Hopefully the discussion will be a world-wide celebration that Sad-Dam and Kim Jong iI are long gone and in Hades with all the other evil non-humans listed within the email I've sent to the Cato Inst. and many others:
In the Associated Press report of Feb. 6, 2003, Muslim ethnic people in Kosovo see Americans as saviors. One of them, Besnik Barhdi said; "If there is a God, his missionaries on Earth are Americans".
Where were the anti-war protesters when the USA and NATO (not the UN) went into the Balkans against evil extremists, ending the Bosnian war and then later controlled conflicts in Yugoslavia/Kosovo/Macedonia? The USA forced the Serb opposition to remove and extradite Slobodan Milosevic to the international tribunal in The Hague. Of course, the communist supporters of tyrants such as those belonging to "International Answer" did support Milosevic and others: http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4213
Well-meaning activists are being pulled by their noses by them and other similar groups. I also wonder how much they would protest if clones of the following evil leaders came into power in another country, perhaps Mexico or Canada (or Ireland for the British; or Monaco for the French who couldn't defeat them without help): Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Kruschev, Mao Zedong, Mao Tse-Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Hirohito, Pol Pot, Kim II Sung, Nicolae Ceausescu, Heinrich Himmler, Idi Amin, Hideki Tojo, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, Ayatollah Khomeini, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Deng Xiaoping, and of course Osama bin Laden (dead and suffering in Hades with the others based on Swiss analysis that his November, 2002 taped message was fake). These non-humans were all responsible for a total of at least 100 million and perhaps 200 million deaths. Besides Butcher of Baghdad Sad-Dam Hussein, there are others in the same league – Cuba’s “In –Fidel” Castro, Panama’s Manuel Noriega, Libya's Col. Muammar Qaddafi, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Columbia’s Manuel Marulanda, and N. Korea’s Kim Jong-il.
http://www.globalspin.org/million_dead_russia.html
 http://www.sid-ss.net/ref/vocmf2.htm .
Evil Ones: http://slate.msn.com/id/2059909/
Swiss analysis – http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,56670,00.html
http://www.idiap.ch/pages/press/bin-laden-eval.pdf
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.htm...ect=105&sid=1627978

A nation or an empire that has more power and influence than any other (a 'superpower') seems always to start acting paranoid & power-hungry. What happens next?

A)Is it possible for a superpower to mellow out & become wise?
B) Or simply quietly decay without messing up big pieces of the rest of the world with war?
C) Or meet up with another new kind of power that neutralizes it?

I think about the big superpowers of the past: China, Rome, the Maya, Great Britain..and I see them falling in to these categories. Whither the US? I think the Iraq2028 conference may begin to see an answer, though I suspect that the US is so large and rich and influential a country that its fate will still be spinning in the balance by 2028. But the upcoming events of the next few weeks will provide important clues.

For example, consider the difference between these possible futures:

1) U.N. Security Council approves an incursion against Iraq and many countries act together, as in the first gulf war.

2) U.S., and a couple of allies, act alone without Security Council approval.

3) US & UN reach some intermediate agreement, such as the 'more intrusive inspections' schemes currently making the rounds in diplomatic circles, and containment continues. After a while, containment is declared successful enough, sanctions are lifted, and ideas, money, food, influence and power flow in to the Iraqi middle class. The newly strong middle class finally gets its act together & overthrows Saddam.

I'm praying for the mellowing into wisdom of the US (path A) & the unfolding of some plan like (3) but I don't see a lot of historical precedent. What seems more likely is the quick collapse of Iraq, and the slow collapse of the U.S.

The optimism of this website -- Iraq2028 -- is the vision that both of these countries, and their neighbors, will have the sort of resilience and creativity to survive with the best parts of their cultures intact for at least another 25 years. I hope so.

New book -- new speaker?

I like Terry's idea about the jail cell ... but here's a question: Why is retrospective history only for elites? I propose adding some Iraqi citizens, some Iraqi dissidents/refugees, some Kurds, some US citizens (not Sean Penn!), some US service-people, and miscellaneous other Middle Eastern, European, etc. folks--including women!--affected, proximally or remotely, by these events.

Oh, I almost forgot:
Why is it that women are conspicuously absent from this list?

