Holy farking shiat, Rwanda is in the Coalition of the Willing? What are they offering, consulting services on ethnic cleansing?
I thought I couldn’t respect anything less than I did the CotW… It just proved myself wrong. It beat its own record.
Thanks for the cite, AQA!
While this is all very true, it is worth noting, on the “plus” side, that many/some of those withdrawls had been scheduled in advance.
In light of the statement from the cite on the Whitehouse website that the “coalition is growing”, I can’t see what about this discrepancy puts in on the “plus” side.
Shh, I’m trying to be a fair sport.
(I think that article is just really old and isn’t meant to be used in a current-events context)
In using the word “believe” I never intended to imply that you held some sort of blind, absolute belief in the war with Iraq. I only meant what I said, which was that you (even though I actually was referring in general to Iraq war supporters) believe that the particular situation in Iraq warranted going to war. I think that this is exactly the point you were trying to make about your support for the war.
I do see your point if it makes you feel any better. I think that you are trying to say that every situation that the US faces with every nation is different and uniquely complex; and that each case must be evaluated according to its own uniqueness and a unique game plan must be created to deal with that particular nation. In the case of Iraq war was the best option. If this is the case then you should open up a new thread in which you lay out the exact reasons why Iraq’s case warranted war rather than a different approach. I suspect, however, that about 10,000 threads have come and gone here about those reasons and no one has been convinced to “change sides”.
As for the idea of the careful individual assessment of international situations I agree to a certain point. Every situation must be approached in a uniquely appropriate manner. However, I believe also that the US, as the leaders of the free world, must adhere to certain firm standards when it comes to situations as serious as war. I believe that we can should not go to war unless we or one of our allies are directly attacked, or if we are under an immanent, immediate threat. This was not the case with Iraq in my opinion.
Now that we are back into it let us try to remember the reasons given for invading Iraq without delay and without waiting for the UN inspection teams to follow and without threatening Saddam with the big club of US intervention if he did not play absolutely straight and nice with the UN inspectors. You will remember that the situation was so critical that there could be no delay. As I recall the reasons from the 2003 State of the Union Address and Secretary Powell’s speech at the UN to have been:
(1) Saddam had tactical, if not strategic, deployable qualities of biological and chemical weapons which he was about to use against governments in the Middle East friendly to the US.
(2) Saddam was about to have nuclear weapons if he did not have them already and he would use them against governments in the Middle East friendly to the US.
(3) Saddam was about to give biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to AlQaida which would surely use them against the US if he wasn’t stopped.
(4) Saddam had wilfully failed to disarm and demonstrate that he had done so in violation of UN directives.
(5) Saddam had promoted, financed and harbored terrorists.
(6) Saddam and AlQaida were in cahoots.
There was a reason that was not contained in the two big public announcements but came out later from I think Paul Wolfewitz that the US needed to get out of Saudi Arabia and needed a base in the Middle East and Iraq was a reasonable place to go.
Now, that’s my present recollection. I may have missed some and I may have unfairly stated some but there is what I now remember. If I’ve misstated the stated reasons or omitted stated reasons then tell me so. Once we have done that we can go down the list in a reasonable and civilized manner with plenty of colorful language and a little less pointless vitriol and personal abuse and figure out if the case for an immediate invasion was all that compelling.
You will note there is no reference to bringing the blessings of freedom to the people of Iraq as a grounds for the invasion. That is simply because its brief mention by the President before the invasion went in was, in my judgment, just window dressing and an obligatory hand wave at the Great Bird of Liberty without any significance. I have said before that as far as I can tell the spread of Western democracy had about as much to do with the invasion of Iraq as the conversion of the heathen had to do with the Spanish Conquest.
So, as our President once said, LET’S RuuuummmmmBLE! Or what ever it was he said.
Here’s a current list.
32 other countries have forces in Iraq, for a total of 26,147 troops.
