I agree with Scylla here. While I dislike the motives and the behavior of the american government regarding this issue (propaganda, arrogance, lies, etc.), putting an end to a dictatorship is always a good thing. And I think that the overwhelming majority of the iraqis will still be much better off in the short and the long term.
It’s amazing the number of people who argue that this war will make things worse. What the hell have you people been sniffing? You don’t know anything about dictatorships. Some people who do know (iraqi refugees) are favorable to this war. And everybody agrees that removing Saddam is a good thing.
The only reason an american should be against this war is because of the rise of hatred towards the U.S. But guess what: people have been hating America for a long time. First world nations citizens hate it because of it’s arrogance and hypocrisy (kyoto treaty, backing 1 U.N resolution for every 9 they ignore or openly contest). The muslims hate it because it supports Israel. In any case, remember,the united states will profit economically and otherwise from this war. If you have been listening in class, you probably know that the costs of this little military enterprise will be paid for with iraqi oil. As a bonus, there will be reconstruction contracts, a very promising brand new market, conveniently positionned military bases, a new government friendly to the U.S, more oil flowing in the open market, and probably many more things that I am missing.
On the downside, you have an increased probability of terrorist attacks. Until now, there has not been a single attack since september 11th so maybe this whole terrorist threat has been exagerated. In any case, Alquaeda is being weakened so any new attacks will probably cause less casualties. Even if I’m wrong on this point, what are a few dozens or hundred casualties a year? A drop in the ocean. Just another neverending issue in a country with a culture of fear that allows the people in power to pass even more insane and restrictive laws they can enforce selectively. No more important nor hopeless than the war on drugs.
Hmm, I started this thread as a short “I agree” thread and I ended up rambling about 50 different things. Well…I needed to vent. In any case, I stand by my words.
Sorry, but I don’t have the slightest idea what makes you think Germany is coming around. There isn’t even a hint of an indication. The fact that the leader of the opposition party expresses support and manages to bludgeon her fellow party members in parliament to support her against the declared wishes of their constituents has no impact on Germany as a nation, nor on the German government.
40 countries are a tiny fraction of the world, and two thirds of them expressed moral support in exchange for the US not cancelling foreign aid to those countries. That, after all, was precisely the goal of a recent law stating that foreign aid can only be received by countries who do not act in a fashion detrimental to US interests. Sorry, blackmail ain’t support.
Except that’s not what you’re doing.
The US is as much in violation of 1441 as Iraq is, and the US has no authority to interpret 1441 in a fashion suitable to its aims. If an individual country could do so, Iraq could simply rule itself as compliant.
No, putting an end to a dictatorship is NOT always a good thing. And Afghanis were CERTAINLY not better off once the Najibullah regime was removed. Putting an end to a dictatorship is only a good thing if you are in position to make things better.
[quote**
It’s amazing the number of people who argue that this war will make things worse. What the hell have you people been sniffing? You don’t know anything about dictatorships. Some people who do know (iraqi refugees) are favorable to this war. And everybody agrees that removing Saddam is a good thing.
**[/quote]
Thanks, but I rather think it is you who don’t know anything about the position of people who DO know. Numerous Iraqi expats are heading back to Iraq to fight the US, rather willing to put up with a cruel dictator than seeing their country stripped of its sovereignty. And numerous Iraqi refugees march on german streets with signs reading ‘No to dictatorship - No to this war’. Just yesterday, Iraqi refugees in Amman were interviewed on German TV, expressing a feeling of betrayal against the US in light of the civilian casualties.
Thanks for demonstrating so convincingly that the goal is NOT liberation of the Iraqis. Because if that were the goal, they wouldn’t have to pay for the damage and THEY would decide who gets reconstruction contracts. And you are seriously kidding yourself if you expect a new government to be unconditionally friendly to the US. Especially if you intend to follow through with the above. Stripping people of their property and hogtieing their economy is not a good way to induce friendliness.
I am not sure what makes you think that Al Qaeda is being weakened. It is in fact assumed by the intelligence community to be stronger perhaps than before 9/11, and militant groups are currently receiving a surge of new recruits.
Which ignores US responsibility for the dead during the post-war insurrection, is ridiculously optimistic about post-war stability, and completely blacks out flare-out conflicts in other countries.
As such, it is about as accurate as judging the costs of war by Saturday’s lottery numbers.
First
I was against this war. I remain convinced that it represents a seignificant error in international strategy and that the role that Rumsfeld, Bush, et al envision for America in the near future is a horrible wrong turn.
