Posted on 07/01/2008 4:01:48 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Cannot be posted due to copyright issues: http://www.sctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008107010001
Consider, for example, if we had gone in "heavy" on the occupation and imposed order by force from the outset. How do we transition to a legitimate and stable Iraqi government from that point? There would have been no incentive for them to take over, and no legitimacy if they tried. Everybody in the country would have had a reason to resent the US occupation and there would be nobody left to work with us.
By doing as we did, on the other hand, we allowed time for the Iraqi governmental organizations and military to develop and gain legitimacy. Then when we finally imposed order by force, we did it with Iraqi forces at our side, and in many cases on point, which is much easier for the Iraqi people to accept. Now as the Iraqi goverment strengthens, it will be seen as a legitimate force of good in the country. This is what we wanted all along, and I don't see how we could have achieved it any other way.
All of this has been achieved with remarkably low casualties throughout the operation. Of course every US death or grave injury is tragic, but it could have been an awful lot worse.
As long as we're playing armchair generals, .. we could have flown Chalabi and his band in and let them take credit for the overthrow, and supported him as he consolidated power and saved ourselves a bundle of money and lives. We let State overrule the Pentagon, and that was a huge mistake.
But all's well that ends well, I guess.
It’s all “what if” games at this point, but I don’t think that would have worked. Chalabi woul habe been seen as being just as illegitimate as (Saddam) Hussein. Sure he could have established a run-of-the-mill ME authoritarian state, but that is not what we were trying to do.
In any event , its all speculation at this point. Still, I would defer to the Pentagons way of doing things over the State Dept, which is inundated with Clintonites and politically correct weasels.
Well, you got that right. Better the boys in green than the striped-pants crowd...
Lincoln should also be remembered for what would have happened had he *not* gone to war to preserve the Union.
Years before the Civil War, slavery as an institution was dying in the South. Slaves were very expensive to purchase and own, at about $1,000 for a working adult male, comparable to $1M today, and were about evenly divided between domestic servants and agriculture. Slaves to a great extent were reserved for the upper classes.
Ironically, in the North, industrialism was having explosive growth with immigrant labor performing higher value work such as mining, steel making and construction. And such immigrant workers were only marginally more expensive to “own” than slaves, often living in company towns and living subsistence lives.
But everything in the South changed with the introduction of the cotton gin. Suddenly, an ordinary man could make so much money from raising cotton on a few acres, that he could afford to buy a slave. The following year, with his own labor, and the labor of that slave, he could buy one or two more slaves.
Overnight, slavery became a middle, and lower middle class institution. And just as fast, it lost its politeness, and became far more wicked. The wealthy had long used social pressure and the law to maintain the illusion that they were “uplifting” the slaves with religion and education, with the idea of eventual emancipation.
In some areas, corporal punishment had to be delivered by a Sheriff’s deputy, not by the slave owner, though this was seen as distasteful by the Sheriff’s officers. But with the cotton gin, all civility went right out the window. Slaves were to be worked until they died.
The percentage of slaves working as domestic servants dwindled, compared to the number performing hard labor in open fields.
(It should be noted that in the slave trade, slaves that resisted the slavers en route, or rebelled before reaching America, were sent to the French colony of Haiti, where they would be mercilessly worked to death. But after their sale in America, the worst punishment facing a slave was usually the threat that he would be “sold down the river”, to work in the harsh conditions of the sugar cane plantations. And that is the origin of that expression.)
But even with the boom of the cotton trade, another advantage of immigrant workers up North quickly became obvious: they voted. More importantly, as voters, this meant that the northern States gained political power in the House of Representatives in Washington. More voters equals more representatives.
This eventually resulted in the convoluted equation that slaves were “worth” 3/5ths of a citizen voter.
But as new States were added, with new US Senators, the South discovered to its horror that it would soon lose control of congress entirely. In their minds this meant not only that national resources would flow North only, but that their economic boom due to cotton would be strangled by opposition to slavery.
And all this leads up to the Civil War, and the question of what would have happened in the South had Lincoln allowed the division of the United States?
A good argument can be made that slavery was still doomed, on top of which, the cotton industry was doomed as well, because of the arrival of the boll weevil. The slave trade was condemned by the British, who ruled the seas, and sought excuses to smite slavers.
To make matters worse, the Confederacy was not well governed, and its constitution so poorly ordered it could only survive with the type of federalism it so rejected.