Only 9 of those countries contribute more than 500 troops:
United Kingdom
Italy
Poland
Ukraine
Netherlands
Japan
Australia
Romania
South Korea
Rwanda may be in the coalition of the willing, but they’re not supplying troops.
Norway has 10 guys over there.
Just this one little point, perhaps too far backstream, but still…
Discussing the relative sanity of Saddam, and the applicability of the term “madman”, and the consequences.
The Leader has made this necessary, with his assertion that he was compelled to action, having to choose between trusting a madman and protecting America. Clearly, we are intended to look upon Saddam as unstable, deranged, and therefore dangerous.
When we challenge the validity of that assertion, we get back blank astonishment and moral outrage: “How can you defend such a man? Isn’t it clear he’s a brutal monster…” Saddam’s moral corruption, the utter bankruptcy of his soul, is irrelevent. I deeply regret that this is so, but it is so. Adolph Eichmann wasn’t “crazy”, he was sane to the point of banality.
Its kind of like the Dennis Hopper character in Apocalypse Now says about Kurtz: “The man is clear in his mind, but his soul has gone insane”.
The Leader clearly intends to imply that rational deterrence, like the certainty of nuclear annihilation, cannot be relied upon to deter a “madman”. A man who seethes with hatred of America, presumably has no other focus of his dark designs but the destruction of America. Might attack at any moment.
Except he didn’t. His enemies cut his country into chunks, told him where he could and could not fly, what he could and could not buy…
And he does nothing. For more than ten years, the rabid wolfman who cannot be deterred…is apparently deterred.
So where, precisely, is the urgent threat? Personally I don’t regard sitting there with his thumb up his ass as a particularly threatening posture.
May I trouble you to jog your memory? Press conference, Colin Powell Cairo Egypt, 2/24/01:
So Mr. Bush’s statement that he is forced to choose between trusting a madman and protecting America is empty on both ends of its excluded middle.
Thanks for the updated figures, Squink and Fear Itself. I was working with only what I found after a quick google search.
32 and 9? How many before we can call it “international support?”
I don’t mean to be flippant, but I can’t help but think that the objection to calling this “international” has nothing to do with the fact that many countries are involved. Like New Iskander and Coelacanth Soup have pointed out, people seem to be digging in their heals on points that they can reasonably concede. You can say that we’ve got international support without saying that we had enough international support. In fact, you’ll probably come across as more credible in the end.
Spavined Gelding, I think you’ve fairly summarized most of the defensive points for invasion. In other words, I think you’ve fairly listed most of the points that it was in our interest. Naturally, I’d say them differently, but I think you’ve done a good job with them, and we can work from your list.
However, I do have two main points of contention. First, I think you can’t leave out the strategic importance of Iraq’s location and resources. As pointed out by Squink and Donald Rumsfield, Iraq is sitting on a lot of oil, and that makes what they do more important than Haiti, which so far as I can tell is just sitting on a bunch of beaches.
Second, I agree that bringing democracy to the Middle East wasn’t the main reason to invade Iraq, as evidenced by the fact that we haven’t attempted to bring democracy to many other countries living under the thumb of a murderous tyrant. But I do think it was a reason worthy of mention. There are lots of folks who honestly expect the introduction of democracy in Iraq to have a liberalizing effect on Iraq, in particular, and the Middle East, in general. I don’t know if that will turn out to be true, but we’d have a harder time making the case for Iraq if it was, in fact, a working democracy. Moreover, the fact that we didn’t intend to colonize or otherwise exert some sort of fascist control over Iraq is a point in favor of the invasion. We were not only trying to depose a murderous thug, we were trying to restore power to the people of Iraq.
Having said that, I don’t think that the invasion of Iraq could or should be justified based solely on bringing democracy to Iraq. At the risk of being jingoistic, I don’t favor putting our troops in danger for the sole purpose of getting foriegners out of danger. We have to have some interest in the outcome beyond merely good karma.
