World Eater, all that matters is that the U.S. and the Iraqi government are trying. They’re trying their hardest to set things up to be as free and fair as possible. Probably. I mean, yeah, the U.S. tortured a bunch of Iraqis, and yeah, there are reports of the Iraqi government and police force now routinely torturing common criminals and detainees. Those people will understand once we tell them our intention was freedom.
Yeah i’m sure it’s a big 'ol misunderstanding.
Baa’thist and Islamist cells don’t cooperate with each other to attack American forces?
Look, if we withdraw before they’re able to defend themselves, they’ll succumb to one or the other. Thats what I’m getting at.
Fuck off, the actions of a few doesn’t diminish the acts of the majority. You coward.
Yes, because the use of militias somewhat brings about the situation of intimidation and violence to scare voters away. Combining that with the insurgents their effect, would be more disasterous and illegitimate than you’re trying to put out. Don’t you remember how the Nazis came to power?
Much like the KKK and right wing extremist parties in the US. With the fact that terrorism is a very real and potent threat in the country, I don’t see how election of parties which have promoted the killing of Iraqi civilians and US troops should be elected.
When these actions are carried out by the government, it doesn’t matter if only a few people participated. Governments are responsible for setting themselves up so that these things can’t repeatedly happen. Actions undertaken by representatives of a government are in fact carried out by the government itself.
The problem is that from where you sit, good intentions can excuse just about anything. So what if some neighborhoods got bombed by accident, destroying houses and killing children? The military was trying to fight insurgents. So what if some cabdriver got picked up by mistake and tortured by U.S. soldiers? They were just being overzealous – it was all a misunderstanding. So what if the government put into place by the U.S. hired the same police force Saddam used, and that police force now beats and tortures the people they pick up? We don’t know how else to restore security, do they have a better suggestion (that we’ll find acceptable)?
Right or wrong, none of these excuses matter. What matters is the actual result of our actions, and the likely result of our future actions. Lots of Iraqis are dead from U.S. bullets and bombs. Lots of homes are destroyed. Iraqis have been tortured by U.S. soldiers. The government we’re supporting is torturing people. All of this has our name on it. In addition to being immoral and antithetical to what this country should stand for, it’s also a guaranteed way to make people hate and fear us. Unless dipshits like you take off the rose-colored glasses and admit there is a problem, it’s only going to get worse.
I’ve never stated theres not been problems in Iraq, I just don’t dwell on them and use those isolated acts as proof everything in Iraq is a failure, because it isn’t.
Isolated acts? There are 30 attacks a day happening!
Iraq is a failure, deal with it. It’s easy to sit here and say we’re going to do this and we’re going to do that. There are intentions, and then there’s reality.
Oh come now, the house isn’t on fire.
It’s simply a unique fixer-upper.
And, what’s this with questioning how the war’s been run?
Why do you have America and Freedom so much?
Have, have???
Hate
And I got a full night of sleep last night too!
Meh.
I was born here.
What an odd question. 
You, and the typo-gremlins, suck.
I disbelieve Iraq is a failure. I’ll always stand by my convictions that what we’re doing now is a success, but a hard struggle. We’ll win in the end. 
Ah, the power of mindless disbelief.
Somehow, I don’t think you’d have as much baseless optimism if it was your home that was being ravaged by a poor planned invasion and your countrymen were being tortured, murdered, raped, by the invading forces.
Really easy to cheerlead for a stupid war when it’s not your life on the line as a soldier or a civilian. Just a hunch.
Courage is always easy when it isn’t your ass on the line.
“Clearly there are some (Iraqis) who are intimidated… I urge all people to vote.”
–George W. Bush
See?
" Intolerance
Those who would do good
Often do the worst evil–
If they have True Faith… "
-Robert Anton Wilson
You’re saying my unquestionable belief that Iraqis have a fighting chance is evil? I have evil intentions because I believe that Iraqis deserve freedom and a just government?
Yeah yeah, the same rolls reverse crap I’ve come across countless times. Like I’ve said, I don’t deny bad things happen in Iraq, but its war and yeah, we could do it a lot more professionally, but this doesn’t mean I favour shortchanging the Iraqi people because a few people in our army have been unprofessional. If we withdrew, that would be as criminal as the people believe the invasion was itself.
Yeah, I guess you could say that about *any * leader dumbass. So you’re saying just because he isn’t on the frontline, we should just cave in and Iraqis should disregard voting?
Evil? Naw.
Stupid? Wilfully ignorant? Dangerous? Short sighted? Yeah.
You don’t deal real well with the English language, do ya?
"Those who would do good
Often do the worst evil–
If they have True Faith… "
Your intentions, however noble they may be, are causing great, great evil. And you would be able to see, but you have ripped out your eyes and now claim to have a better sort of vision than the rest of us. You are Blind, and have True Faith in this war, and so no ammount of lamentations, no ammount of suffering, no number of failures, no series of slaughters, no progression of pain will reach you. The land will be drenched in blood, blood, blood. But you will not care, isolated in your willful ignorance and pipe dreaming.
You have sown the seeds, and soon it will be time to reap the whirlwind.
But it will not be only the Iraqis to suffer and die. Oh no, the blood that will flow will be of you and yours, and mine. You have taken a two bit dictator’s country and turned it into an international terrorist hub. You have energized and galvanized our opposition. You have given them recruiting videos to use for the next fifty years.
You have set Iraq on a course for sorrow, pain, misery, woe, horror, death, destruction, blood. And you do not see it, being Blind in your ideological cocoon.
