[lbo-talk] Iraq war "clearer" to Americans than WW 2

[H. Curtiss Leung]

There's been some nice implicit rhetorical linkage of certain issues, but 
when it comes down to it, actual reasons are pretty thin on the ground.  IIRC,
Dubya mentioned and deplored the gassing of the Kurds in his State o' th' 
Union address, but never said that it was a reason for going in.  Bush 
pere did the same thing vis a vis making the removal of Saddam Hussein a 
goal of the first Gulf War: for example:

	Q. Is it a goal to topple Saddam? 

	The President. The goals have been spelled out by me and 

	by the coalition partners, and the goals remain the same. But 

	I would answer like the Prime Minister: I wouldn't weep if they 

	put him aside. 

(from http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/papers/1991/91021700.html)

and then of course, there's the famous exhortation to the Iraqis to rise
up which I'm too lazy to look for....but you get the idea.  Make noises
about the indignity of these things, and then act shocked, SHOCKED when 
it comes out that the goals people could related to were just to get
popular support for other, less interesting ends.

Curtiss


> 
> For example, someone told me he supported Gulf War 2 because he felt
> sorry for the Kurds. It was a matter of opposing the anti-Kurdish racism
> of Saddam and even the Turkish govt, he said. There have been a lot of
> reasons thrown onto the shit heap of legitimation that Bush and Co. have
> tried to amass, but last I checked, Bush and Co. said nothing about
> fighting Kurdish racism.
>