But I am not a pacifist. I am not against all wars. And I am convinced that at this moment, having been committed to a bad course, the best that we can do is hit it hard and fast and hope a good chance to turn comes along. So . . . I don’t know if that makes me the target audience for the OP, but here are my answers.
Certainly, to the same extent that those who argue for open markets are in actual effect arguing for the ecological devastation of the third world and those who argue for zero gun control are in effect arguing for criminals to have easy access to deadly weapons.
In other words, you are taking a single short-term effect of a position, isolating it from context, and then charging people with supporting that single thing. While not precisely a strawman, it is also not particularly helpful if your hope is to understand th eposition of the protesters.
For myself: I recognize that my position would have left a homocidal madman in charge of Iraq. I wish that I had an answer that I thought was better, but I do not. I fear that th government we impose upon the Iraqi people shall not be to their long-term benefit (though it will certainly be to their short term gain). I fear that the damage we have done to our reputation among Arab nations shall be harmful to the United States in both the long and short term, as will the damage that we have done to long-standing diplomatic relationships with other developed nations.
The same way that one takes a stance to keep firearms within easy access of murdererd and maniacs, by not isolating only a single aspect of a problem and considering it in a vaccuum.
The same way that one argues we should not be imposing new forms of government upon troubled African nations that have engaged in far more active genocidal campaigns in the last decade.
The same way so many people argued that we should not commit military resources to removing Milosevic from power.
Because I veiw the down side, including the risk of destabilizing other Arab nations and inciting more terrorist activity, as outweighing the upside. Because I do not imagine that “ending Hussein’s reign” will be the sole result of this war, thus I do not evaluate it solely upon the benefits of “ending Hussein’s reign”.
Is that really so hard to understand?
LC
Fair enough. I am against Saddam.
That does not mean I am for war. It did not require an invasion by the United States and Britain to end apartheid.
MLS
Probably in the hands of silly people or very brave Iraqis.
Are you seriously confused at the reasons why people in other countries are not taking to the strees in order to influence the Iraqi leadership to voluntarily surrender power? Here’s a hint: Saddam Hussein doesn’t derive power from the consent of Joe Peacelover in San Franciscon.
newscrasher
Your hatred makes you blind.
ExTank
I’m not certain what you use as basis to decide that you have a “better grip on Saddam’s mentality” than anyone else. I see absolutely no reason to believe that absent protest in the United States he would be more inclined to give up his struggle. To me, 2 things seem clear:
[ol][li]Saddam is doing everything that he can to turn this into a rallying cry for Muslims in th eregion, particularly Arab Muslims, and his ongoing resistance fuels that strategic goal.[/li][li]Even if (1) were not true, he is a megalomaniac that would cling to every last shred of power and spend the lives of every last folloer in the attempt, no matter how unlikely his chance of success.[/ol][/li]In other words, I simply do not but your premise that local unrest is in any significant way contributing to Saddam’s “prolonging his resistance”.
El Jeffe
I would not push a button that would magically return all troops to their homelands, because we have already started this thing. The diplomatic damage is done. It would be a mistake to come home now with the job unfinished–that would only improve Hussein’s position both at home and in the region.
BUT, if I had a magic reset button that would set everything back to the instant before our President first uttered that lovely phrase “axis of evil” I would slap it in a heartbeat.
The wooly mammoth relaxed, and considered the situation. The black ooze of the tarpit bubbled around his ankles, inching slowly, slowly towards his knees. He was pleased with his decision. He had considered wading into the tar pit, but worried he might not get deep enough before he was stuck. After careful planning, he took a bold gamble. He went back about half a mile, got a running start and leapt nimbly into the tar, landing squarely on all four feet.
Many of you have said that you would have supported the war had it “really” been about human rights abuses. If Saddam’s regime is the source of most of the human rights abuses then why do you care how the war is billed? That’s like saying “I only want the doctor to heal the patient if he’s not in it for the money.”
Hardly. The doctor’s be actually making an effort at healing the patient. Not just opening him, looking left and right, and taking out anything that doesn’t quite look proper at first glance and stitch him up when his gut feeling tells him everything is ok. That Saddam’s regime is a source of many human rights abuses doesn’t mean there will be less abuses once he’s gone. Even with a pseudo-democratic government, there’s the likelihood of Shiite backlash, and the possibility of all-out civil war between the ethnic groups as happened in Afghanistan once Najibullah was removed.
Well, I wouldn’t have supported the war if it had “really” been about human rights abuses, but that’s because I don’t think the United States should be pushing itself as the world’s nanny at this time.
But to address the greater issue, I think a lot of folks feel that in an open democracy, the leaders are required to be honest with the populace, and not use “any excuse necessary” to justify their actions. This is doubly so when wars are involved, since those require the risk and loss of human life. The troops have pledged to fight for their country; our duty, as citizens, is to make sure they don’t endanger themselves needlessly.
