As I continue to read various bits and pieces off the blogosphere regarding impending war on Iraq, I am struck by something fundamentally different between the “hawks” and the “doves.”<\/p>\n
By and large, the “doves” don’t trust the Bush Administration, and the “hawks” do.<\/p>\n
Read some anti-war posts, editorials, essays, or rants, and they basically boil down to, “Bush and his cronies are a pack of lying thieves. Bush stole the election. It’s all about accessing oil for their oil industry buddies, and about distracting folks from economic troubles at home. You can’t trust <\/i>anything the administration says about Iraq.”<\/i><\/p>\n
There’s not quite as homogeneous a message from the hawks — there are still plenty of them willing to hold the administration’s feet to the fire on various issues, including domestic policy, homeland security, and the like — but there is, to some degree, a basic trust regarding what is being said about Iraq. It’s backed up by any number of analysts, private and governmental, who have spoken to the danger that Iraq presents. But it’s still fundamentally about trusting the Bushies regarding what intelligence they claim to have about Iraq, as well as a certain measure of trust (“trust but verify”) as to how the administration plans to handle a post-war Iraq.<\/p>\n
Is there any rational basis for either position? I don’t know. I’m certainly not in favor of military intervention in Iraq solely because of what the Bush administration says, but I also find that I do believe them when they say they have sufficient additional evidence beyond what is public. That is, perhaps, naive of me, but I’m also at this point unwilling to believe that the Bushies would actually trump up a war merely for purposes of avarice, or political gain. I’d need a lot more evidence of that <\/i>than simply the allegations thrown around on the dove side. I may not agree with the current administration on a number of things, but I don’t think they are that evil.<\/p>\n
Anyway, no profound answer here, just an observation — and one that points out a difficulty in intelligent discourse about this subject. If you’re starting from the premise that the current administration (or any administration) is <\/i>that evil, then trying to convince you otherwise is futile. The converse is also true, which goes to explain why so much flaming vitriol is being expended out there on the Net.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I continue to read various bits and pieces off the blogosphere regarding impending war on Iraq, I am struck by something fundamentally different between the “hawks” and the “doves.”…<\/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-4122","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":5545,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/02\/24\/pumped.html","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":0},"title":"Pumped","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 24-Feb-04 6:27am","format":false,"excerpt":"Production cuts by OPEC could case gasoline prices to spike this summer, reaching $2 or more in Colorado, $3 in places like LA and Chicago. 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