Hardly. Tell me how it was in Iraqs interests to have their army and airforce decimated, their prize taken, and their nation seriously damaged. Part of the power-play is knowing your limits.
If you are going to try to apply my views to particular situations, do it right, or better yet, just ask. I’ll talk your ear off. But don’t try to ascribe certain views/positions to me that I don’t hold.
Very well, do you agree or disagree with this statement:
There is nothing wrong with a nation invading another nation, which represents no direct threat, in order to control its strategic or financial assets.
In a move that echoes some of the sentiments expressed in this thread, both Chirac and Schroeder criticized the proposed American resolution seeking international troops:
Washington Post
Can’t say that I blame them for not caving in to the first US appeasement offer – or cries for help, to be more accurate.
I have already, it’s a well-known source. I just don’t think much of it. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming that particular incident was accidental, the preceding and subsequent actions against the Kurds obviously weren’t, so it’s probably true that Saddam “gassed his own people.”
Whether or not this was a good reason to invade a country, or whether this was even a primary reason, is another matter. Personally I think we were waiting for a legal justification to off him, thought we had one in the WMD + terrorism support post 9/11, and off we went.
Some of it was, but most of it wasn’t. There was a major naval arms race brewing between the US, UK, and Japan after World War I. Technology had made a lot of older battleships woefully obsolete, but all 3 sides were building a lot of battleships and making plans for a lot more, some of them huge monsters. The enormous cost of it was threatening the economies of all 3 powers. The battleships the US scrapped in 1922, with ages in parentheses:
Maine (20), Missouri (20), Virginia (17), Nebraska (17), Georgia (17), New Jersey (17), Rhode Island (17), Connecticut (17), Louisiana (17), Vermont (16), Kansas (16), Minnesota (16), New Hampshire (15), South Carolina (13), Michigan (13), Washington (0), South Dakota (0), Indiana (0), Montana (0), North Carolina (0), Iowa (0), Massachusetts (0), Lexington (0), Constitution (0), Constellation (0), Saratoga (0), Ranger (0), United States (0), Delaware (12), North Dakota (12).
Those with ages of 0 had not yet been completed, though construction had started. They would have been the 6 Lexington class battlecruisers (8x16in guns) and the 6 South Dakota class battleships (12x16in guns). Two of the Lexington class were allowed to be completed as aircraft carriers.
On a small scale, this is true. But anyone who’s spent any time looking at these two historical figures in any depth will realize that, intellectually, Washington couldn’t hold a candle to Jefferson.
Doesn’t mean Washington wasn’t an admirable figure. I still think his protest against being made President-for-life constitute one of the more admirable episodes in American political history. But, as a thinker, he was just not on the same level as Jefferson.
And, spogga, when you say “Fuck the Arabs” and “I am not a bigot” in the same argument, don’t be surprised if some people have a hard time believing the second statement.
On the subject of the OP, i’n one of those who wants the UN involved, but only on the UN’s terms. Fuck Bush if he wants to hand over the work but none of the authority. It’s a typical self-serving and hypocritical position from the moron-in-chief.
Because he plays the songs they like to hear, like “We’re Good, They’re Evil,” “You’re Either With Us or Against Us,” and “Everything is Black and White”. :rolleyes:
Bush ELECTED 
Yes we would rather see President Bill Clinton, or at least Al Gore leading us through such trying times.
No kidding. Compared to GWB, Clinton now looks like Winston fucking Churchill.
Agree, with a proviso: By ‘threat’, I would include potential threats to interests.
Saddam was not a threat to us until we decided to oppose his invasion of Kuwait (AFAIK, he was generally friendly to Western interests.) Why we did, and what if we did not, are interesting points of speculation, but we are dealing with the situation that the past 3 presidencies have left us: An incredibly anti-American regime, prone to craftiness, sitting on/near a massive chunk of the world’s oil supply.