(And really, if the Bush Administration is suddenly so gung-ho about improving human rights in the Middle East, why not start by leaning on our allies, like Qa’tar and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, to clean up their own homes? That’d certainly have cost less and wouldn’t have required thrashing our own international reputation in the process.)
Yes, newcrasher, I do. I thought I made that clear in my posts.
I can’t reiterate enough that this is simply not true. Let me give an analogous example. I design and manage stream restoration projects. As a part of each project, we analyze several different alternatives, and one of these ALWAYS has to be “do nothing.” The do nothing analysis, though, is not seen as a final solution. Instead, it’s a tool to decide what the net effect of your actions will be.
In this case, I preferred the “do nothing” option to the “go to war with questionable motives, no clear international consensus and no definitive international support” option, but that analysis leaves out many other alternatives.
First, Scylla, I appreciate both your disagreement with newcrasher and your politeness in the face of baiting by some of the antiwar folks.
That said, the issue you raised is the hardest one for me to deal with in my opposition to the war. My position is not a simple anti-war position, however. Here’s where I stand on things.
Saddam Hussein runs a horrific regime.
The United States helped him gain power; as such, we are partly responsible for the horrors of his regime.
The United States has helped other horrific dictators gain power; as such, we are partly responsible for their horrors as well.
The United Nations imposed crippling sanctions on Iraq; even when it was clear that the sanctions were helping to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis, we supported them. We, and the UN, are partly responsible for these deaths.
In case it’s not clear, Hussein is primarily responsible for his regime’s horrors, including the deaths during the sanctions.
We gotta do something.
The United States has a bad track record when it comes to acting alone: when we act alone, we tend to install nasty regimes that favor us instead of nasty regimes that don’t favor us.
The UN, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t have the same nasty history.
Since we gotta do something, it’s best to do it through the UN, rather than through the US.
The UN was ratcheting up the pressure on Hussein. Hussein was responding to that pressure (although he was also responding to the US pressure, below)
The UN wasn’t acting fast enough for Bush’s purposes, or else he really wanted to act unilaterally. He dismissed the UN’s preferences, alienating several important allies in the process.
To make matters worse, Bush did not pay attention to concerns of other sovereign nations in the Middle East.
The “coalition of the willing” looks like a joke: it looks like diplomacy by bribery rather than by principle, looks cobbled together hastily in response to criticisms of the US’s unilateralism. I do not think anyone seriously proposes that this is an international, rather than a US, war effort.
We gotta do something, but not like this. We should have acted through the UN, should have used our clout to step up inspections, should have kept the pressure on Hussein through the UN.
We should work to strengthen international human-rights bodies, such as the International Criminal Court, rather than weakening these bodies; if we do so, we’ll find it easier to build coalitions against dictators in the future, since people won’t be cynical about our motives.
Now that we’re there, what should we do? We should do everything possible to protect civilians, even at the cost of US soldiers’ lives. We should be working to rebuild ties with our allies instead of excluding them from the aftermath reconstruction of Iraq. We should be promising not to force Iraq to spend its own wealth to rebuild the infrastructure that we destroyed. We should be finding as many international partners as possible to help Iraq rebuild, focusing on partners from the region.
I want to emphasize #6: when there’s an evil dictator in the world, especially when we helped them gain power, we gotta do something. But I believe we had options before the war began that we didn’t fully use; I believe the United States has, by behaving in a unilateral fashion, made it that much more difficult to build an international coalition against the next evil dictator that comes along. I believe that our work now should be to rebuild those international ties, demonstrating humility, cooperation, and charity.
Surely you aware of polls in most of Europe, including the UK, that show the population are against the war?
As for your ‘coalition’, how many have sent troops?
Did you notice Turkey turning down billions of dollars in bribes?
And how many countries do you think there are in the World if 40 is ‘more in favour’?
About 40 years ago China invaded Tibet. They took over the Government and banned the religion. They are still there.
When is the US going to ‘jump in’?
(Of course, China has a powerful military + nuclear weapons, so the answer is never.)
And here a far more important reason why I think the US are in Iraq (I posted this on another thread, but it bears repeating):
‘Prospects for democracy in post-Taliban Afghanistan appear dimmed by the bare-knuckled oil services deal-cutting overseen by the victor, the United States. Last December, the US Department of Defense made a no-cap, cost-plus-award contract to Halliburton KBR’s Government Operations division. The Dallas-based company is contracted to build forward operating bases to support troop deployments for the next nine years wherever the President chooses to take the anti-terrorism war.’
