Zo maar een opinie

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/07/opinion/07KRIS.html

As one savvy official observed, occupying Baghdad comes at an
"unpardonable expense in terms of money, lives lost and ruined
regional relationships." Another expert put it this way: "We should
not march into Baghdad. . . . To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter
our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us, and make a
broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero . . . assigning young
soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and
condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban
guerrilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even
greater instability."

Those comments may overemphasize the risks, but they are from top-
notch analysts whose judgments I respect. The first comment was made
by Colin Powell in a Foreign Affairs essay in 1992; the second is in
"A World Transformed," a 1998 book by the first President Bush.

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