Camilo vs. Instead of War
http://www.insteadofwar.org/site/comments
Legally the name of those who died in Iraq is public record. Morally, you should not have used any names unless you had permission from the families. You know that there are families who do not want their loved ones name used in any association with an anti-war protesting group. Do you want to cause these families more pain? You are. How do I know this? I have spoken to three of the families and they said it hurts them knowing their sons' names are being used. It is your moral responsibility to use only the ones who want their loved ones name used.
Posted by: Shay on Oct 27, 05 12:40 pm
Shay, Which do you think will bring more pain to more families - the publication of the names of the fallen, or the loss of another 2,000 young men and women? Please don't confuse the actual tragedy with the telling of it. If you care about the pain of the families, then please take responsibility to see that no more families have to feel that pain.Human beings are not lemmings. The argument that more soldiers must die so that the first 2,000 will not have died in vain is nonsensical at best, cruel at worst. The question is whether the war is worth the huge cost in lives and national self-respect and dollars. At this point, a strong majority of Americans have decided that it is not. Now it's up to the politicians to hear our voices.You may think that it's scare-mongering to talk about the loss of 2,000 more soldiers. That's what Vietnam war supporters said after the first 1,000, first 2,000, first 10,000, first 20,000, first 29,000 American soldiers who died there, yet in each case the number did double (not even counting the millions of Vietnamese). The U.S. gets further from "victory" in Iraq each day, and the only question is how many more will die before our chickenhawk commander in chief and his chickenhawk VP and his chickenhawk defense secretary call an end to this abominable war, leaving Iraq in ruins and how many more thousands of American families desolate?P.S. Don't try to tell me that Rumseld is no chickenhawk. He coasted out the Korean War in Princeton ROTC and joined the Navy after the war was all over. In contrast, you may recall that thousands (millions?) of men left college to serve in WW2. But I'll admit that compared to Bush and Cheney, even chickenhawk Rumsfeld looks like a full-fledged war hero.
Posted by: Jonathan March on Oct 27, 05 5:35 pm
Shay is right. It's one thing to have the names of the soldiers that died in the war on terror being part of public record, but it is another to use their names to protest what they literally fought and died for. Sick and cruel in fact.Besides, it is a joke to think that the real reason you so-called anti-war protesters oppose this war is the costs. You don't believe in the mission. And where were you anti-war protestors when Clinton attacked Iraq? What about Bosnia, wasn't that war worth protesting? And if you want to look at war records better avoid the Swift Boat Vets for Truth.Iraq was not an imminent threat with WMD and was not part of the 9-11 attacks, but that wasn't why we went to war in Iraq. Our soldiers are fighting in Iraq because after the attacks of 9-11 we cannot allow tyrants defy weapons sanctions in the Middle East. That was the official administration foriegn policy in Iraq. The real for war was to create a battlefield of our choosing to take on the terrorists on their ground. Jihadists have been pouring into Iraq from neighboring countries to martyr themselves, let's give them what they want. Forget sealing the borders let those terrorists take their best shot. In the words of a great man, Bring it on!
Posted by: Camilo on Oct 27, 05 11:13 pm
Actually many of us did protest, repeatedly, when Clinton attacked Iraq, and Serbia as well. Not because we liked Saddam or Milosevic (many of us were protesting Saddam when Rumsfeld was cutting oil deals with him in the 80's, and when the U.S. was providing intelligence to him for his bloody war against Iran) but because these wars inflict great damage without solving the underlying conflicts.Cost: Would I support this war if it were free? Of course not; what good is free mayhem? But does the incredible financial burden of this war, with U.S. health and educational levels approaching second world levels, national infrastructure crumbling with neglect, and all of us paying for grotesque tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%, add to the war's obscene violence? You bet it does.Since even you don't seem to take seriously the official reason for the war I won't waste words on it. As for your stated reason: Do you seriously imagine that there is a fixed pool of jihadists and that this war is drawing them all in to die? Hypothetically: how would you feel if you came to believe that this war is creating jihadists at an ever-increasing rate? Would you then need to find anothe reason to support it, or would you then, finally, agree that it was wrong? Are there actually any circumstances which could lead you to reconsider your support for this war?