Bravo for doing something other than complain, like most of us are doing. In terms of who else to invite: the presidents of France, Germany and Turkey or their representative in the National Security Counsel might be good. Clearly none of them want war but they are all being pressured to back our rush to war for different and obvious reasons. My guess is that France will cave and then perhaps the rest and GW will get his resolution and do his worst. It would be very interesting 25 years hence to know more about the very difficult position these other major players find themselves in.

How will we look back on this? Well, first of all, let's hope someone is around to look back on this. I hope we'll look back on it as a time when the wasteful dependence on fossil fuel by a superpower combined with a civilizations whose primary infastructures are predicated on unbridled growth and short-term results blinded us to the simple principle: we=them. Killing, poverty, pollution and ignorance no matter how concentrated, no matter how small, affects all life on the planet.

My personal fantasy would be to lock George Bush, Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, Arial Sharon, Osama Bin Laden, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in a small prison cell together for the next 25 years, with no books, TV or other forms of distraction.

This is excellent - in our current rush to arms, it's good to think about the long-term effect war might have - let's hope GWB & Co. do as well.

Shouldn't Osama bin Laden be invited? Perhaps he should be the keynote speaker!!!

Wonderful! At the present moment the "characters" seem very intent on war and very clear about calling each other evil. You enspire hope by making it clear that at any time in the future (tomorrow perhaps) anyone can shift their perspective and people who once were enemies can now be friends.

Bravissimo! you should just keep this on the back burner & REALLY organize it in 2028. Cudos to Nico, too -- Ithink it is one of the most openminded and intelligent statements on this proposed war that I have yet to see. Thanks for NOT making it shorter!

There is conflict taking place but it is not between Iraq and the West, and there is no drive to war from Iraq. It is amazing that Iraq and Hussein could be compared to Nazi Germany and Hitler or even the Soviet Union and Kruschchev. Iraq is (now) a stone age country led by a party which has no grand vision, and on the scale of expansionism couldn't hold a candle to Nazi Germany or the post-War USSR. (A scud missile is about equivalent to a V2, only 60 years more 'modern'.)

The second Gulf War was about establishing the pecking order in the 'New World Order', and the third will be about re-establishing US authority against a moderately resurgent Europe, and the new kid on the block, China. It took two World Wars before the US could take the baton of world leadership from Britain, and given its political and cultural hegemony I doubt the US will be forced to cede this baton in the next 25 years, so I don't believe at that point there will be much to reflect on.

However it will be interesting to reflect on what I believe will be seen as one of the most ridiculous and pathetic episodes of political history. In this period unprincipled Western countries spent over a decade picking on a regime which they had supported politically and militarily for the previous 20 years (remember the first Gulf War against Iran?), which launched a massive 'liberation' campaign after a relatively minor incursion into territory that was historically Iraqi (divided only a British 'line in the sand'), and spent the next 12 years periodically bombing the country to protect 'Marsh Arabs and Kurds', people with whom they had and have no sympathy. (Turkey, a Nato member, regularly persecutes Kurds within its borders.)

But pointing up such hypocrisy is a pointless activity in a post-political age. More interesting will be to see what kind of liberated and progressive society the West creates in Iraq over the next 25 years. Will it be as inspiring as the modern Kuwaiti democracy, or the new egalitarian Afghanistan? How will Western countries that have forgotten their founding principles and themselves are scared of political and social progress create a vibrant new society in Iraq? Maybe in 25 years we will have learned that our current leaders were unfit to govern, and we will no longer tolerate their government.

(Apolgies for the length of this post. If I had had more time it would have been shorter. Nico Macdonald

You should print a conference agenda...

This is absolutely brilliant. I want to go! You forgot to invite some people, though - like the chancellors and prime ministers of France and Germany!

Hm. I'm not sure about this one, and, well, that's a good start. I like the idea of a future reference, the idea that Baghdad matters in 2028 - but I also know that a war will cut off the line for more than 25 years. 3 months of war - 30 years of terror...and Baghdad 2028 will be a generals meeting, discussing their next irrelevant move in an area of chaotic hate.

I'd love to see it happen differently.

snooweatinganima

Post your thoughts!