Orson Scott Card Has Plenty to Say

[billroper]

In this article, author Orson Scott Card has a great deal to say about the situation in Iraq. It's entirely likely that many of you will disagree with him. Heck, I'm sure that I don't agree with him about everything.

On the other hand, I don't always agree with myself about everything...

Comments

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Is he still claiming to be a liberal? Even long after he espoused very non-liberal points of view, he still claimed he was one.

[billroper]

I wouldn't know, to be honest about it.

[patoadam]

Ywill not be surprised to hear that I disagree with OSC almost completely. I only have time to touch on a few points.

OSC writes:
Various Democrats are making a big deal about President Bush landing on that aircraft carrier and saying to American servicemen: "Mission accomplished!"
What they say is, "The mission was not accomplished. It's still not accomplished!"

Yup, Bush and Cheney had no idea of the extent of the opposition we would face after toppling Saddam's government. Cheney even claimed that Iraqis would greet us as liberators.

OSC writes:
At the same time, President Bush stated very clearly that there was still much to do and the war on terror would take a long time and require many sacrifices.

President Bush does not understand or does not admit that our invasion and occupation of Iraq has fostered terrorism by destabilizing Iraq and fomenting hatred of the US throughout the Islamic world. In the words of Richard A. Clarke, who at the time of 9/11 was the top counterterrorism official in the Bush administration,

"Nothing America could have done would have provided al Qaeda... a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country... It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mounain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq'."

What did invading Iraq have to do with terrorism? The Saddam Hussein regime had not attempted an act of terrorism against the US since 1993 (although Saddam Hussein did encourage acts of terrorism against Israel). At the time of the invasion, there was one terrorist camp in Iraq, in an area of the country not controlled by Saddam Hussein. Now there are 20,000 insurgents in Iraq, trying to kill our soldiers.


OSC writes:
Is Edwards saying that President Bush should have stepped in and told the experts at Defense that they were wrong about how much resistance we'd meet after our military victory? How exactly was the President supposed to know this in advance?

Bush and his inner circle advisors ignored experts in the State Department who predicted this.

OSC writes:
Sometimes a President chooses wrong. That's inevitable. Much of a President's job is guesswork, based on the best available information.

Bush doesn't have the best available information because he "isn't much of a reader" and he relies almost exclusively on his inner circle of advisors.

British Ambassador to Italy Ivor Roberts kicked up a huge fuss this week on several levels when he lobbed this little grenade into a closed conference of British and Italian diplomats: "George W. Bush is the best recruiting sergeant for al Qaeda," Roberts said. "If there is anyone ready to celebrate his eventual reelection, it is al Qaeda."

Yup.

OSC continues:
This is, of course, ridiculous. Al Qaeda has been under relentless pressure under President Bush;

Nonsense. We failed to send enough troops to Afghanistan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, possibly because Bush wanted them available in Iraq. As I have already stated, our invasion of Iraq has fostered terrorism.

Much of the information I have posted here comes from "Against All Enemies" by Rihard A. Clarke, which I think all American voters should read.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

I think Mr. Card falls into that category of observer who desperately wants to believe that his country, and most importantly, his president, is acting in the best possible way, given the facts that he is aware of at any given time.

When it becomes clearly evident that the President, and by extension, the government, has acted in error, by deliberately ignoring facts that disagree with what the President wanted to do, covering and back-filling become the order of the day. The Eager Believer seizes on the backfill attempts as a man lost at sea clings to a life preserver.

I'm afraid that this is what OSC is doing in this article: clinging to the life preserver of Unintended Results, and wishing, hoping, praying that the President is doing the right thing *right now* even though he didn't do the right thing in the past.

Meanwhile, the best predicter of future results is past history. Anyone looking at the past history of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq cannot fail to realize that huge mistakes were made at every step of those actions. So they are in effect hoping that the President will do something different the next time around. Why should he? If he gets re-elected, it's a mandate to 'Stay the Course.'

It really is disturbing that people with the intellect of OSC are falling into the pit of believing what they're told over what they can see with their own eyes.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite writers of fiction, but what I've seen of his political opinions in, say, the last 10 years leaves me with absolutely no respect for what he says outside of his fiction. This piece is no exception.

He starts out by claiming that Bush was right to claim and continue to claim that major combat was over on the date that he originally declared it to be, despite the fact that we still have well over 100,000 forces deployed, taking fire, and taking casualties. Only a twit would argue that the Iraq operation today is not "major", and to argue that it's not "combat" is to piss on the graves of our servicemen who are still dying every week.

Then he says something about the main source of problems being Rumsfeld's fault, as if Bush had no responsibility for Rumsfeld's policies, or for either his initial appointment or his continued service. Sorry, dude -- if Rumsfeld is a major source of problems, that means Bush has to go, because we don't elect the Secretary of Defense, but we do elect the President.

I couldn't stomach any more of the drivel. Stick to novels, Scott.