[rrgg]

Originally Posted by AllNatural

Just like hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed in the second Irak war.

24,000 according to the United Nations.
http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/population.htm

[VanillaGorilla]

24,000 according to the United Nations.
http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/population.htm

The same UN who was being paid off by Sadam? Could you name me a war were innocent people were not killed? How about a war were innocent people were not killed when the enemy was wearing civilian clothes and mixing in with the population?

[rrgg]

Vanilla-- I agree. I'm countering AllNatural's bogus claim that "hundreds of thousands" died. Even the UN disagrees with him.

Besides, the US will leave Iraq. Saddam never made that promise, and his killings would have continued for years to come with his sons in power. He killed 500,000+ and mass graves were still being uncovered just last month.

[AcuDoc]

Originally Posted by rrgg

...He killed 500,000+ and mass graves were still being uncovered just last month.

Around 300,000 of those were with tacit U.S. consent. During the first Gulf war Bush I encouraged the Shiites in the south to rise up against Saddam. Then fearing a power vaccum which might bring Iran more influence if the uprising was successful, he allowed them to be slaughtered.

Republican Guard units were allowed to cross coalition lines to attack Shiites and Hind-24 attack helicopters were allowed to fly over coalition air space to help put down the Shiite uprising which we encouraged and hinted that we would help. Bush got cold feet and the results were 300,000 + men, women and children dead. And people wonder why they don't trust the U.S.?

If we invade every country with a despot then the list will be pretty long and we'll be fighting for decades.

IMO this war has cost too much blood and gold and has given us nothing. War is dirty, nasty, and brutal. Americans have an idea that we can have a "clean" war. There is no such thing. If more people realized this then maybe there wouldn't be such a whimsical (outside the military) view of going to war.

The war in Iraq has cost billions of dollars which had to be borrowed from the Chinese (treasury bonds)-our real foe, diverted military strength from Afganistan where we should already be finished, divided our nation, harmed families of vets while cutting vet benefits, created thousands of new Jihidis who would have never been involved in the conflict, and weakened our military by driving down recruitment numbers.

What will we get from it? Not enough to compensate for the losses.

[PastorofMuppets]

Originally Posted by AcuDoc

Around 300,000 of those were with tacit U.S. consent.

You have a very strange definition of the word "consent".

Using your logic....since we screwed up in the past we are therefore not allowed to do anything in the present?


Edit:

"harmed families of vets while cutting vet benefits,"

I would like to see a reference for this one. And no a cut in an increase is not a cut.

[AcuDoc]

Originally Posted by PastorofMuppets

You have a very strange definition of the word "consent".

Consent,
n : permission to do something;

We gave permission for Republican Guard units to cross through our lines to attack Shiites who were rising up because of our prompting them to do so. We gave permission for attack helicopters to use air space which we controlled to attack Shiite civilians. This was consent. What is your "very strange" definition of consent?

[AcuDoc]

Originally Posted by PastorofMuppets

Using your logic....since we screwed up in the past we are therefore not allowed to do anything in the present?

Why stop at Iraq then? Why not any number of African nations? Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia all detain, kill and torture thousands of their own citizens? How about Iran and North Korea who have much greater threats to our security then Iraq ever was? The list could become pretty long.

My point about Iraq was that it is not worth the blood or the money spent on it. In the world of real-politic, the returns are not greater than the costs so it is a poor expenditure of resources.

I'll get back to you on the specific numbers on the vet benefit cuts.

[PastorofMuppets]

Originally Posted by AcuDoc

Why stop at Iraq then? Why not any number of African nations? Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia all detain, kill and torture thousands of their own citizens? How about Iran and North Korea who have much greater threats to our security then Iraq ever was? The list could become pretty long.

Again, the same tactics do not apply to all situations. And the humanitarian angle is not the only angle here.

For example, Bosnia was at first a diplomatic effort (Dayton Peace Accord), which failed and was followed up by a massive air campaign.

North Korea has already let the nuke genie out of the bottle, sorry.

Libya....dealt with.

And please, are you suggesting an equivalent attack on Saudi Arabia? Sure it is a hotbed of nutjobs, but our support for the SA royal family is the only thing that keeps them in check as it is. Can you seriously comprehend the gigantic call to jihad if we attack SA? It would make the insurgency in Iraq look like a pre-school playground fight.