Posted by: Jonathan March on Oct 28, 05 12:09 am
Jonathan, did the anti-war movement really protest President Clinton’s use of military force? Well let’s say that they did; is there any use of military force that is acceptable? What is the anti-war movements answer to the War on Terror? Should we protest in the streets when we’re attacked? Or hold candle light vigils to convince the Islamo-Fascists like Osama Bin-Laden to put down their ideology of death and their tools of terror? What are and how would you solve the 'underlying conflicts' as you put them?Cost: What would it cost if terrorists attacked the U.S. again? How much are our American brothers and sisters lives of worth? What if you died in a terrorist attack? The last attack on the U.S. killed over 3,000 and the devastation to the city was an incredible financial burden. But after an attack like that can we afford a tyrant in the Middle East to defy weapons sanctions, with U.S. employment at 94.6%, and increased tax revenues thanks to tax cuts, to go kill terrorists in the Middle East? You bet we can.Is this war inciting more to join the enemy? The war in Iraq didn’t create the enemy; Al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. before the war began. We don’t know the number of the enemy, the only way to gauge their strength is by evaluating their attacks. Since the war in Iraq began the U.S. hasn’t suffered an attack, the enemy focus their attacks in Iraq against civilians, they cannot accomplish attacks like they previously could, rely on suicide bombing and IEDs, and is opposed by the majority of the population as seen in the Iraqi election.Hypothetically: If you found out that this war is destroying jihadists at an ever-increasing rate? Would you then need to find another reason to oppose it, or would you then, finally, agree that it is right? Are there actually any circumstances which could lead you to reconsider your opposition to this war? How do you like intellectual condescension?
Posted by: Camilo on Oct 31, 05 1:11 am
Camilo, the anti-war movement is not monolithic. Of the people who now oppose the Iraq war, many of us strongly opposed the military attacks on Serbia; some supported it; some didn't really think about it because it didn't seem to have much of an impact on their lives. Some are ethical or religious pacifists, some abhor all war but think that in some cases war is the lesser evil, some just oppose pointless incompetent wars.You seem to be concerned about our national security. Your assumption is that the war on Iraq is somehow helping to make the U.S. safer from terrorism, and your argument is that it is worth the cost in lives and dollars. But I don't accept your assumption. Bush/Cheney and their war in Iraq are putting us all in greater and greater risk every day that this war proceeds. As dozens of retired high-ranking military officers have stated publicly, Bush/Cheney dropped the ball on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan, instead attacking Iraq, a country which while ruled by a tyrant (partly of U.S. making), had at the time virtually no connection to Al Qaeda (certainly much less connection to Al Qaeda than did Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Germany, or the U.S. itself). Do you really think it's fine that the war in Iraq is drawing in jihadists, suicide bombers?!? Please remember that who is actually dying in this war, far more than the jihadists or the U.S. troops, are Iraqi civilians, by the tens of thousands, and Sunni Iraqi nationalist fighters, in numbers unknown. I find it morally unacceptable to send another country into bloody chaos because you have a theory that some small fraction of the people being killed might, some day in the future, have threatened our safety here at home. Yes, of course the jihadists are opposed by a majority of Iraqis. People want peace. The U.S. occupation is also opposed by a majority of Iraqis. As for the Sunni nationalists - they certainly don't pose a threat to the borders of the U.S. as you fear; they see themselves fighting for their own borders. They may well pose a threat to their Kurdish and Shiite neighbors, but the U.S. military occupation seems to be deepening that conflict. Back to your main concern, U.S. national security:Bush/Cheney quickly transformed a world which was overwhelmingly sympathetic to the U.S. after 9-11 to a world which by unprecedented majorities viewed the U.S. government as a dangerous bully.Bush/Cheney gutted our national public safety infrastructure, sending the National Guard, made up of cops, firefighters, paramedics, teachers, helicopters, jeeps, to Iraq to fight and die in this insane war, instead of being home to rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina. (Yes, there were also other factors in that debacle, including the sheer incompetence of Bush's crony head of FEMA and the Homeland Security bureaucracy.)Bush/Cheney opposed vehicle fuel standards, mocked energy conservation, and blocked serious research on alternative energy sources - not surprising given that they are both oil industry stalwarts, but certainly increasing the U.S. dependence on foreign oil.Bush/Cheney took the step, unprecedented during wartime, of slashing taxes for the wealthiest Americans (their real base), then borrowing the money to make up the shortfall. And who will be called on to pay off the extra trillions of dollars of debt for generations to come? - middle-class Americans in their taxes, and poor Americans in slashed public services. Bush/Cheney, instead of addressing the health care coverage crisis which constitutes the biggest security worry of most Americans, came up with a prescription drug "benefit" package for seniors whose main function is to transfer taxpayer money to the pharmaceutical industry.Instead of discarding our capital and young lives and national reputation in this desperate war in Iraq, let's invest them in these real national security issues.
