11,000 years. (I read that somewhere.)
Ballpark figure.
(Note: from this point forward, whenever I assume the position of a war supporter, I will preface my post with the phrase “ATTN: From the Desk of Bizarro Svinlesha”, so as to help avoid confusion.)
Shodan:
Come, come now. You’ve got to get into the spirit of the thing. I’m not asking you to merely summarize, in categorical form, arguments you’ve read here or there. I’m asking you to argue forcefully for those arguments against the war you found most compelling – even if you found those arguments only slightly compelling. After all, you are a conservative, right? And as Sam points out, you conservatives understand us liberals much, much better than we understand you. Hell, you probably understand us better than we understand ourselves!
Given Sam’s assertion, I must say that you haven’t started out very strongly:
!
You mean to tell me you’ve been arguing in favor of the invasion, against those godless lefties, for what – three years – and you still don’t know of many reasons put forth by your opponents? Tsk, tsk! Apparently you’ve not been paying very much attention. Why, I could summarize a dozen good reasons for invading Iraq at the drop of a hat!
Let’s look at what you’ve got so far:
I’m sorry, I don’t find this to be very clear at all, quite the contrary. Do you have any evidence to back up such an outrageous assertion?
To begin with, an overwhelming majority of intelligence experts believed Saddam possessed at least some WMDs. The estimates of what he possessed, exactly, varied greatly of course, because intelligence estimates always involve a certain amount of guesswork. But let us consider the ”best case scenario,” and confront it directly: that is to say, a scenario in which Saddam possessed only a few chemical weapons stocks, a handful of covert weapons programs, and a dormant nuclear weapons program. This is a scenario that probably 80 to 90 percent of all intelligence analysts could agree upon as at least extremely probable.
If such were the case, would it be wise, do you think, to leave Saddam in power? What assurance can you give the American people that he wouldn’t use his chemical weapons against us, given the chance, or pass them on to terrorists to be used against us? He is, after all, a psychopath. Can we really afford to take the risk of leaving a man like that with access to any kind of WMDs?
Really? You know this for a fact? You can read the mind of Saddam Hussein?
Well, afterwards, we can see that the inspections and sanctions regime worked perhaps even better than we thought. But even so, we had no real way of ascertaining this fact prior to the invasion. We needed to get into the country, and the Hussein regime needed to open up to the inspectors, for us to make that determination. And this was something Saddam was completely unprepared to do.
But, on top of that, the sanctions had inflicted a decade of human suffering on the Iraqi civilian population without weakening Saddam’s position in the slightest. If anything, it had strengthened it. And the will to continue with the sanctions regime was wavering in the UN. The international community could not be expected to punish Iraq indefinitely for its invasion of Kuwait. Sooner or later a choice would have to be made: either lift the sanctions, or remove Saddam by force.
I contend that lifting the sanctions would leave an extremely ruthless demagogue and declared enemy of the US sitting over the world’s second-largest pool of oil, in one of the world’s most strategically sensitive regions. He would be free to continue his pursuit of WMDs – at the very least, we would have no guarantees that he wouldn’t continue his attempts to develop them – and we would find ourselves back at square one. Such an option would be, quite simply, unthinkable.*
Well, if that’s the case, he sure has gone about it poorly. What do you know, really, about the ownership rights to the Iraqi oil fields?
He did mention that in a speech once, and while it might have played a role in his thinking, I’m sure he had much more important reasons as well (such as the ones I outlined above).
What evidence do you have that this is the case?
One does not get re-elected by killing people, not even in America. He took a hell of risk when he invaded Iraq, and if anything, the results have been detrimental to him. In fact, I suspect that he would have won the last election by a REAL landslide had it not been for how the war was going – the lack of WMDs, the Abu Ghraib scandal, the economic cost, and the ongoing insurgency. All of these were issues were significant weaknesses for Bush, and points of attack for Kerry and the left.
No, if Bush was only interested in getting re-elected, he would never have invaded Iraq. Clearly he did it because he believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was in the best interest of the US.
Thank you for summarizing the pro-war argument for me. I’ve only read it, like, a gazillion times. But don’t forget that you should be arguing against the invasion, not in favor of it.
I have to say that I’m not too impressed by your first attempted foray into the liberal mind-set. Perhaps Sam, who claims to understand liberals so well, can give you a couple of pointers?