Why it’s just like a prediction, isn’t it?
‘In Halliburton’s case, Vice President Dick Cheney cashed out $20.6 million in stocks before retiring as CEO. With Halliburton now ailing financially, it’s only natural that the Defense Department, over which Cheney presided in the administration of Bush I, would provide the bailout.’
It’s nice to have friends.
‘The Pentagon posts all contract announcements exceeding $5 million on its Website, but in Halliburton’s case declined to disclose the estimated value of the award. A spokesperson for Halliburton gave $2.5 billion as the amount the company earned from base support services in the 1990s, acknowledging that the contract value could exceed that number assuming that the scope of US military actions widens in the next decade.’
Afghanistan will be the end of such military actions, surely?
'Though the Pentagon may be wary of admitting its favor towards Halliburton, the British Ministry of Defence shows no such reticence. In the third week of December 2001, the Defence Ministry awarded Halliburton’s subsidiary Brown & Root Services $418 million to supply large tank transporters, capable of carrying tanks to the front lines at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour.
The first increment of Halliburton’s award is being subcontracted to Oshkosh Truck Corporation in Wisconsin and King Trailers in Market Harborough, England. Because of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s invaluable service of persuading Britain’s reluctant public to go along with the American campaign and in providing British peacekeepers to secure Afghanistan, America’s junior partner has been rewarded with a boost to its manufacturing base.’
Nice one, Tony.
Any chance of a repeat performance?
‘Halliburton’s publicity material boasts of its ability to establish temporary military bases under often hostile conditions – an invaluable preparation for the second phase of its project: laying the groundwork for oil exploration under often hostile conditions. Vice President Cheney has been famously quoted in reference to the country of Iraq: “The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratic regimes friendly to the United States.”’
Yes, but Cheney surely wouldn’t use his influence over the Iraq war - it’s about HUMAN RIGHTS!
United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (and 1441) called on Iraq to provide “accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure” of its WMD and related programs. 1441 said do it or face “serious consequences.” 1441 passed 15-0. Verifiable fact.
Saddam Hussein was given opportunities to adhere to U.N. Security Council resolutions 678, 687 and 1441. While providing some cooperation on the process level, no one, anywhere, with the possible exception of in Paris or on the Straight Dope Message Board, would say he complied substantively with the demands placed upon him in the relevant Security Council resolutions. Including Hans Blix. Verifiablefact.
Very quickly after Sept. 11, Iraq’s WMD programs and continued non-compliance became more of a priority in the Bush administration. About the only conclusion that can logically be drawn is that the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, exposed the potential consequences of allowing America-haters, rogue regimes and terrorist groups to do their thing, so long as they were not attacking us on that given day. Evidence Evidence that those in the Bush administration who supported ousting Saddam Hussein were largely ignored until after 9/11
There’s much hue and cry over how the U.S. “failed in diplomacy.” Curiously, all such criticism is leveled by those who have A) shown previous dislike for George W. Bush, and B) are opposed to war in Iraq. Under this kind of twisted logic, it was Bush’s responsibility to concede to the French, German and Russian position.
This makes no sense, for two reasons.
Whether you agree with him or not, Bush is citing a national security threat to the United States as a primary motivation for the action in Iraq. You show me a commander-in-chief who cedes such national security decision-making to an international body whose individual members may or may not have the USA’s best interests in mind, and I’ll show you a president who should be impeached.
The U.S. was presenting facts and evidence, PROOF that Saddam Hussein is not complying with his disarmament responsibilities. France, Germany and Russia (along with many on this message board) reply with head-scratchers.
“There’s no need to act now.” What’s going to change in a year? Two years? If there are no consequences for Saddam Hussein’s failure to comply.
“More inspectors.” The whole idea of the inspectors was to verify Iraq’s voluntary disclosure and disarmament. 100,000 inspectors couldn’t detect carefully hidden WMD, if the person who has them in hand is diligent about them not being found.
“Action will inflame Islamic hatred of the U.S.” There’s enough of that now, thanks. Our choice is Islamic hatred and Saddam Hussein with WMD, or Islamic hatred with a democratic Iraq and no WMD.
etc. etc.
I suspect that much of the “moral” opposition to this war is merely political opposition to Bush - more specifically, Bush having his way. Little matter whether he’s right or wrong, to people thinking like this.
I am against the war because I feel that at some point, our species has to find a better way than killing those who we disagree with. Is that even possible? I don’t know. It’s just that during my ‘formative’ years, I somehow got the idea that the human race’s destiny involved general peace and harmony. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, that ideal has stuck with me. Call me naive, but don’t call me anti-American.