Actually, all that I had to do was show that the invasion was not necessary to deal with Iraq. Part of the pitch for the war was that Iraq was a danger that the US could no longer tolerate. Take for example Mr. Bush’s quote pressented in the OP, (luci I still can’t get you link to work),
“… We removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder, and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take….”
When the same set of criteria that were established in the case of Iraq to determine that Iraq was ‘a risk we could not afford to take’ are applied to certain other countries it turns out that there are even greater threats that we are living with.
Hence, war with Iraq was not a necessity. It was a war of choice, an elective war. It was not pre-emption. It was instead a preventive war. Pre-emption has been sanctioned for centuries. There’s no objections to a country taking pre-emptive military action. It’s self-defense. The invasion of Iraq was an optional foreign policy decision, not a question of self-defense.
So, it’s not necessary to show that these other countries have gotten better. I that I had to do was show that the war with Iraq was not necessary.
However, if anything, it would only be necessary to show merely that the other examples hadn’t deteriorated as quickly.
The invasion of Iraq has increased the availability of ‘weapons of mass destruction components’ to terrorists. The invasion of Iraq has made it more likely that terrorists can get their hands on some of the very things we went to war to keep them from getting.
I may’ve misunderstood you; however…
First, I’ve been unclear about the time frame I’m referencing. I was trying to say that other countries, like Pakistan, were a greater threat than Iraq when they were judged by the same criteria as Iraq.
So, it’s not a discussion about the current situation in Iraq vs the current situation in NK and a comparison of the outcomes of the differing policy decisions, rather a comaprison of the relative threat to the US from the different countries as acsertained by the criteria presented for use on Iraq.
Any discussion of approval and/or disapproval of the way NK, Iran, Pasistan, or Canada is being handled is the result of inference not implication.
Which is pretty much what happened to NI, apparently. Rather than recognize the problem as being in the criteria used to determine what is and is not war worthy he seemed to think instead that people were advocating more war.
Again, I was not comparing the outcomes of different policies, but the assessments of differing countries using the criteria established for Iraq.
Actualy, it seems that you’ve missed the point here.
It’s not about defending Hussein at all. The idea that Hussein’s agression was undeterrable was another essential element to the pitch for war. If Hussein were a rational person, then obviously Dr. Rice would be correct in that ‘national obliteration’ would continue to be an effective deterrent to Hussein’s agressive actions against the US.
To sell the idea that Hussein was significant, realistic threat to the US one has to get around the extremely real threat of ‘national obliteration’ that Hussein would’ve faces were he to’ve ‘initiated’ an attack on the US. "Hussein’s unpredictable. Hussein’s ‘suicidal’. His aggression’s undeterrable. Look out, Hussein’s a MADMAN!.
So what you witnessed was not anything even close to anyone defending Hussein on character issues. Rather it was discussion over the ability of the Most Powerful Fighting Forces the World Has Ever Known, (and the ‘national obliteration’ they could surely visit upon Iraq), to deter Hussein.
If you’ll look above, you’ll note that this is referenced in some of my and other’s earlier posts in this thread.
I strongly disagree with this.
Even if we take the term “madman” off the table in favor of “morally currupt and bankrupt of soul,” that doesn’t help the case any. The point is that 1) deterrence didn’t work; and 2) the limits which Saddam would go to get his way are entirely relevant to the actions he’d take if given the means and opportunity.
True, he hadn’t done much beyond his own borders in the 10 years after the Gulf War. But the international, bipartisan consensus was that he was still pursuing the development of WMD, including nuclear capabilities. Despite the fact that his pursuit of WMD and aggression against his own people resulted in sanctions that crippled his country and harmed his regime, he would not be deterred from their pursuit.