It would still have struggled with the North over the addition of the western States. Texas understood early on that it had little choice but to join America in some manner, or be in continual and bloody fight with unstable Mexico. And while there were slaves in Texas, it was a minor institution.
And with the substantial Indian territories in what is now mostly Oklahoma also being a non-slave State, much of the route West would be blocked.
California and the New Mexico territory would lean towards the Union side for several reasons, as it could not practically join the Confederacy, for any number of reasons including the dominance of California, the Mormon territories, and the Taos Revolt, based on the fear of the Indians that they would be made slaves. And all too soon, Mexico would descend into bloody, protracted and vicious civil war itself.
So what of the Confederacy? Without the Civil War, there would still be considerable diplomacy and trade between North and South. But there would be a downward spiral in the southern economy, along with a general flight of wealth North. The western States would provide the agricultural products to the East, but the South could not afford industrialization.
Since no new slaves would be arriving, it is unlikely that slavery would have continued long. The migration of runaway slaves North might have resulted in a repatriation policy to Liberia in the North that while impractical in Lincoln’s time, would have become possible with vastly larger steel ships. But it would have had to have been voluntary.
Eventually, some of the southern States would have wanted to rejoin the Union, but the federalization of America would have taken much longer. The post-Civil War Indian Wars would have been less likely, and the French Army might have successfully regained Mexico without a battle hardened Union Army staring them down.
In the end, complete American reunification would probably result. The Alaska purchase would still be in question, as would American growth into Canada or even deeper into Mexico, and out into the Pacific.
Lincoln should also be remembered for what would have happened had he *not* gone to war to preserve the Union.
Years before the Civil War, slavery as an institution was dying in the South. Slaves were very expensive to purchase and own, at about $1,000 for a working adult male, comparable to $1M today, and were about evenly divided between domestic servants and agriculture. Slaves to a great extent were reserved for the upper classes.
Ironically, in the North, industrialism was having explosive growth with immigrant labor performing higher value work such as mining, steel making and construction. And such immigrant workers were only marginally more expensive to “own” than slaves, often living in company towns and living subsistence lives.
But everything in the South changed with the introduction of the cotton gin. Suddenly, an ordinary man could make so much money from raising cotton on a few acres, that he could afford to buy a slave. The following year, with his own labor, and the labor of that slave, he could buy one or two more slaves.
Overnight, slavery became a middle, and lower middle class institution. And just as fast, it lost its politeness, and became far more wicked. The wealthy had long used social pressure and the law to maintain the illusion that they were “uplifting” the slaves with religion and education, with the idea of eventual emancipation.
In some areas, corporal punishment had to be delivered by a Sheriff’s deputy, not by the slave owner, though this was seen as distasteful by the Sheriff’s officers. But with the cotton gin, all civility went right out the window. Slaves were to be worked until they died.
The percentage of slaves working as domestic servants dwindled, compared to the number performing hard labor in open fields.
(It should be noted that in the slave trade, slaves that resisted the slavers en route, or rebelled before reaching America, were sent to the French colony of Haiti, where they would be mercilessly worked to death. But after their sale in America, the worst punishment facing a slave was usually the threat that he would be “sold down the river”, to work in the harsh conditions of the sugar cane plantations. And that is the origin of that expression.)
But even with the boom of the cotton trade, another advantage of immigrant workers up North quickly became obvious: they voted. More importantly, as voters, this meant that the northern States gained political power in the House of Representatives in Washington. More voters equals more representatives.
This eventually resulted in the convoluted equation that slaves were “worth” 3/5ths of a citizen voter.
But as new States were added, with new US Senators, the South discovered to its horror that it would soon lose control of congress entirely. In their minds this meant not only that national resources would flow North only, but that their economic boom due to cotton would be strangled by opposition to slavery.
And all this leads up to the Civil War, and the question of what would have happened in the South had Lincoln allowed the division of the United States?
A good argument can be made that slavery was still doomed, on top of which, the cotton industry was doomed as well, because of the arrival of the boll weevil. The slave trade was condemned by the British, who ruled the seas, and sought excuses to smite slavers.
To make matters worse, the Confederacy was not well governed, and its constitution so poorly ordered it could only survive with the type of federalism it so rejected.
It would still have struggled with the North over the addition of the western States. Texas understood early on that it had little choice but to join America in some manner, or be in continual and bloody fight with unstable Mexico. And while there were slaves in Texas, it was a minor institution.
