This summer, travelling in Eastern Europe, we had a guide who took us on a driving trip up the Danube from Budapest. Late in the trip, we asked her about the 1956 uprising. It was like what’s happening in Burma. For a short time, the people retook their country, then the Russians poured over the border and they had another 35 years of oppressive Communist domination. Our guide, Gabriella, talked about it. She said the the Hungarians thought that the world would come to their aid when they finally took to the streets. She said there was great bitterness that they were left on their own, powerless against the invasion of 150,000 Russian soldiers with 2,500 Tanks. She said that most people in Hungary now understood that their hope was naive, but that many Hungarians felt sympathetic to the Iraq Invasion – having been left alone to suffer in a Dictatorship.
But I didn’t think it was so naive. I thought that the world was afraid of the Russians and their bombs. To me, it was different. First, I do not think we invaded Iraq to help the Iraqis. But, the Hungarian people reached out – many dying in the process. They were literally "longing to be free." When she told the story, I felt really sad that the world didn’t listen. I feel the same thing about Burma. Those incredibly brave people did an amazing thing this week. I want the world to hear it.
And I want the world to censure us for going off half cocked in Iraq instead of continuing to work through the U.N. I would have been glad for us to chase Bin Laden into Pakistan or wherever he went. I might still be glad for that. I felt good about going after the Taliban. I think we should still be fighting them there. We had a reason. But Iraq and Iran are world problems, not just American problems. We have a mechanism to deal with world problems. Getting the world to act is hard work, and frankly, it should be hard. Our Neoconservatives are impatient, arrogant, and way out of their league. They think they can just unilaterally bully people who don’t do what they want.
Like Hungary, there is a just cause in Burma. We’ll never know if there was a just cause in Iraq because we jumped the gun. The same is true in Iran. John Bolton may want the Shah back, but I’m not sure the Iranians want a Shah. Bolton says that getting rid of Hussein was a good thing. I’m not sure that’s right either. It sounds like Hussein was checkmated, close to ready to bow to pressure and abdicate. It could’ve been handled in such a better way.
World politics is hard. Foreign Affairs are hard. And our government has made blunders along the way – operating as it was in stormy seas. But what’s happened in the last six years isn’t just a mistake or a bad call, it’s a perversion of our principles and our place in the world. Send Condi to the U.N. to try to figure out what to do in Burma. She’s a smart lady. Give her something she might can do something about instead of parrot Talking Points. Burma needs for the America I grew up in to be involved. Stop focusing on conquest or quick solutions in the Middle East. We’re not going to fix the centuries of strife that region lives with. We have to just live with it too. Lets get back to "walk softly, but carry a big stick," reaffirm our commitment to the U.N. and the Geneva Conventions, and put the Neoconservatives where they belong [once we figure out where that is – like maybe prison]. But it’s time for a break in the clouds. Bush and Cheney are wearing our asses out.
NEWTON, Iowa (CNN) – Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson blamed inadequate intelligence for not sending a larger U.S. invasion force into Iraq, but said he supported the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
"Clearly we did not go in with enough people, with the right strategy," Thompson told reporters after a campaign event in this rural city in central Iowa. "We did not foresee what was happening there. Part of that has to do with the fact that our intelligence capabilities were not what they should have been."
Thompson said it was imperative to remove Hussein from power.
"Saddam Hussein, today, had we not gone in, would be sitting on this power keg and be in control of the whole thing," Thompson predicted. "He would have been the new dictator of that entire region in my estimation. He is–was–a dangerous irrational man who, by this time, would have been well on his way to having the nuclear capability himself."
In remarks delivered earlier in a café, Thompson said Hussein "clearly" had weapons of mass destruction prior to the beginning of the war.
You say our gov’t has made blunders. Maybe they made blunders because they were too busy making sure that they would become more powerful by denying access to their plans to make the justice dept more Bush friendly, load up the courts with Bushies, give the oil companies everything they wanted, deny people the right to vote as Democrats in elections now and in the future, etc. They were too busy being devious in obtaining a one rule gov’t that they had little time to take care of this country and help make the world safer through diplomacy. If this doesn’t rise to the level to impeach I don’t know what does.