The right of free speech allows both sides to air their views. This right and the freedoms we enjoy didn’t come easy. In WWII over 900,000 American service men were killed defending that freedom. This was a war of survival, if the Axis had won where would we be now? Do you think Hilter would have rebuilt our country and given it back to us. Do you think you could say what you wished?
Be thankful. Peace at any price is not worth having.
You mean to say the US will rebuild Iraq and not take advantage of its control of resources and give it back at no charge?
Wow!.. I didn’t know superpowers did that.
Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
I won’t start with the 12 years of inspections, but I will start out with a dictator who has played the con-artist to perfection, and a master of the Shell Game. There is no perfect diplomacy when one party never intended on compromising to begin with. Giving Saddam more time so we can find some concessionary diplomatic solution (and that is all he is expecting - concessions) and let the UN inspectors be conned continuously in a Shell Game is a waste of time and also costing Iraqi lives and would even cost more lives of future coalition forces. Saddam has no interest in a diplomatic solution, just interest in keeping his reign intact. Too bad that the French, Russians, and Chinese didn’t want to get caught with their pants down around their ankles and their weapon sales contracts hanging out of their G-strings, otherwise there would have been consensus on the issue of force, and then many more americans would be in support of the war. Frogger missles is the weapon de jour, another violation of the UN resolution from 1991…how many more violations and years do you want Saddam to remain a threat?
Hey AZ Boy,
although my government is pro-war, the country is overwhelmingly anti-war. For many, it stems from a hatred of the US government for refusing to help out during the genocide here and blocking the UN from sending troops plus the usual arguments of the arrogant superpower…war for oil… Like i said, im no hawk but the sheer weight of the anti-war camp makes me a hawk here as i am consistently defending US and Britain. We have been having passionate debates about it in our school, and the pro-war crowd is a really small minority. However i was impressed that our president came out in support of it while almost all African leaders caled for more inspections.
And why has this thread caught fire all of a sudden? When i first started it about five days ago, only 2 people responded and it was that way for the next few days …you are a strange bunch…
You do now, look at Germany and Japan.
Why are you surprised that there are good people and good countries in this world?
Oh, yeah. God forbid lives should be saved if it wastes money.:rolleyes:
To be honest… when I first read your OP I made the stupid mistake of forgetting to check your profile for your location… and I thought YOU were a loonie 
But… I would like to add… don’t you sorta ruin your own point when you say ‘hey why do you loonies call us names?!’ Those posts concerning bias on both sides are correct.
That being said I think the above quote answers it. Here in the US the country is overwhelmingly (by some counts) for the war… and there is quite a bit of intolerance for those against it. I guess it comes down to human nature… we can give ourselves freedoms but the fact remains we are intolerant of those freedoms when they seem to disagree with our ideas of what should be. Free speech is fine and dandy until it interferes with popular opinion and then the only free speech that matters is the freedom to get in someones face and yell at them because they dare to disagree.
Thanks, minega, for checking back in, and yes, your situation is consistent with my theory - that it is the minority viewpoint that is less tolerated. Whether that is the pro-war or anti-war side depends on what the majority opinion holds where you are.
I do not wish to hijack this thread, but I must point out what I see as a questionable statement.
I completely agree. And a pretty strong case can be made that Bush never intended on compromising to begin with. In fact, a strong case can be made that Bush decided to topple Saddam before he was elected, and 9-11 was just the excuse he needed to do so. All this 1441 stuff was simply a shell game.
I have heard that Bush’s Inaugural Address gives a good clue about what was to come in the Middle East. I haven’t checked it yet.
Yes, both sides are biased. I believe these things to be true:
Almost everyone would agree that Suddam is an evil man.
All of us want our troops to return home safely and as soon as feasible. I do support them. I often make little prayers for them as I see them within camera range.
Pro-war people are not anti-peace.
People who “fight for peace” are contradictory. But they are a small minority and I am sickened by those who blow that all out of proportion. At the gathering in Washington Square in New York, for every person arrested, 2,200 people were not.
minega, many of us were concerned when the United States did nothing to end the massacres in Rwanda. I thought you might want to know.
Touche AZ, the only problem is that Saddam had an 8 year head start…
Yup. That’s it, blame it on Clinton, everyone else does…
No, it is not as simple as that because if it were, I’d ask you to STFU and GTFO. As it stands now, I am answering your post as best I can.
The war in Iraq is current policy. Telling the president to “Send the Troops Home” is forcing policy.
Well lets hear it from this guy:
Now the question comes to mind. If the anti-war are not mostly for pulling out the troops now, what the heck are they demonstrating for? What is their objective? Why are there signs in all anti-war rallies to “Send the Troops Home”?
You mistrust the government so you protest their motivations so that they can straighten up and fix themselves. You trust them to do that? No, but you demonstrate anyway. Why? Coz you want your voices to be heard but then the media are just the lapdogs of the govt and they cant be trusted either. So, who are you demonstrating for and what will it accomplish? Afterall, they are whitewashing the facts now and soon, it will all just disappear.
Have you any idea how nutty that sounds?
so youre saying 12 years wasnt enuf to finish the job? Failed diplomacy is a big element of this war, not because the US didnt try but because Saddam wouldnt allow it to happen.