And had he been able to obtain WMD, there was little doubt that he was “morally bankrupt” enough that he wouldn’t resist the urge to use such the most extreme military measures at his disposal when he thought they might benefit him. And his idea of when the situation benefitted him didn’t match up with most rational people’s ideas. For example, he continued to shoot at coalition troops patrolling the No Fly zone despite the fact that each shot earned only destruction of Iraq’s strategic targets and the loss of Iraqi lives, and further entrenched the international opposition against him. He continued to reach into the cookie jar despite the fact that every time, he got his wrist slapped.
We’d been able to keep him in the box during those 10 years, but what happened if he was able to buy yellowcake from some rogue state? What happened if he was able to trade enough oil and supplies with rogue states to successfully mount an adequate army? The point is that we knew enough about Hussein’s “moral bankruptcy” to know exactly what would happen.
But if deterrence was working, and Hussein didn’t have WMD, then how has deposing him increased the availability of WMD for terrorists?
If you concede that Hussein had WMD – in violation of his treaty obligations and UN sanctions and the threat of American force – then you’re relying solely on the idea that he could be deterred from using them against America and its interests. Am I right about this?
Again, I don’t mean to be flippant, but I’m curious where we stand.
Well, if you compare the current coalition to that for gulf war 1, it looks pretty pathetic.
Here are the troop strengths for the top 7 foreign contributors (of ~39) to GW1:
Umm, cite? You must have me confused with someone else.
D’oh! It was SimonX in post #57. I apologize to both Squink and SimonX for my carelessness.
Don’t forget (as Fahrenheit 9/11 pointed out) that Morrocco offered to donate 2,000 monkeys to detonate land mines:
Yeah, there’s a key component of the Coalition of the Willing… 
But how does this mean that the support being offered now isn’t “international”?
Compared to the New England Patriots, the University of Texas football team looks pretty weak. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t a pretty good football team.
A bit shaky, at best. Rummy once remarked that Saddam had fired upwards of 700 missiles at Allied aircraft. And never hit one. Not one. Age, I can get drunk, put on a blindfold, and go duck-hunting with a .22 pistol and do better than that. They amounted to nothing more than belligerent gestures, flipping the bird for a couple hundred grand a pop. You seem to find this impressive. Is this the best you got? Boy, pretty scary stuff. Firing off very expensive bottle rockets and shaking his fist. Heavy.
About as much as might happen if we delivered it to you. The process is a bit complicated. Kind of expensive. Time consuming. Look into it.
What happens if he finds the one true copy of the Necronomicon? I mean, if you’re just going to offer conjecture as argument, can I play too? We have Mr. Powell’s expert testimony that, as of Feb. '01, he had diddly squat, and sanctions were effectively preventing him from obtaining anything we would rather he didn’t have.
Pretty much the same thing that did happen. Not much.
Of course, Moore entirely omits any reference to the religious objections from the Primate of Athens. Typical.
Dude.
Rwanda.
This isn’t college football level. This isn’t even high school football. This is farking Pop Warner.
Wanna bet that the soldiers being fired upon looked at it differently? And if you’d been in those planes, I’m willing to bet that you’d feel differently about it, too.
Moreover, if Hussein had no chance of ever hitting coalition planes with those missiles, and we reacted with force every time he did, doesn’t that show that he wouldn’t be deterred, despite all rational impulses that he should just cut it out?
I am neither a scientist nor a multimillionaire. Hussein was a multimillionaire and he had scientists working for him.
North Korea was able to discover these apparently impossible secrets. I think you may be overstating the difficulty of discovering how a nuclear bomb works.
You are playing. Or do you have something besides conjecture that Hussein’s scientists never would have been able to discover the inner secrets of a giant bomb? And that sanctions and a No Fly zone would keep Hussein “in the box” forever?
And yet Powell’s expert opinion was that we should invade. Maybe Powell’s expert opinion was that Hussein’s deep pocketted scientists would one day be able to figure out the secrets behind what makes nuclear bombs go boom, or buy such information from someone that already had it. And if I remember correctly, Powell’s expert opinion was that Hussein’s efforts were getting dangerously close to fruition.