot shots at...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16746,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/02\/17\/they-dont-make-em-like-they-used-to.html","url_meta":{"origin":3136,"position":4},"title":"They don’t make ’em like they used to","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 17-Feb-10 8:55pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm fascinated by old propaganda posters.\u00a0 Recently my folks forwarded on an email linking to several of them from the US in WWII.\u00a0 You've probably seen most of them -- various patriotic appeals to buy war bonds, work hard in factories, what we're fighting for, loose lips sink ships, etc.\u00a0\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fine Art"","block_context":{"text":"Fine Art","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/wwii-not-won.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":51372,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/05\/the-deaths-of-world-war-ii.html","url_meta":{"origin":3136,"position":5},"title":"The Deaths of World War II","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 5-Jun-15 4:25pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are some remarkable dynamic charts by Neil Halloran of the staggering military and civilian deaths in the Second World War -- as well as a comparison to conflicts before and since.While it may not seem like we live in a peaceful world today, the numbers (at least in comparison)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}