>
> I must be pretty obtuse, because your response makes
> absolutely no sense to
> me. The USSR had nuclear weapons, and yet we fought
> their Vietnamese
> allies. The US had nuclear weapons, and yet that
> did not stop the USSR from
> waging war in Afghanistan.
But the Vietnamese and the Afghans were not nuclear powers, and unlike Europe and Japan, were not covered by the nuclear umbrella. ANyway, your notion that this war is about some sort of boundless lust to expand by a weakened and debilitated Iraq that is already half-occupied and substantially disarmed, that probably could not stand up to an Iranian attack, much less an American one, is the argument that makes no sense.
It is also totally ahistorical in two ways. First, it ignores the point made by Seth that there is no reason to think that this war is about Iraqi expansionism, but is rather an instance of American expnsionsim in the context of the Rice doctrine. Second, there is the point made by someone that Saddam's previously ventures were carried out with, in the case of the Iran war, the open encouragement and support of the US, and in the case of the Kuwait attack, what Saddam took to be the implicit authorization or benign neglect of the US -- wrongly in that case. What makes you think that Iraq qould ever attack anyone without what it took to be an OK from the US? It never has done.
Similarly, I don't think
> the fact that Israel
> and the US both have nukes would be sufficient to
> deter Iraq from invading
> its non-nuclear neighbors.
Well, if we said that an invasion would be met with armed defense from the US, that would probably do it.
>
> > The costs of ousting him don't figure into the
> picture, apparantly.
>
> Yes, they do, but I was responding to your charge
> that I'm some sort of
> unabashed unilateralist.
>
> -- Luke
>
The response only balanced the costs of NOT attacking Iraq with the cos of doing so unilaterally.
jks
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