In summation, one at a time.

[rrgg]

If we invade every country with a despot then the list will be pretty long and we'll be fighting for decades.

Why is it necessary to even answer this? Is it not obvious to you that we don't have to invade them all? Different strategies work for different situations.

Take a look at this article from, of all places, the left-wing paper, The Guardian, which mentions effects on other countries in the Middle East. Syria, for example, is basically now surrounded by countries no longer friendly to them. Did you not see what happened in Lebanon recently? If the US were not sitting on the Syrian border, do you honestly think Syria would have reacted to Lebanon the way they did recently?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...475994,00.html

IMO this war has cost too much blood and gold and has given us nothing. War is dirty, nasty, and brutal. Americans have an idea that we can have a "clean" war. There is no such thing. If more people realized this then maybe there wouldn't be such a whimsical (outside the military) view of going to war.

Do you think it's a little pretentious to claim other people just don't realize that wars aren't "clean?" Who actually thinks wars are clean? I'm serious. I certainly expected deaths. In fact, before the war I expected 20,000+ dead Americans in the first 6 months, and I remember TV ads claiming far more.

But getting back to my original point-- I was not arguing whether the US should have invaded or not or whether it was worth it or done properly or whatever. I was simply countering AllNatural's factual inaccuracy that "hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed in the second Irak war."

[AcuDoc]

My point wasn't that we should attack all of those countries, just pointing out that Iraq was not the best of targets. It has been a waste of resources for little gain.

Syria's pullout of Lebanon had very little to do with the U.S. in the region. They pulled out because Assad the Dentist screwed up and overplayed his hand. Syria pulled out their military to avoid a complete backlash within Lebanon not because the U.S. is in Iraq (completely overstretched and with it's hands full). Syria still has a huge presence of intelligence and covert assets in Lebanon. The military pull back was also because Assad needed the troops to counter any possible internal moves by his own generals mounting a coup.

The U.S. sitting on borders has had little effect on Iran, same for every other country in the region. Egypt's elections are a joke, as are SA's faux local elections. We have lost far more in diplomatic capital than we have gained by this misstep.

Do you and POM really think the loss of American lives have been worth it? Do you think the Iraqis or any other Arab appreciates the losses we have taken?

[AcuDoc]

BTW I am enjoying the discussion.

[rrgg]

My point wasn't that we should attack all of those countries, just pointing out that Iraq was not the best of targets. It has been a waste of resources for little gain.

That's a loaded statement. I take your point but feel it's debatable whether it was a good candidate to target and whether there has been or will be "little" gain.

Elections in Egypt and S.A. may still be a joke, but less of a joke. My point is that there's been change. When I referred to Lebanon, I was talking about the reaction of people in the streets recently. The events in Iraq and Lebanon are reminiscent of what happened in Afghanistan and Berlin in the 1990's. People were inspired to see the Soviets fail and revolted elsewhere. This may be a stretch, but I don't think so.

I stick to the mainstream papers and am usually on the left, and I no longer think that Iraq is having absolutely no effect on other countries. It's no accident that I referred to the Guardian as just one example.

Do you and POM really think the loss of American lives have been worth it?

I wasn't arguing this one way or the other. Before the war, I had my own personal premise for invasion, which hasn't really changed, and was separate from what President Moron claimed. The humanitarian reasons for helping Iraqis do actually bother me, despite the naysayers. In terms of security though, I felt the US would have to topple Iraq eventually, and that it would cost far less to do it now, both in lives and money. Dealing with Saddam's sons in the future would have been much much worse. I felt the same in the late 90s. No one talks about what the alternative to invasion would have been, or how much worse it was. The alternative scenario is that sanctions would have ended in a few years, restoring sovereignty to Iraq, bringing Saddam back in the fold of the international community able to do whatever he wants again. Reading the Deulfer report reaffirms that this scenario would have been devastating.

Do you think the Iraqis or any other Arab appreciates the losses we have taken?

Why do you think this matters? I'm serious.

