When I began this blog in 2001, I was appalled by President Bush's headlong rush to an illegal war (we were not in fact under attack). As time wore on and Bush began his assault on the Constitution and any people bold enough to criticize, I believed that "the republic is endangered more by actions of our own government than by those of any terrorist." With the election of a high-minded, compassionate, intelligent man like Barack Obama, my fears have ceased.
"Honor them with peace, not war"
United for Peace
Unlikely opponents to Iraq war
Opposition to the Iraq war that the President keep threatening/promising comes not just from Quakers, Buddhists and aging hippies.
Speaking to the Economic Club of Florida in Tallahassee last week, Anthony Zinni said that a war to take out Saddam Hussein would have "numerous undesirable side effects and should be low on the nation's list of foreign policy objectives." His speech was reported in the Tampa Tribune 8/24 and posted on their website 8/29.
Zinni says the U.S.ought to negotiate a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, and focus on eliminating the Taliban in Afghanistan and the al-Qaida terrorist network that launched the Sept. 11 terror attacks. He noted that Iran is more significant than Iraq in the war on terror, since it has been a leading financier of Islamic organizations like Hezbollah ever since followers of the Ayatollah Khamenei took American hostages in 1979. In addition to stretching military resources, an Iraq war would antagonize our allies in the Middle East.
Zinni is no flower child. A retired Marine General, he is the president's special envoy to the Mideast
The Tribune reports:
When Zinni commanded the Army's Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, he publicly trashed a plan spawned in the White House to train 200 Iraqi exiles. This group would train another 5,000 men who U.S intelligence forces would insert into southern Iraq. The plan envisioned the small force capturing an air base and triggering massive defections from the Iraqi army.Zinni derided the plan as Bay of Goats, a sarcastic reference to the failed U.S.- backed invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.Bush administration hawks, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have tried to keep the possibility of war with Iraq at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy.
Zinni took a shot at the hawks, noting their lack of military experience. He ticked off several prominent military men who have expressed reservations about the war: Secretary of State Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser under former President Bush; and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of operations in the Persian Gulf War.
It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, he said, and all the others who have never fired a shot and are hot to go to war see it another way.
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Palema
8:18 PM
Copyright © 2001-03 Pam Shorey
(except the specific sources credited in quotes)
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