2001-11-09 - 12:51 p.m.

So.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has announced that the US will be turning its attention to Iraq as soon as we're done with Afghanistan. This is a bit odd, since he was about the only sane voice in the government about Iraq. This is a really stupid move, and I'll tell you why:

1)There's no real evidence that Iraq had anything to do with September 11. That means any military action against Saddam is illegal.

2)It will royally piss off every muslim in the world, even those who HATE Saddam. It will say to them: yup, the US is out for every muslim country, even one's who are secular. Because Iraq is a secular state: the ruling Baath party is socialist, and christians are very well represented in the government. They are not allied with bin Laden in any way other than their shared hatred of the US. This sort of indiscrimination will look like a vendetta on our part against Islam, which plays directly into bin Laden's hands.

3) No one else supports our threats against Iraq. Not one European country, not one Islamic country, no one but Israel. We would do it alone.

4)We can't move against Iraq until we're done with Afghanistan, so we get the maximum amount of time to be feared and hated without actually doing anything about it.

5)The sanctions have already killed almost 2 million people. The incredible death-toll there is one of bin Laden's excuses for massacring New Yorkers. Threatening Iraq does not look like us defending ourselves against a mad dictator, it looks like a continuation of our war on the Iraqi populace. Which will breed more hatred.

6)The US' stated purpose here is to attack any government that is developing or has developed weapons of mass destruction. So, is France our next target? What about Britain? Or Russia? Or the US? We develop chemical weapons, and it looks like the Anthrax found in Daschle's office is of the American variety. We're the greatest nuclear power on the globe: do we need to be invaded to make sure we don't go rogue? Very faulty logic, and the world knows that.

The US government is not thinking this all out: we're not using Realpolitik to determine our course of action, but neither are we being ideological about it (we have alliances with terrorist-supporting states right now). I'm really worried about this. If we win the ground war and lose the PR war, we lose everything. Terrorism is, at base, a war of PR. Successful terrorism is popular, and succeeds in characterizing it's enemy as evil, usually by pushing that enemy into violent retribution. It worked in Ireland in the 1920's, it's working in Palestine right now, and it's starting to happen to us in this war. Stay tuned, sports fans. Things are about to get interesting.

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