As for other countries doing the same, it just isn’t feasible for virtually any other nation to even attempt. If they do, they really do need to make sure that it doesn’t come up on Western radars. Not fair, but that’s life…
So it´s fair as long as you can get away with it… thanks for the tip.
Just for old time’s sake, Brutus, tell us all one more time how Sadam and Iraq were a credible threat to the United States, it vital national interests and critical allies, in 2002-2003.
Few people will argue that the war waged by the international coalition organized by George H.W. Bush was not an appropriate response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. That however was in 1991.
Tell us all why it was necessary to invade in 2003. Tell us once more, just for the sake of clarity, why the need to invade was so pressing that the United States could not be bothered to take the time necessary to persuade all the countries that contributed their young man and treasure to the Gulf Campaign that there was a legitimate need to finish off Sadam in 2002-2003. Tell us why the very nations whose opinions were disregarded, if not disparaged, in 2002-2003, should now be eager to commit their youth and treasure to extricating the United States from the consequences of a course they then thought was the course of folly. If you please.
If grandma had wheels she’d be a bike.
If grandma had wheels she’d be a bike.
The police could bust you because they can’t prove that if you had a weapon you wouldn’t shoot someone?
Stupid hamsters.
To summarize, Iraq was an unfriendly state, sitting on and near the lifeblood of our economy.
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It was a foolish half-measure, and left the ‘threat’ in place. Then again, maybe it was a clever ruse to get American forces in the region, in force, for the foreseeable future.
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Uh, no. Go back and read my other posts. I think I have been more then clear as to why I think the war was and is A Good Thing.
I certainly don’t think that getting the UN involved is a positive development.
Once again, Brutus punts.
That’s it? No nuclear weapons or ambitions to acquire them? No chemical weapons; no nerve gases in war heads ready to launch? No biological weapons; no vats of anthrax at the disposal of front line commanders? No intimate ties to elQuida? No bringing democracy to the good people of Iraq? No brutal dictatorship oppressing its own people? No financing of terror? All you got is that Sadam did not like the US and had something the US wanted? That’s it?
If so, that is as cynical an apology for imperial aggression as I have ever seen. If that is indeed the policy of the government then it deserves to stew in its own juices. Regrettably, the fuel that heats that stew is the treasure and youth of the United States. Your justification for the war is just an abomination. It is the thinking of a sand box bully: you have it , I want it, I will take it.
Tell me that you aren’t serious. Tell me that your post is just a parody of Wolfowitz-Rumsfelt-Cheney-Pearl-think. This is just reprehensible. I am appalled. This is not the position of a great nation. This is the mind set of pirates, muggers and strong armed robbers.
If this is indeed your thinking and that of the Administration it amounts to an incriminating statement that the whole thing is about oil and that the justification the President gave the nation and the Secretary of State gave the UN was a deliberate, calculated and premeditated lie.
This is getting tiresome.
When I write all those words, you need to read them all, if you are going to refute a point I am making. Don’t pick and choose, don’t ignore. You may read them all and still find points of contention, but if you read them selectively, you get points and statements that I did not make.
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Point, the first.
I have no secret hotline to the Adminstration. My ideas are my own; While I would like to think the Administration shares like views, I am not a spokeman for them. GW and I certainly don’t see eye to eye on domestic spending.
Point, the second.
Why should what the SecState said to the UN have to be a lie? There very well may have been a WMD program and/or actual WMD in Iraq. If Bush did go in for purely power-play reasons, why would that change the WMD situation? It’s just that the specter of WMD provided a great cover story (assuming the power-play scenario).
‘The world is not black and white’. Isn’t that, and variations of that, a favorite statement among liberals? Why not apply it to Iraq? Why does there have to be one, and only one, reason for going to war? Iraq had all sorts of great reasons. Forwarding the cause of American power projection for me (among other, previously stated reasons), getting rid of a dictator and helping the Iraqi people for you.
I want to thank Brutus for the honesty rarely shown by others from his side of the political spectrum. It’s about oil. Something the liberals have claimed the whole time.