Posted by: Jonathan March on Oct 31, 05 9:19 am
See The Next Attack : The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right , by Daniel Benjamin, Steven Simon From Publishers Weekly Review: The chilling first words, "We are losing," capture the tone of this scathing evaluation of the Bush administration's responses to the September 11 attacks. Benjamin, a Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow, and Simon, an instructor at Georgetown University, authors of the award-winning Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War Against America, do not mince words; America's foreign policy vis-a-vis the Muslim world is bankrupt and has "cleared the way for the next attack-and those that will come after." By invading Iraq, the authors argue, the U.S. demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of the scope of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, and has turned Iraq into a "country-sized training ground" for terrorists. The authors also explore terror's philosophical roots, analyzing how salafism, a strain of Islamic fundamentalism, dominates jihadist beliefs, as well as how the Internet helps facilitate global dissemination of its tenets, strategies and tactics. The authors' remedies for this baleful state of affairs include fostering an understanding that independent cell-based terrorist units, not state sponsors, are the backbone of the movement; dispensing with reflexive use of military solutions; improving links with foreign intelligence and law enforcement agencies; and recognizing the limitations of democracy in solving developing nations' problems. Not a book that'll appeal to readers whose politics are right of center, it's nevertheless a sobering analysis of compromised American security.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.http://tinyurl.com/d9lu8
Posted by: Jonathan March on Oct 31, 05 2:18 pm
Jonathan, All that and you didn’t answer my questions. Is there any use of military force that is acceptable? What is the anti-war movements answer to the War on Terror? What are and how would you solve the 'underlying conflicts' as you put them? Please don’t refer me to another book, in your own words.
It’s reckless and irresponsible to advocate immediate pull out in Iraq, especially because the reasoning is we’re losing and need to get out before we suffer more casualties. We’re winning the war in Iraq; Saddam Hussein is out of power, the Iraqi people voted for a new Constitution, and the Iraqi people elected a new government. The majority of Iraqis don’t want the U.S. to pull out. On December 15 the Iraqis will vote again, signs point to more Arab Sunni participation and an end to violence.
The only way we can lose is if we pull out our troops as you advocate, before Iraq’s security forces are ready. Then we would have a real scene of tragedy in Iraq with carnage and mayhem like you’ve never seen. And that would be the real disgrace to all the soldiers who worked and sacrificed for this mission and to the Iraqi people who will have let down once again.
Fighting the War on Terrorism has made us safer. The enemy has declared war on us and we must respond. In Iraq we couldn’t allow a tyrant to defy weapons sanctions with this new terrorist threat. What if Saddam’s WMD got in the hands of al-Qaeda and were used on the United States? Saddam Hussein is an enemy of the U.S., you may not recognize this fact, but Saddam does and we’re safer to have him behind bars. And the war in Iraq has created a central front where we can fight the Islamo-fascists on their ground.
