On Jun 26, 2006, at 1:55 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>> Huh? I thought it was going to be a disaster from before it started.
>
> For a long time after the beginning of the invasion, you kept pointing
> to polls of Iraqis to argue that a premature US withdrawal will be a
> disaster, too, and undesired by a majority of Iraqis, so we couldn't
> and shouldn't call for that.
For the first few months after the invasion, all evidence was that Iraqis didn't want an immediate pullout because we had destroyed their state and they feared chaos. I figured that deferring to Iraqi opinion was the proper thing for the western antiwar movement to do. You (and Carrol, as I recall) found this a violation of the catechism and quoted Kipling. At the same time, I quoted Christian Parenti's comment on returning from his first visit to Iraq: there's no way anything good can come of this. After a few months, circumstances changed radically and so did Iraqi opinion, and it was time for the US to leave.
>> What am I going to do about it? Same thing that you are, no?
>
> You mean nothing?
I'll follow your lead then.
Doug