To answer your question though, yes. I base part of that on reading poll results along with Arab translations found at http://www.memri.org On a related note, I remember a reuters videofeed showing an Iraqi cursing Arab nations for shaming them, claiming they should have helped the Iraqi people themselves.

As a counter-question, "do you think" that 50 years from now, "Iraqis or any other Arab will appreciate the losses the US has taken?" My grandfather fought for Mussolini, but I sincerely appreciate what the US did for humankind. Liberation Day is still an Italian holiday.

P.S. What's POM?

[AcuDoc]

You have a good point about having to take on Saddam's sons. I hadn't thought of that but would there have been a reason to take them on in the future is debatable.

The elections in the region are still just as rigged as before. Until we see funds tied to elections which are certified by UN observers there will be zero change.

The reason I asked the question about Arabs appreciating the losses is for the people who now say we went into Iraq to free it. For them it should matter how the Iraqis see the "liberation". I truly doubt in 50 years there will be any celebrations of the American presence in Iraq.

POM is PastorofMuppets. I didn't feel like writing out the whole name.

[rrgg]

I hadn't thought of that but would there have been a reason to take them on in the future is debatable.

Technically you are right that in the end it is debatable since the war happened instead, but I honestly believe there's a lot of agreement about this scenario. Clinton guys were saying the same thing (I think Rubin has been writing a lot about Iraq for example).

The reason I asked the question about Arabs appreciating the losses is for the people who now say we went into Iraq to free it. For them it should matter how the Iraqis see the "liberation".

I'm not sure if you're putting me in that category.

I'll address it anyway. I think this is irrelevant since many Iraqis who'd benefit have not been born. Nevertheless, if you read the actual independent polls of people living in Iraq, this appreciation does exist significantly. I haven't seen them since last year, but I remember being surprised because of the instability still in the country. I'd also like to mention that the opinion of 1,000,000+ Iraqi exiles and half million dead Iraqis probably also counts. I'm not sure if you're dismissing that.

I truly doubt in 50 years there will be any celebrations of the American presence in Iraq.

You answered a different question than the one I asked. Should I take that as a no? ("do you think that 50 years from now, Iraqis or any other Arab will appreciate the losses the US has taken?")

You could be right, but it's pretty bold to say that about the future. Put yourself in Germany for example 60 years ago where things were much worse than they are in Iraq. Given the situation, it would have been hard to imagine what a signifcant ally Germany became.

Incidentally, I wasn't asking about celebrations, but in fact exiled Iraqis did actually celebrate after the invasion. So it already happened on some small scale.

[AcuDoc]

I wasn't putting you in the "liberating Iraq" catagory. Your position of taking him out sooner rather than later makes sense.

I do think though even with that as a reason, we could have at least waited until we were done in Afganistan. With proper manpower we would be finished there by now.

As it is right now we are so bogged down that we are simply a paper tiger and every country knows it. We have no way of projecting any power and won't be able to until we are out of Iraq.

BTW I find The Economist a great source of news and insight. The journal Foreign Policy is also very interesting.

[rrgg]

Originally Posted by AcuDoc

I do think though even with that as a reason, we could have at least waited until we were done in Afganistan. With proper manpower we would be finished there by now.

I don't disagree all that much about timing, but I don't know what you mean by "done." That could be many years. For example, the UN was (is) in Bosnia and Kosovo for 7+ and 4+ years.

If you just meant to say we could have waited another year to satisfy allies, then yes maybe. Realistically though, timing was not on the side of the US due to logistics (moving armed forces) and the short election cycle.

Here's something interesting from Foreign Affairs regarding the timing,

That remained its view for months, until February 2003, when Blair convinced Bush that he risked losing his leadership of the Labour Party if they did not seek a second resolution. Given Blair's staunch support up until that point, Bush understandably decided to switch his stance to try to help his friend.
About the same time, the French also reversed their position. After insisting from the beginning that war would require a second vote to authorize it, suddenly Paris began scrambling to avoid a showdown with the United States. France's ambassador in Washington, Jean-David Levitte, told Cheney in February that Washington and Paris should simply "agree to disagree." Through other diplomatic channels, the French advised the Americans to bypass the council entirely. "Your interpretation [of 1441] is sufficient [to justify war]," they counseled Washington, and "you should rely on your interpretation."