Oh yes, “dozens of retired high-ranking military officers have stated publicly, Bush/Cheney dropped the ball on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan,” instead attacking Iraq. please name just 12 then if dozens have come forward publicly. We all know how wise they must be since they are no longer in the service doing their job. Of course they are criticizing the war because they think they could have done it better, but I doubt they advocate immediate pull out of the troops. Many retired officers would probably advocate higher troop levels and different tactics, but I doubt they would advocate an anti-war position like IOW. What is that position again? …instead of war, what?
Boo hoo poor Sunni Nationalist Iraqi fighters; those are the terrorists killing Iraqi civilians you fool. This minority was the favored class under Saddam’s regime that oppressed the Kurds and Shiites and stole their oil revenues. Of course the occupation bothers them and the Sunnis have conflicts with their neighbors. The Sunni nationalists a.k.a. Baathists, Saddam Hussein’s party, coincidently live in the areas of high terrorist activity like Fellujah. They can either start voting or be left behind for all I care.
As for your advised reading, your authors’ ‘remedies’ are complaints not solution. We’re supposed to ignore state sponsors of terrorism, focus only on cell-based terrorism, avoid military solutions, improve relations with foreign intelligence and law enforcement agencies and recognize the limitations of democracy. So in Iraq and Afghanistan we should not have invaded, instead we should have improved our relations with Saddam’s and the Taliban’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to apprehend the terrorist cells and all the time recognizing the limitations of democracy, our own style of government. That is precisely the post-Cold War slumber kind of foreign policy our enemy thought we would use, they saw us as a vulnerable ‘paper tiger’ that would not fight back. They were wrong.
P.S. Lamp, how can you say Iraq was sovereign, because of benevolent President Hussein’s 99% electoral approval rating (1% margin of error)? And, what is that about the Chinese being after our/Iraqi oil? Are you dumb, or just stupid? Those soldiers are heroes that risk their lives and sacrifice a great deal for scum like you to be able to slander them. Well, at least you’re more honest then your companions like Jonathan and IOW that pretend to mourn our soldiers lives purely for political motives.
Legally the name of those who died in Iraq is public record. Morally, you should not have used any names unless you had permission from the families. You know that there are families who do not want their loved ones name used in any association with an anti-war protesting group. Do you want to cause these families more pain? You are. How do I know this? I have spoken to three of the families and they said it hurts them knowing their sons' names are being used. It is your moral responsibility to use only the ones who want their loved ones name used.
Posted by: Shay on Oct 27, 05 12:40 pm
Shay, Which do you think will bring more pain to more families - the publication of the names of the fallen, or the loss of another 2,000 young men and women? Please don't confuse the actual tragedy with the telling of it. If you care about the pain of the families, then please take responsibility to see that no more families have to feel that pain.Human beings are not lemmings. The argument that more soldiers must die so that the first 2,000 will not have died in vain is nonsensical at best, cruel at worst. The question is whether the war is worth the huge cost in lives and national self-respect and dollars. At this point, a strong majority of Americans have decided that it is not. Now it's up to the politicians to hear our voices.You may think that it's scare-mongering to talk about the loss of 2,000 more soldiers. That's what Vietnam war supporters said after the first 1,000, first 2,000, first 10,000, first 20,000, first 29,000 American soldiers who died there, yet in each case the number did double (not even counting the millions of Vietnamese). The U.S. gets further from "victory" in Iraq each day, and the only question is how many more will die before our chickenhawk commander in chief and his chickenhawk VP and his chickenhawk defense secretary call an end to this abominable war, leaving Iraq in ruins and how many more thousands of American families desolate?P.S. Don't try to tell me that Rumseld is no chickenhawk. He coasted out the Korean War in Princeton ROTC and joined the Navy after the war was all over. In contrast, you may recall that thousands (millions?) of men left college to serve in WW2. But I'll admit that compared to Bush and Cheney, even chickenhawk Rumsfeld looks like a full-fledged war hero.