You dont think its a contradiction of “Being against all war and any violence” and supporting US military troops to go fight in a war and do great amounts of violence. ooookaaaay…
I’ll drop the sarcasm here. If you support the troops, you’ll support their job which is to make war, do it effeciently, effectively with obedience to their commander in chief, the president of the United States. If you want them to make war and go home as soon as possible that means you arnet against the war so long as its short. Thats still pro-war. You dont like the reasons we started it but want the troops to kick ass and hurry home. thats STILL pro-war, because the reasons we get into war dont mean squat to our troops whose job it is to finish what the president started. Whether you you dont like the beginning or the end, the “during” is war and if you support that, you are pro-war no matter how short that war was.
OK lets just let the evil fester, why dont we? That will surely prevent a war. Dont mind the Iraqi people. Theyre not americans, right?
OK Dateline March 21,2003
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/22/iraq/main545333.shtml
Niiiice way to protest for peace. :rolleyes:
How about what happened 20 hours ago?
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=World&oid=19500
Can you say * Ansar al-Islam *? and please dont quote the insipid part about finding no connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam. They were headquartered in Northern Iraq. Nothing significant happens in Iraq without Saddam knowing about it or having a hand in it, especially someplace so close to his hometown. Its about as believable as the Taliban not knowing the existance of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Yep but I can throw rock over my shoulder at an anti-war demonstration and be sure to hit a dumbass. You’d have to carefully aim at the dumbasses in the prowar demonstration. This is proven by the many on the spot interviews done by reporters. Many TV interviews are of the kind you posted above. When pro-war people are interviewed, they stick to patriotism and supporting the troops. They stick to a theme and at best hide their dumbass nature.
And thats all I really want the anti-war people to do. You guys have many good points. Stick to those. Lose the nutballs. Stay away from anarchists, they only bring you down and forget about the “cant trust the govt” angle. You guys are americans too, the govt is your govt. Dont make yourselves look like conspiracy nuts.
and a personal opinion. Movie stars and Rock stars as representatives (on either side) is a Baaaad Idea.
I see … so what do you think of these guys, then? FWIW, I think they do not represent the majority of pro-war people – but it is clear the pro-war crowd is not suffering from lack of idiots.
Actually, I wasn’t making a point one way or the other about the timing of when troops should be pulled out, I was merely showing how ridiculous your statement was. It sounds like you’re saying we can’t pull out now because we already spent a lot of money on the war. An extremely callous position if you ask me.
That might be because a further discussion with you was deemed futile, since you made up your mind on an issue against overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
What you want to say is that the pro-war people are a handful of people repeating the same arguments in an endless loop, regardless how often they have been refuted, while the anti-war people are a crowd from all walks of life and from a huge spectrum of backgrounds who oppose the war at this point in time for a variety of individually specific reasons?
Skepticism of the government has nothing to do with conspiracy nuts. Demanding unconditional support for the government in times of crisis is the spirit out of which dictatorships are born.
Why? Unlike key members of the administration, most of them have been all over the world and actually KNOW the people they are talking about. Bush, in the meantime, is pressing buttoms and watching number columns change, as if killing people is a video game.
Make that ‘pressing buttons’
Without getting into the rest of this discussion, let me just note that Ansar al-Islam is based in the Kurdish section of Iraq, sandwiched in a particularly rugged region on the border with Iran and between PUK-, and KDP-controlled territory. Saddam Hussein has not exercised any control in that area for years. Ansar al-Islam itself is a lineal descendant of the old IMIK ( Islamic Movement in Iraqi Kurdistan ), that represents the fundamentalist section of the Kurdish opposition to the Iraqi government
Saying unequivocally that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaeda through this particular group is jumping the gun a bit. It’s not at all impossible, but not certain, either. And in fact at the moment, appears unlikely. Ansar al-Islam claims itself an enemy of Saddam Hussein and their main secular rivals, the PUK, has of yet turned up no solid ties between the two ( and they’d certainly point them out if they found them ) For an examination of this, here’s a very solid article covering Islamism in Kurdistan ( it’s a pdf ):
http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/middleeast/iraq_iran_gulf/reports/A400885_07022003.pdf
First of all, thanks Zoe for the concern you expressed about the US inability to stop the genocide. I really appreciate that.
As a pro-war advocate,i must confess that i find the links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda to be weak , but there is no doubt that they would put aside their differences to unite against the US. Al-Qaeda want nukes or biological,chemical weapons and im pretty sure Saddam would be more than happy to make an alliance with them to fuck up the USA. Just like i have to ally myself with Dubya to support the war even though i loathe him. it is a marriage of convenience. The enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing.
What i like most about this war-naively idealistic as it sounds-is the moral angle…freeing the IRaqi people from the monster that Saddam is. Sure, many innocents will die but compare that to those who will if Saddam stays in power and passes it to his dear son Qusay who is equally brutal…and on and on. In the long run, its not a smart policy. And yes, there are many brutal dictatorships in the world, but does it mean our failure to stop all of them should tie our hands here? Should we deny the Iraqis freedom because we cant give it to others?
And its amusing how physic everyone has become all of a sudden…íts a war for oil dummy!ís all i ever hear as if it is a fact. it is not. I often doubt Bush’s motives as well, but i believe its a genuine paranoia about what Saddam can do to the USA. Whether that paranoia is justified is another story of course…