*Of course, what do I know? I’m just a poor liberal, and I don’t really understand how you conservatives think.
Well, I think I understand fully well what liberals think.
Liberals have, in general, a deepseated mistrust of military interventionism or military adventurism. In general, they prefer that military action take place within an internationalist framework and/or in support of vital national goals.
To their mind, neither condition was adequately met in the case of Iraq.
A doomed excercise, Svin, however well-meaning. You are posing more an excercise in rhetoric, kind of thing you do in high-school debate, be prepared to argue either side of an issue with equal aplomb. In that context, its somewhat meaningful, though it has lead any number of young people astray into careers in the law. It also tends to place skill in advocacy above the purpose of advocacy.
Secondly, you didn’t define your time frame. Arguments with our Tighty Righty brethren have changed substantially since the war, as the reason for our aggression has been shown to be vacuous. At least before, they could argue from ignorance with some grounding: we don’t know he ain’t gottem, maybe he gottem, gotta kill a whole bunch of people so we can be sure a whole bunch of people won’t get killed.
If I had been convinced that Saddam was nuke-capable and batshit crazy in the sene that no deterrence was feasible (maybe in some crazy-ass Muslim Apocalypso…they got a Islamic version of the Left Behind series?..), that would have come closer to persuading me that war was necessary. But that’s all coulda shoulda woulda at this point.
Lastly, its a wee bit dishonest. I would not ask someone to argue a case they don’t believe in, because I need to extend credibility, I need to assume that my rhetorical opponent believes what he says. Take that away, and you have nothing but a masturbatory display of rhetorical skill. As well, I find a dispassionate interchange on the subject of making folks dead to be perversely abstract: if there is a subject to have emotion about, making war has got to be at the very tip-top of the list.
Just my opinion, of course, if you guys want to play at this, nothing to me.
ya know what galls the shit outta me at this point? way back when, prior to the invasion, there were some of us here saying stuff like “well, I can’t say for certain that SH doesn’t have WoMD, but I don’t see that he has the capability to attack us with them” (and the answer was “the evidence may just be a mushroom cloud over New York!”); and “gosh,why do you believe that invading Iraq would be a simple thing, a few weeks ground war, march into Bagdad, small amount of US casualties, followed by weeks of parards, flowers and children smiling?” (and the answer was “Saddam lover” etc.)/
now almost a year, over a thousand US deaths, untold numbers of Iraqi deaths later, we discover “well, gosh, who’d have thought we weren’t quite correct about those WoMD, but he woulda if he’d coulda”, and gosh darn who’d have believed there’d be so many insurgents (ok, so they used to be Iraqi citizens, they’re insurgents now)?
and the answer to both questions, of course is : there were those of us expressing exactly those cautionary ideas.
Damn - we were more prophetic than Dionne Warwick’s pychic friends network.
and yet all of those who were so damn certain they were right, are still yammering about how we don’t know what we’re talking about, and are out in left field.
damn, from where I sit (in this field), there’s some folks who seem to not have a good handle on reality, and it ain’t us.
If you’d found SH capable of attacking the US, I was prepared to say “ok, I was wrong” . I would have been happy to have been wrong about our reception in Iraq (given the horrible horrible costs it has had and will continue to have on our young - hell I"m a baby boomer, we need those folks back here earning social security wages**) But I wasn’t wrong. and yet we still find certain folks failing to reassess their position.
how in the hell can you be shown to be so wrong, and still believe that you’ve got a good handle on assessing situations?
**sarcasm for those impaired.
Mr. Svinlesha, or rather bizzaro Mr. Svinlesha, Can I play? I think I can propose several argument against the war in Iraq. Or are we allowed to broaden to the war on terror?
This would be a great paragraph to decorate with links - plus, the automatic underlines you get with links would work to underscore your points.
What a bizarre world we live in today. The latter is, or used to be, a conservative value. Plenty of liberal hawks have been shot down over the last 20 years for demanding military intervention and democracy promtion into human rights disasters and dictatorships by tut-tutting conservatives who pushed realpolitik. Now conservatives have decided that they are (and always have been, sure!) human rights activists and democracy experts, of course THEY know everything about these subjects (i.e. they can safely ignore all the lessons liberal hawks had learned and make all the same predictable mistakes democracy promoters and interventionists had learned to their peirl.)
Perhaps this is something you should take up with Sam Stone.