And with the substantial Indian territories in what is now mostly Oklahoma also being a non-slave State, much of the route West would be blocked.
California and the New Mexico territory would lean towards the Union side for several reasons, as it could not practically join the Confederacy, for any number of reasons including the dominance of California, the Mormon territories, and the Taos Revolt, based on the fear of the Indians that they would be made slaves. And all too soon, Mexico would descend into bloody, protracted and vicious civil war itself.
So what of the Confederacy? Without the Civil War, there would still be considerable diplomacy and trade between North and South. But there would be a downward spiral in the southern economy, along with a general flight of wealth North. The western States would provide the agricultural products to the East, but the South could not afford industrialization.
Since no new slaves would be arriving, it is unlikely that slavery would have continued long. The migration of runaway slaves North might have resulted in a repatriation policy to Liberia in the North that while impractical in Lincoln’s time, would have become possible with vastly larger steel ships. But it would have had to have been voluntary.
Eventually, some of the southern States would have wanted to rejoin the Union, but the federalization of America would have taken much longer. The post-Civil War Indian Wars would have been less likely, and the French Army might have successfully regained Mexico without a battle hardened Union Army staring them down.
In the end, complete American reunification would probably result. The Alaska purchase would still be in question, as would American growth into Canada or even deeper into Mexico and the Caribbean, and out into the Pacific.
But even with the boom of the cotton trade, another advantage of immigrant workers up North quickly became obvious: they voted. More importantly, as voters, this meant that the northern States gained political power in the House of Representatives in Washington. More voters equals more representatives. This eventually resulted in the convoluted equation that slaves were “worth” 3/5ths of a citizen voter.
The 3/5 compromise was part of the original Constitution of 1787. It was not some 'eventuality and it had absolutely nothing to do with voting rights. It was strictly for apportionment in the House of Representatives. That the Northern states grew via immigration while the South did not was due strictly to the fact that immigrants saw better opportunity in the North for jobs and eventual land ownership which they had little chance of in the South.
Texas understood early on that it had little choice but to join America in some manner, or be in continual and bloody fight with unstable Mexico. And while there were slaves in Texas, it was a minor institution.
At the time of the Civil War, over 1/3 of the total population of Texas were slaves and Cotton was the only significant agricultural product. Slavery was hardly a 'minor institution' in Texas.
And with the substantial Indian territories in what is now mostly Oklahoma also being a non-slave State, much of the route West would be blocked.
There were indeed many slaves in Oklahoma and slavery was perfectly legal there. Many were slaves brought by the Indians across the "Trail of Tears from Georgia and the Carolinas 25 years earlier.
Since no new slaves would be arriving, it is unlikely that slavery would have continued long.
Bringing new slaves into the United States had been illegal since the year 1808 (as specified in the Constitution). In 1808, there were approximately 1 million slaves in the US. By 1860, there were 4 million! A high birth rate among slaves was encouraged and rewarded by many slave owners and the slave birth rate was twice as high as the white population.
In 1860, if anything, the South was looking at an eventual overabundance of slaves if new territories and markets for excess slaves could not be opened either in the West or in Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean. The Civil War was a driect result of the conflic between those who insisted the slavery expand westward and those who opposed any further expansion the institution.
I liked the article and I think it fits. Besides, it was the entire world’s position and intelligence not just ours that demonstrated Saddam had to go, no different then the mad mullahs in Iran or Afghanistan. The President’s push for increasing energy supply on all fronts was VERY evident early on after 911 or should I call it a shared Bush/Cheney vision? Either way, the man fought and fought and fought for us, the U.S. citizen. It ruined some of his fine reputation amoung some indefinately, but should he now care? History will be a lot kinder to this President, and those whom blocked or gave away our national security will someday be exposed for what they really were, traitors.
He must certainly know the liberals love for power and attempt to push there personal failures as policy on our population is far less then the Presiden’ts love and sacrifice for our nation. That I know about GWB as indisputible fact.
I would make a strong wager if he could go back in time, he would have made other Cabinet choices, but hindsight is always 20/20. You took it all on your shoulders and that shows class.
Well done Mr. President. You were handed the biggest *hit sandwich since the Civil War (911, Recession, Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russian Islam alliance) and kept the bad guys on defense instead of our citizens being ruthlessly attacked again. Thanks for those years of feeling safe. Indeed, the last time things were so dangerous but I still felt safe was Ronald Reagan. Don’t give up on the counter-attack against our domestic enemies and please accelerate educating the public.
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