Posted by: Jonathan March on Oct 27, 05 5:35 pm
Shay is right. It's one thing to have the names of the soldiers that died in the war on terror being part of public record, but it is another to use their names to protest what they literally fought and died for. Sick and cruel in fact.Besides, it is a joke to think that the real reason you so-called anti-war protesters oppose this war is the costs. You don't believe in the mission. And where were you anti-war protestors when Clinton attacked Iraq? What about Bosnia, wasn't that war worth protesting? And if you want to look at war records better avoid the Swift Boat Vets for Truth.Iraq was not an imminent threat with WMD and was not part of the 9-11 attacks, but that wasn't why we went to war in Iraq. Our soldiers are fighting in Iraq because after the attacks of 9-11 we cannot allow tyrants defy weapons sanctions in the Middle East. That was the official administration foriegn policy in Iraq. The real for war was to create a battlefield of our choosing to take on the terrorists on their ground. Jihadists have been pouring into Iraq from neighboring countries to martyr themselves, let's give them what they want. Forget sealing the borders let those terrorists take their best shot. In the words of a great man, Bring it on!
Posted by: Camilo on Oct 27, 05 11:13 pm
Actually many of us did protest, repeatedly, when Clinton attacked Iraq, and Serbia as well. Not because we liked Saddam or Milosevic (many of us were protesting Saddam when Rumsfeld was cutting oil deals with him in the 80's, and when the U.S. was providing intelligence to him for his bloody war against Iran) but because these wars inflict great damage without solving the underlying conflicts.Cost: Would I support this war if it were free? Of course not; what good is free mayhem? But does the incredible financial burden of this war, with U.S. health and educational levels approaching second world levels, national infrastructure crumbling with neglect, and all of us paying for grotesque tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%, add to the war's obscene violence? You bet it does.Since even you don't seem to take seriously the official reason for the war I won't waste words on it. As for your stated reason: Do you seriously imagine that there is a fixed pool of jihadists and that this war is drawing them all in to die? Hypothetically: how would you feel if you came to believe that this war is creating jihadists at an ever-increasing rate? Would you then need to find anothe reason to support it, or would you then, finally, agree that it was wrong? Are there actually any circumstances which could lead you to reconsider your support for this war?
Posted by: Jonathan March on Oct 28, 05 12:09 am
Jonathan, did the anti-war movement really protest President Clinton’s use of military force? Well let’s say that they did; is there any use of military force that is acceptable? What is the anti-war movements answer to the War on Terror? Should we protest in the streets when we’re attacked? Or hold candle light vigils to convince the Islamo-Fascists like Osama Bin-Laden to put down their ideology of death and their tools of terror? What are and how would you solve the 'underlying conflicts' as you put them?Cost: What would it cost if terrorists attacked the U.S. again? How much are our American brothers and sisters lives of worth? What if you died in a terrorist attack? The last attack on the U.S. killed over 3,000 and the devastation to the city was an incredible financial burden. But after an attack like that can we afford a tyrant in the Middle East to defy weapons sanctions, with U.S. employment at 94.6%, and increased tax revenues thanks to tax cuts, to go kill terrorists in the Middle East? You bet we can.Is this war inciting more to join the enemy? The war in Iraq didn’t create the enemy; Al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. before the war began. We don’t know the number of the enemy, the only way to gauge their strength is by evaluating their attacks. Since the war in Iraq began the U.S. hasn’t suffered an attack, the enemy focus their attacks in Iraq against civilians, they cannot accomplish attacks like they previously could, rely on suicide bombing and IEDs, and is opposed by the majority of the population as seen in the Iraqi election.Hypothetically: If you found out that this war is destroying jihadists at an ever-increasing rate? Would you then need to find another reason to oppose it, or would you then, finally, agree that it is right? Are there actually any circumstances which could lead you to reconsider your opposition to this war? How do you like intellectual condescension?
