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Iraq is not our country. While countries may have helped us during our revolution, they did not come and free us from England. We made the choice to break free. Iraq did not pose any significant threat to us. Not to our security. Nor were we under any obligation to free them, or mold them, or bring more injury to them.
As for Iran, they were doing that before Iraq, and moving rather quickly to a more friendly government. Iran's less desirable elements need a reason to push the hardliners forward. That's just one of the reasons they helped us going in. We enabled the less dersireable elements an opening, not to mention making Iraq more friendly for them.
Iraq was always a bad idea. A reckless one. No rewriting of history or new rationale will change that. In fact, no outcome there will change that.
And no, the cost of the mission was always going to be high. Bush the sr was correct when he said going in was easy, leaving would be hard.
Stubborn to the end. I made the argument and you simply shut down because you need your protest. You've placed too much emotional investment behind it to simply think it through now. Like it or not, Iraq was always about more than just Iraq. I keep stating this, but you keep pretending the argument is solely about Iraq as if it is an island without a region. Were it just about Iraq, then **** em. But the fact that we made them our problem for a decade under UN starvation embargo makes them our obligation. Instead of finishing our mission in 1991, we chose the destiny of these people and the region. The ironic thing is athtprotestors used "soveriegnty" as the excuse to turn our backs as if we hadn't already been executing missions in the north since '95 and dictating the national condition since '91. You are in denial and you have yet to make an argumnent about how Iraq wasn't apart of this 9/11 mission. Try as you may, even Mr. Bin Laden stated it was.
But this is the new America. Americans want us to turn our backs on allies now. They want us to deny our obligations and turn backthe clock to isolationalism. They want us to some how pretend that someone else will stepin top protect sea lanes, trade routes, and keep regional stability. That some how we can preach about democracy and still maintain Cold War prescription and celebrate dictator thrones (secretly of course because no Internet exists). I just don't get it.
By "those who mattered" I meant those who expressly deal with foriegn affairs, cultural issues, and wider national threats.
Most of those people opposed going into Iraq. We have a lot written on this by those type of people.
Seeing the man in Iraq as compared to seeing the regional threat are two different things. Public reasoning needs little more than a sensational headline and some extremist chain e-mails. I don't place too much faith in a people who use these things to determine national policy. Besides, aren't they too busy flipping channels or deciding whether or not to fully respect homosexuals? Foriegn affairs are for other positioned people to figure out, because the average public reasoning is void of the facts, history, and the efforts continually going on.
Most of our national conflicts came from neither imminent threat nor attempts to stop genocide. Your way of life has been built by missions that have contained and/or stabilized regions and trade routes. Good men have died for over two hundred years fighting in "wars" that have had everything to do with making sure you have all the luxuries Disney Land has to offer. Of course, the Gulf War was the only war in history where we drew a line in the sand and threw ourselves a false victory parade only to go and set up the mechanisms that would lead to 9/11. And still people deny the obligation to finish this even for their own sake. One may wonder what mechanism would have been set in play had we simply reached the German border and merely "contained" the dictator.
I think I address this in my other respnse.
Most of those people opposed going into Iraq. We have a lot written on this by those type of people.
I didn't shut down. I have limited time and often have to be quick. I read your argument and it did not convince. i tried in a short space to explain why.
And no, I don't see Iraq as an Island by itself, but rebutt with we made the region less stable and benefitted Iran more. The idea that changing Iraq would change the region was always flawed. Still is. We can't effectively remake the world with force. Nor should we. This misguided belief has been held by many a conquer, and I would not want our country to be listed with any of those.
Alright, alright. Not trying to get frustratedhere. I just don't see how you can't see the commen sense in this.
This is a pointless argument because Iraq is not the world. Nor have we ever conquered anybody. We have never assimilated or colonized. We have never kept captured territory. Iraq is no different. However, remaking the world is exactly what we have been doing since World War II. Notice how we were the most powerful nation on earth after World War I and still insisted that Europeans form into the League of Nations? Notice how we were themost powerful nation in history after World War II and still insisted on the creation of the United Nations? In both events, we proved what a powerful nation should do, which is empower the weak and unite the globe. For the decades after World War II, "McWorld" infected every corner of the earth and people enthusiastically invited the American way of life into their borders and jumped on our path. Globalization is largely due to the American will to change the world.
