More war thoughts.

[kyrielle]

I'm still not fond of Bush; I think he went about this the wrong way. But as I've said before, I also think this may be (I'm not so confident as to say is) a war that needed to be fought. It's how he got to it that I don't approve of.

My dad sent me a link to an entry about the war, which is notably pro-war. And I think it may be the first such to at once quantify my ambivalence, and speak to it. The comparisons are interesting.

I still don't know what I think; I'm thinking. Besides making me think, I thought it was a fascinating piece in its own right (it's gone through the Civil War and science fiction by the end of it). So, here's

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] .a>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

<lj-cut text="Ambivalent, but not anti-war, thoughts in here.">I'm still not fond of Bush; I think he went about this the wrong way. But as I've said before, I also think this may be (I'm not so confident as to say <i>is</i>) a war that needed to be fought. It's how he got to it that I don't approve of.

My dad sent me a link to an entry about the war, which is notably pro-war. And I think it may be the first such to at once quantify my ambivalence, and speak to it. The comparisons are interesting.

I still don't know what I think; I'm thinking. Besides making me think, I thought it was a fascinating piece in its own right (it's gone through the Civil War and science fiction by the end of it). So, here's <a href="http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000039.html".a link for anyone who is curious</a>.

Comments

[penguinzero.livejournal.com]

I don't know... he does make a good argument that war is sometimes necessary. I don't disagree with that -- I think it should be a last resort, and that people are often more reasonable human beings than you'd first assume, but sometimes there's no way to stop injustice or whatnot other than going in militarily. The costs are great, but on occasion the cost of not fighting would be even greater. World War II was definitely such a time. But I'm less convinced by his argument that this war is necessary.

The evidence that Hussein actually has a functional program for the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction is far more shaky than he seems to assume. And US intelligence sources (which the president seems bent on ignoring) claim that the invasion of Iraq is more likely to destabilize the region than to pacify it. And he discusses the administration taking a long hard look at the region after 9/11, and decided to go in and clean it up -- but there's strong evidence that they were planning on doing it long before 9/11.

Anyway, it's a complex issue, from whatever perspective you're looking at it. No simple answers. And this is certainly the most thoughtful piece in favor of the war that I've seen, and it was well worth reading, and I can see how it's an attitude intelligent people could take. But... well, I'm sticking to my opinion.

[kyrielle]

Oh, agreed - I think some of his assumptions can be questioned too. I'm not completely sure of my answers. I don't think this happened the right way/time; I'm not sure yet if I think it's entirely wrong on the face of it, though, or just a bumble maneuver how it got going, or some mix thereof.

But the sheer thought level of this one was nice to see. Normally, the pro-war folks seem to just rant about being patriotic....