John Glenn quote (warning, some content may incite anger)

[JWsleep]

Originally Posted by mheisig

Political affiliations aside, everyone seems to skip over the fact that no country in human history has ever invaded another country, won the hearts and minds of the people, installed a democratic form of government and then had everything turn out well.

You can't shove your governmental architecture on people who don't want it. Most invasions in history were of the "invade, kill everyone and enslave a few" kind. I don't know where we get this idea that we're going to invade someone's country and they'll end up loving us and adopting our form of government.

This seems absolutely correct to me. The issue is that the neo-con view of the invasion didn't take this problem seriously. The main "greeting us with flowers" guy was Paul Wolfowitz, neo-con par excellence. This led the administration to down-play post-invasion planning. It wasn't folks on the left that made this mistake, it was the neo-cons and their blending of Wilsonian "nation building" with strong uses of American force. Kissinger, a realist, wouldn't have done this. Nor would have the elder Bush and James Baker.

Of course, GHW Bush and James Baker left Saddam in power at the end of Gulf War I for that reason, and I'm not into that move either, don't get me wrong. I was pro-invasion for the sorts of reasons spouted by Thomas Friedman: we can positively influence change in the middle east, and it's in our interests to do so. But a mis-planned and mis-executed war serves no one's interests, and gives comfort to those who don't accept ANY use of force in our foreign policy (and who tend to be highly suspicious of anything done by our military).