But back to Iraq, we are hardly forcing the wotld to change by force. Considering that the entire Middle East has had a modernist streak about it since the beginning of European colonialism, we are hardly forcing Iraq ro change. We just removed the thorn that held the region in check. I dare you to apply some common sense here..... Do you honestly believe that Al-Queda bombs and insurgent savagry upon their own fellow Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan haven't had an impact on the regional Muslims as a whole? That modernist voices haven't been using this to further their social goals against their oppressive governments (governments that give their radical crowd no way other than violence to express themselves)? That somehow, A-Queda's complete inability to recruit throughout the Arab world is not somehow contributed to this social and political change inside Iraq and their willingness to murder in the name of religious perversion and oppression? These are the dramatic changes that have gone on. In the end, we may owe our long term security to all those Muslims that were forced to look in the mirror everytime another 10 or 20 died from another Muslims hands. Before the Internet and international television, Muslims could look the other way and seek the foriegn devil to blame. Now they can't. Only peoplen the West keep harping on their inabilities to be responsible for themselves and blame Western cultures for daring to remove their dictators and oppressions.
I don't care who was aware of it. Prosecute her too as far as I'm concerned. The point is, it was a crime.
....and mr obama and his renditions, incarcerations without trial, evesdropping, and drone attacks that regularly kill inocents? Is mr obama a war criminal, professor?
I believe that waterboarding IS torture (how is it not?). I also have no problem with acknowledging that Pelosi lied on this issue and went along with it.
I think Guy was insisting that it SHOULD be done, not that it CAN.
....and mr obama and his renditions, incarcerations without trial, evesdropping, and drone attacks that regularly kill inocents? Is mr obama a war criminal, professor?
That would be my point, we pretty much need to start thinking about being "realistic" here. In my fantasy world I'm a lot younger and my wife looks suspiciously like a young sophia loren. {sigh}
Well, alrightie then!! let's start rounding up all american leaders starting with anyone still alive connected to fdr's administration because that man committed the most awful atrocities in american history. We might as well dig up anyone left from the truman administration as well. Nuking innocent japanese citizens just for nothing.....shame, shame. :mrgreen:
That would be my point, we pretty much need to start thinking about being "realistic" here. In my fantasy world I'm a lot younger and my wife looks suspiciously like a young sophia loren. {sigh}
lol I think your age is showing here Dutch.
There's nothing common about good sense. Many a person has thougth something sounded good and made sense only to find it was flawed, majorly flawed. You can't spread freedom or democracy at gun pont. And the fact is, iraq slowed down the movement and did not advance it.
No, Iraq is not the world. but it is the country we invaded needlessly.
And it is more than a little imperialistic to see us as remaking the world, especially by force. Woudl we really apporve of any other country, say Iran or Russia or China, remaking the world for us?
No, I don't see your argument at all.
Well, alrightie then!! let's start rounding up all american leaders starting with anyone still alive connected to fdr's administration because that man committed the most awful atrocities in american history. We might as well dig up anyone left from the truman administration as well. Nuking innocent japanese citizens just for nothing.....shame, shame. :mrgreen:
Only Americans are so deluded as to thinking that their life styles are not earned by others who can't live up to the surface image of perfection.
If we don't live up to the "surface image of perfection," as you call it, then our lifestyle is not earned, it is cheated.
Well, Guy IS a Libertarian.
Congratulations. This is the world you live in. Surface image of perfection is for your kind. Making it possible is for others.
America has not built its reputation on dreams alone. Why...I even heard about a couple atomic bombs over civilian cities somewhere in our history too. Our image is sound. But traveling the gutter to achieve our global station is sometimes always necessary. I live it and see it. It's the rest of you that would secretly rather just not know so you don't have to feel that you have to address it.
I'm not sure why you keep bringing up atomic bombs, that was no war crime. Its irrelevant to this discussion. Torture of prisoners, however, is very much a war crime.
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