Posted by: Camilo on Oct 31, 05 1:11 am
Camilo, the anti-war movement is not monolithic. Of the people who now oppose the Iraq war, many of us strongly opposed the military attacks on Serbia; some supported it; some didn't really think about it because it didn't seem to have much of an impact on their lives. Some are ethical or religious pacifists, some abhor all war but think that in some cases war is the lesser evil, some just oppose pointless incompetent wars.You seem to be concerned about our national security. Your assumption is that the war on Iraq is somehow helping to make the U.S. safer from terrorism, and your argument is that it is worth the cost in lives and dollars. But I don't accept your assumption. Bush/Cheney and their war in Iraq are putting us all in greater and greater risk every day that this war proceeds. As dozens of retired high-ranking military officers have stated publicly, Bush/Cheney dropped the ball on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan, instead attacking Iraq, a country which while ruled by a tyrant (partly of U.S. making), had at the time virtually no connection to Al Qaeda (certainly much less connection to Al Qaeda than did Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Germany, or the U.S. itself). Do you really think it's fine that the war in Iraq is drawing in jihadists, suicide bombers?!? Please remember that who is actually dying in this war, far more than the jihadists or the U.S. troops, are Iraqi civilians, by the tens of thousands, and Sunni Iraqi nationalist fighters, in numbers unknown. I find it morally unacceptable to send another country into bloody chaos because you have a theory that some small fraction of the people being killed might, some day in the future, have threatened our safety here at home. Yes, of course the jihadists are opposed by a majority of Iraqis. People want peace. The U.S. occupation is also opposed by a majority of Iraqis. As for the Sunni nationalists - they certainly don't pose a threat to the borders of the U.S. as you fear; they see themselves fighting for their own borders. They may well pose a threat to their Kurdish and Shiite neighbors, but the U.S. military occupation seems to be deepening that conflict. Back to your main concern, U.S. national security:Bush/Cheney quickly transformed a world which was overwhelmingly sympathetic to the U.S. after 9-11 to a world which by unprecedented majorities viewed the U.S. government as a dangerous bully.Bush/Cheney gutted our national public safety infrastructure, sending the National Guard, made up of cops, firefighters, paramedics, teachers, helicopters, jeeps, to Iraq to fight and die in this insane war, instead of being home to rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina. (Yes, there were also other factors in that debacle, including the sheer incompetence of Bush's crony head of FEMA and the Homeland Security bureaucracy.)Bush/Cheney opposed vehicle fuel standards, mocked energy conservation, and blocked serious research on alternative energy sources - not surprising given that they are both oil industry stalwarts, but certainly increasing the U.S. dependence on foreign oil.Bush/Cheney took the step, unprecedented during wartime, of slashing taxes for the wealthiest Americans (their real base), then borrowing the money to make up the shortfall. And who will be called on to pay off the extra trillions of dollars of debt for generations to come? - middle-class Americans in their taxes, and poor Americans in slashed public services. Bush/Cheney, instead of addressing the health care coverage crisis which constitutes the biggest security worry of most Americans, came up with a prescription drug "benefit" package for seniors whose main function is to transfer taxpayer money to the pharmaceutical industry.Instead of discarding our capital and young lives and national reputation in this desperate war in Iraq, let's invest them in these real national security issues.
Posted by: Jonathan March on Oct 31, 05 9:19 am
See The Next Attack : The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right , by Daniel Benjamin, Steven Simon From Publishers Weekly Review: The chilling first words, "We are losing," capture the tone of this scathing evaluation of the Bush administration's responses to the September 11 attacks. Benjamin, a Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow, and Simon, an instructor at Georgetown University, authors of the award-winning Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War Against America, do not mince words; America's foreign policy vis-a-vis the Muslim world is bankrupt and has "cleared the way for the next attack-and those that will come after." By invading Iraq, the authors argue, the U.S. demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of the scope of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, and has turned Iraq into a "country-sized training ground" for terrorists. The authors also explore terror's philosophical roots, analyzing how salafism, a strain of Islamic fundamentalism, dominates jihadist beliefs, as well as how the Internet helps facilitate global dissemination of its tenets, strategies and tactics. The authors' remedies for this baleful state of affairs include fostering an understanding that independent cell-based terrorist units, not state sponsors, are the backbone of the movement; dispensing with reflexive use of military solutions; improving links with foreign intelligence and law enforcement agencies; and recognizing the limitations of democracy in solving developing nations' problems. Not a book that'll appeal to readers whose politics are right of center, it's nevertheless a sobering analysis of compromised American security.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.http://tinyurl.com/d9lu8
Posted by: Jonathan March on Oct 31, 05 2:18 pm
Jonathan, All that and you didn’t answer my questions. Is there any use of military force that is acceptable? What is the anti-war movements answer to the War on Terror? What are and how would you solve the 'underlying conflicts' as you put them? Please don’t refer me to another book, in your own words.