Your war will lead to a civil war in Iraq, a civil war which may very well end up pitting Islam against the West. A war which may very well destabilize the entire Middle East. This is your legacy, this is your doing. And when the next bomb goes off, in Leicester Square or Time Square, you will know that somewhere some dumb kid, full of religious faith and zeal, schooled on pictures and stories of US soldiers murdering, raping, strapped a bomb to his chest out of hatred and fear… When that happens, you will be too Blind to know that it is your own goddamn fault.
Funny, you’ve not learned yet.
Go figure.
Shortchanging???
They want us out of their country. Read any recent poll. They want us gone. You are imposing your vision of ‘democracy’, at gunpoint, on a populace that does not want it. And yes, some of them want to vote, but what will you say if they elect a theocrat? Because, that is democracy too. Democracy, is mob rule.
What a gift we have given them.
And, my Blind fellow, those ‘unprofessional’ soldiers were acting on orders, orders which at least came from Rumsfeld, and most likely from the President himself.
And, now evidence has come out that the Brits have been torturing people too. That the ‘coalition of the willing’ has kept the torture rooms open, and just put in some ‘ex’-baathists, because hey, we need to maintain order, right?
If it was your country, you would not stand for it. Your lofty ideology would be lost the first time your mother, your sister, your brother, your father was arrested, tortured, raped. When your house was bombed. When your friends were gunned down. You are willing to sacrifice someone else on the pyre of your ideology.
You should be ashamed.
Not if we made a mea culpa before the UN, opened up bidding for reconstruction to all nations and not just Bush’s chums. If we put in place a multi-national peacekeeping force with the manpower to stabilize Iraq, maybe then we’d at least have a fighting chance. But right now, we’re overextended, hamstrung, and fighting a war in a country which is growing more hostile to us every day. Your boundless optimism is paid for with the blood of the innocent, of civilians, of soldiers trying to do what’s right. You and yours have hijacked the concept of preemptive war. You have sent soldiers, whose desire was to protect their nation, to die for nothing.
You have perverted the will of the UN, eviscerated international alliances, and given the terrorists the biggest boon they’ve had since we supplied money and training for the Mujhadin in Afganistan.
And this would all be fine, if you and your idiotic ideologues were the only ones to suffer. But you sit there, in your comfy flat, not going to bed to the sound of gunfire, not worrying if tomorrow you’ll be arrested and tortured for no reason.
But this world is interconnected, and sooner or later the ‘lump’ will be passed around. I just wish you idiots weren’t taking the rest of us down with you.
And, what’s more, when we descend into a second cold war, or a third world war, whichever way you look at it… then you and yours will sing to the crows, crying out that you were right all along. That war was inevitable. And you will beat the drums, and cheer as other people fight and die. And never, ever, will it cross your blighted mind that this is all your goddamn fault.
May history judge you kindly, may God have mercy on your soul.
Can anyone please tell me what we have to do to “win” this war? Please lay out the steps and explain how we realistically plan on carrying them out.
While you working on the request above, feel free to let me know when we’re going after Pakistan.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7452415
What the fuck? Maybe because I know the only way out of this is with the Iraqi government not collapsing, with the Coalition not withdrawing prematurely, thus ensuring the collapse of the entire state, and an even more catastrophic explosion of violence. I don’t like to think giving the terrorists more resolve to try and kick our ass is a good way out.
Iraqis were already suffering and dying, to withdraw from the country because a small minority of terrorists don’t want us to allow the iraqi people to choose for themselve what government they want is a crime in itself.
What makes you so right and me so wrong? Just because Iraq is violent doesn’t mean it will not be a success. In fact no one can accurately say whether will be success or failure yet.
Much like any country wants a foreign army off its soil, just like South Korea, or the Japanese, or even my own country, but then again, governments look past that to see the bigger picture.
What vision of democracy are we talking about here, the one in which two hundred parties are allowed to compete for the elections? That one we’re talking about? What versions that then, the one were Arabs are too dumb and violent to be allowed to organise such democratic elections.
Yes, I would too, last time that happened, Saddam claimed the gas he used was by accident, and those Republican guards who raped countless women in Kuwait and Iraq never happened. This war isn’t a disaster and your attempts to portray it as one is somewhat lacking.
Haha! Ideology, yes, I seem to think free elections and free representative government is an ideology worth death.
What alternatives is there other than letting the insurgents and terrorists destroy even more Iraqi lives and the whole society? You’d rather see us with leave because of a few mistakes rather than see it through? We owe it to the Iraqis to train up a force which can protect their government and their democracy.
Train the Iraqis ad nauseum.
They have not died for nothing, they’ve freed over 28 million people from the clutches of tyranny. My boundless optimism is because I know there are alot of Iraqis who will live and die for a just free society, and I believe we’re helping them make that happen, it just takes time, effort and yes again, training. Cutting them loose before they’re ready would be actually dying for nothing, because we wouldn’t of finished it.
Who’s this ‘you’ you think I’m an absolute Bush supporter? You think I supported the invasion? The WMD lies? I knew they were a crock of shit from the get go, but I also knew that something positive would come from all this, in that Iraqis would be free to elect who they wanted to lead for more than half a century.
Yeah sure, whatever. Melodramaticness never ceases to amaze me. I’ve never denied Iraqis have it extremely bad, but I don’t deny they have some good opportunities for their future either, and we helped them achieve it.
Quit with your apocolyptic bullshit, Bush will eventually be out of office, put your dummy back in. Ok?
Yes, I remember in historyclass , 1933-1939, you let monsters devour whole countries to ensure peace was guaranteed, and eventually we were drawn into the largest war in Human history, were you right then?
Conclusion:
Iraq might be a mess, but we’re somewhat on course, and we’ll actually make it, costly mistake but worth the trouble nonetheless.