At any rate, I am concerned that this might come uncomfortably close to the T word. Not that I am accusing you of it, but I am hovering between overstating the liberals’ anti-war case to such a degree that I cannot post with a straight face, and being tempted to post assertions that I think are easily refuted to add apparent strength to the pro-war case.
No, I have summarized most or all of the major contentions put forth by anti-war types such as yourself for Bush’s motives.
AFAICT, Bush’s motives are either what I mentioned, or simply that he is bad/naughty/stupid/evil etc. If that is all you want, I can simply repost the “Bush Lied - People Died” or “No Blood for Oil” stuff over and over and over. As I said, this is 90% of what passed for debating over the last six months or so.
Which doesn’t strike me as a very productive exercise.
To be honest, I think we have pretty much hashed out every possible permutation on arguments about the Iraqi invasion. Absent any new information, I don’t see the point in ringing the changes again.
FTR, I doubt that either of us have any troubles about disagreeing on interpretations of the facts. What we both have troubles with are misstatements of the facts. On my side, it would be something like asserting “Iraq was involved in carrying out 9/11”, which I don’t believe and have not asserted. If I have come across as stating this, I was wrong (or unclear). On your side, it is statements like “no WMDs were ever found” or “Saddam bent over backwards” and so forth.
If it is any comfort, I can stipulate that Bush and other members of the administration overstated the case that Iraq was holding large stockpiles of WMDs before the invasion. You can use this to condemn them all as evil and stupid if you like, but that is a matter of opinion. I would classify it more as a reasonable conclusion based on the facts as available. And it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see that Saddam did, in fact, ship his remaining WMDs off to Syria just before the invasion. Again, that is a matter of opinion rather than an assertion of proven fact. I suspect we may never know. But I am not willing to assume that Saddam is innocent until proven guilty, or for that matter that Bush is guilty until proven innocent. I think that alone accounts for most of the differences of opinion between us.
Bottom line is also that I don’t consider it a Bad Thing that Saddam is now history. We have removed an obnoxious regime from power, which is an improvement. This is true not only for Iraq, but for other obnoxious regimes like Libya and North Korea and so forth. I hope they sleep a little less easily knowing that the President of the US is not going to let the corruption and incompetence of the UN, or the desire of France to be a pain in the ass, or the desire of the EU to appease their own radical Muslim populations, to stand in the way of doing something that should have happened a few days after the end of Desert Storm.
YMMV, and probably does.
Regards,
Shodan
I want play too.
Well, I think I understand fully well what neoconservatives think.
Neoconservatives have, in general, a deepseated trust in military interventionism or military adventurism. In general, they don’t give a shit whether or not those military actions take place within and international framework/or in support of vital national goals. As long as the bombs are falling, they appear to be content.
To their mind, conditions were ripe to bomb the crap outta Iraq, renew their military inventory and try out all sorts of newfangled deathly toys.
Gotta love this game, Moto.
elucidator:
Point taken.
It’s just that I’m so tired of it. They’ll throw any kind of shit at you that they can, apparently. Essentially, Sam’s argument boils down to, “Everyone who disagrees with Bush does so because they’re too stupid to understand him. Luckily, I’m far more intelligent than that.” It’s just this non-stop litany of unsubstantiated, bullshit assertions. They never let up. Assertions that fly in the face of truth: I’d say by this point that it’s pretty obvious that Shodan has not understood the arguments against the war, for example.
By the way, kudos on your evisceration of Shodan’s last post. Always a pleasure to read your musings.
Apos:
For what it’s worth, I’m not necessarily against military interventions to promote democracies, etc. I’ve even stated that I probably would have supported the invasion had it been approved by the UNSC.
The problem is the way this administration went about it. And let’s not forget, their major excuse for this particular exercise was not the promotion of democracy, but rather the security of the US.
Shodan:
You were going to demonstrate that you understood the anti-war cause by arguing strongly in its favor. The fact that you can’t tells me that you don’t, really, understand the strength or validity of the anti-war stance.
How far you have come from proclaiming that those of us who doubted the administration’s claims were denying reality, or accusing us of being short-sighted and ”breathtakingly stupid.” Perhaps you can at least now see it was not ”reflexively anti-American” to argue that, prior to the war, the administration had failed to prove its case.