It’s reckless and irresponsible to advocate immediate pull out in Iraq, especially because the reasoning is we’re losing and need to get out before we suffer more casualties. We’re winning the war in Iraq; Saddam Hussein is out of power, the Iraqi people voted for a new Constitution, and the Iraqi people elected a new government. The majority of Iraqis don’t want the U.S. to pull out. On December 15 the Iraqis will vote again, signs point to more Arab Sunni participation and an end to violence.
The only way we can lose is if we pull out our troops as you advocate, before Iraq’s security forces are ready. Then we would have a real scene of tragedy in Iraq with carnage and mayhem like you’ve never seen. And that would be the real disgrace to all the soldiers who worked and sacrificed for this mission and to the Iraqi people who will have let down once again.
Fighting the War on Terrorism has made us safer. The enemy has declared war on us and we must respond. In Iraq we couldn’t allow a tyrant to defy weapons sanctions with this new terrorist threat. What if Saddam’s WMD got in the hands of al-Qaeda and were used on the United States? Saddam Hussein is an enemy of the U.S., you may not recognize this fact, but Saddam does and we’re safer to have him behind bars. And the war in Iraq has created a central front where we can fight the Islamo-fascists on their ground.
Oh yes, “dozens of retired high-ranking military officers have stated publicly, Bush/Cheney dropped the ball on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan,” instead attacking Iraq. please name just 12 then if dozens have come forward publicly. We all know how wise they must be since they are no longer in the service doing their job. Of course they are criticizing the war because they think they could have done it better, but I doubt they advocate immediate pull out of the troops. Many retired officers would probably advocate higher troop levels and different tactics, but I doubt they would advocate an anti-war position like IOW. What is that position again? …instead of war, what?
Boo hoo poor Sunni Nationalist Iraqi fighters; those are the terrorists killing Iraqi civilians you fool. This minority was the favored class under Saddam’s regime that oppressed the Kurds and Shiites and stole their oil revenues. Of course the occupation bothers them and the Sunnis have conflicts with their neighbors. The Sunni nationalists a.k.a. Baathists, Saddam Hussein’s party, coincidently live in the areas of high terrorist activity like Fellujah. They can either start voting or be left behind for all I care.
As for your advised reading, your authors’ ‘remedies’ are complaints not solution. We’re supposed to ignore state sponsors of terrorism, focus only on cell-based terrorism, avoid military solutions, improve relations with foreign intelligence and law enforcement agencies and recognize the limitations of democracy. So in Iraq and Afghanistan we should not have invaded, instead we should have improved our relations with Saddam’s and the Taliban’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to apprehend the terrorist cells and all the time recognizing the limitations of democracy, our own style of government. That is precisely the post-Cold War slumber kind of foreign policy our enemy thought we would use, they saw us as a vulnerable ‘paper tiger’ that would not fight back. They were wrong.
P.S. Lamp, how can you say Iraq was sovereign, because of benevolent President Hussein’s 99% electoral approval rating (1% margin of error)? And, what is that about the Chinese being after our/Iraqi oil? Are you dumb, or just stupid? Those soldiers are heroes that risk their lives and sacrifice a great deal for scum like you to be able to slander them. Well, at least you’re more honest then your companions like Jonathan and IOW that pretend to mourn our soldiers lives purely for political motives.
posted by Camilo at 2:39 PM
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