Mark Shields for President?

February 14, 1993 - before the invasion/occupation

I think the president can go to war. I think that the question, Margaret, is what becomes success politically as well as militarily. I don't think anybody doubts that the United States could vanquish the depleted armies of Saddam Hussein. But the reality is, Margaret, here we are 58 years after World War II. The United States still has troops in Japan and Germany. Fifty years after the end of Korea, the United States still has troops there.

Anybody who thinks this is a year or two years, to build the kind of Iraq that is envisioned, that is, a democratic Iraq, multi-representational government with secure borders, having disavowed any use of weapons of mass destruction, living in harmony and some peace and prosperity, if it took 50 years in Germany and Japan, with homogenous populations with traditions it's an investment that the president has not prepared this country to make. It's just really... it's an enormous, enormous task. And I think given the American people's attention span on this war, they'd root and we'd win and that would be it. I'm telling you, I could see it turning to absolute ashes and dust before us.

... the President of the United States since Sept. 11 has never asked young Americans to join the military -- One -- never once. He has never said this is going to be long, it's going to be bloody, it's going to be painful, it's going to be costly. We're going to go to have forgo some pleasures, some privileges and some luxury, never. So as a consequence, American people are totally unprepared for any kind of admission as noble but as risky and difficult as building a multi-party multi-religious democracy in a land that is a construct, an artifact of a political drawing and not a natural place.

... I don't think there's any preparation. Margaret, just take Afghanistan. The last time we were involved in Afghanistan was when the Soviets were there. Ok, the Soviets leave, we leave. What happens? The Taliban. Now we're in Afghanistan. Girls can go to school with boys. Isn't that terrific? Karzai -- one of the great leaders of probably the area in the region is now the mayor of Kabul effectively because that land is essentially... we have lost interest in it. Do you hear Americans talking about the mission we have in Afghanistan?

... [Democratic Party] leaders, plural; basically what they've done is they've taken a position, the ones in Congress, supporting the president on this. The party itself is against war -- strenuously against war. And probably if we go in and the troubles do develop as are predicted and the long painful peace follows and difficult peace, then there they'll be even more against it. So you have the followership party of the party going in one direction and the leadership going in the other. The leadership is absolutely in my judgment paralyzed with what to do.

And then on another topic on the same program (pre Hurricane Katrina) -

... if we find out that emergency workers in the next crisis, in the next attack are deprived of the tools, the federal government is supposed to provide for them because instead we're diverting those funds to cut whatever tax it was that was burdening Bill Gates that day, then I think that there will be an erosion of the president's leadership qualities and a sense of his judgment in that way.

Once again February 14, 2003 and he got it all completely right!

Mark Shields for President!