At any rate, you’ve moved the goalposts. Prior to the war, we invaded Iraq because people such as yourself were screaming that he was going to bomb us in 45 minutes with VX nerve gas. Now the only defence you can muster for the war is that it’s a good thing, at least, that Saddam is out of power. If only that had been your argument from the beginning.
Although, had it been, I doubt Bush would have had enough domestic support to start the war in the first place.
You are, of course, aware that the standard conservative opinion, after Desert Storm, was that we needed Saddam in power to prevent Iraq from unravelling into civil war, yes? And that conservatives, using many of the same arguments now promoting by those against the war, railed against Clinton’s actions during Desert Fox?
Just curious.
As I’ve mentioned before, such as this is logical proof of both stupidity and cowardice.
If there’s not a single argument that you haven’t carefully considered, then I take it you must have obviously read the book, yes?
I’d be curious to know what your response would be to Jim Warner.
Having carefully considered his argument, I’d like to see your response.
Or, shall we go for a trifecta and add “liar” to the qualities you’ve demonstrated alsongside stupidity and cowardice?
I kind of like Bizzaro Svin. Maybe strong, andsome, intelligent Bizzaro Svin can dominate and subsume weak puny Svin and we’ll get to keep him.
(added the ‘h’)
maybe, but we’ll have to wait for strong handsome intelligent Bizzaro Scylla to dominate and subsume weak puny Scylla first. 
Scylla’s here? Oh, goody! He always comes back after he calls someone a liar and a coward.
'Cause I’ve really been trying to direct his attention over to Wikepedia, which has got the article about the whole “winter soldiers guys were fakes” meme that was so crucial to his declaration of Kerry as a “traitor”.
You will recall, I am sure, how you insisted the Kerry must take personal reponsibility for all the lies told at the WSI. And if there were none? If it should prove that the vast majority (out of some 160) were entirely legitimate, doesn’t that make your case untenable? Or at the very least, open to question.
Have you any documentation, outside of the slanders of Kerry’s political enemies? If you have, you might want to check further into Wikepedia’s documentation and investigations. Links are provided, take a sandwhich, you’ll be a while. They have an exhaustive compendium/argument that tracks down every link, every scrap. You won’t like it, I reckon.
Surely, I say to myself, this cannot be. He must have mounds and mounds of solid proof, a paraon of candor, courage, and scrupulous behavior, as our Scylla, would not fire off a charge of treason merely on the say-so of a man’s political enemies.
If you think it too much a hijack, I’d be perfectly willling to join a thread.
I was? I don’t remember signing up for the “Everyone has to post the way Mr. Svinlesha tells us” club.
You are, of course, free to draw what inferences you like. I have already mentioned my reasons for discontinuing my participation in the Bizzaro Poster thread. If you wish to put a different interpretation on this, and declare yourself victor by fiat, feel free. If you think it matters.
Really? I had no idea I thought so.
Come to think of it, I didn’t.
At any rate, what you consider “the standard conservative opinion” in 1991 is not binding on me, despite your attempt to make it so. Feel free to set up strawmen and attack them as you like.
Regards,
Shodan
Uh huh.
The difference here is that I respect the liberal argument, and have demonstrated such respect in my post. I don’t agree with it, but I do respect it.
It’s a shame you can’t show me similar respect and understanding.
He told me to eat a turd, and called me names first. Chastise him, why don’t you? If you don’t like me calling him a liar and a coward then tell him to stop lying and calling me names in a cowardly fashion. Apply your standard evenly, or do me the courtesy of minding your own business and shutting the fuck up, okay?
Yawn. Some were fakes. The fakeness really has little to do with Kerry as a traitor. The lies and betrayal that he perpetrated do. We’ve been over this so many times, you and I, the fundamental lack of comprehension you demonstrate over the base arguments, or your persistance in misinterpreting them when you know better, makes debate with you tiring and futile.
Over and over the same old shit. You mistate the argument and misrepresent my position and then I have to tiresomely redefine what it was I was saying while you resist actually understanding or responding to what my fundamental position was. And… we already had near enough this exact debate. Thank you, but no. I’m full. Couldn’t eat another bite.
Over and over the same old shit:
Dissent = Treason.
The Breakfast of Fascists, everywhere and at all times.
In case anyone had any doubt as to what Scylla’s actual argument was, or is.
“I’m not Fonda Hanoi John”, right?
Pieces of shit don’t come any smellier than you and your buddies.