Well I agree with you there. I would like to see the U.N. be more active. But how can you say they do nothing? You admitted that there have been successful U.N. peacekeeping missions, didn’t you? One can certainly argue that the U.N. isn’t powerful enough, or has had mishaps, but can you really say they’ve done nothing?
BTW, if this is still Mrs. xtsime, could you please indicate so? If you want to participate (and we would love to have you), you might consider signing up with your own name.
Well, there’s no accounting for taste.
Whether the Iraqis are better off remains to be seen, but I agree with you that the U.S. ought not to be responsible for righting all the wrongs in the world. And no, there were NO good reasons for what the U.S. did. None.
The way I see it (and I think most of the world sees it as well), is that it’s not gonna work for any country to just take it upon themselves to invade another country (contrived “coalitions” notwithstanding). Yeah, maybe, in theory, the people of the invaded country could end up better off. But if we just leave the decision up to the invading country to devise whatever justification they wish, surely you can see it’s not a good way to run things. Even Hitler had his phony pretenses for attacking other countries. No, I’m sorry - the only way that makes sense is not to allow unilateral invasions for the purpose of conquest or regime change - EVER.
What dual standard? Please give examples of France, Germany, and England being allowed to do things that the U.S. was not allowed to do. You really don’t think they’d catch any heat if they invaded a sovereign country right now?
Yes, and what has the oh so benevolent Bush Administration done to help them? Funny how the countries without oil don’t seem to be entitled to the U.S.'s guardian angel services.
The main criticism I hear is that they don’t have enough power. Question for you: When the most powerful member nation delares the U.N. “irrelevant”, would you say this would tend to increase or decrease the U.N.'s power?
whether you like it or not we ARE a rogue state, and we only care out people of our own country, i am suprised that we don’t execute illegal immigrants in the street by burning them alive, after all - they can’t vote for Bush.
and no, i am not sarcastic, that’s just what i think.
again, i was not being sarcastic, that is pretty much how i feel myself - its a good exercise for the army and on the whole what we’re doing is not so utterly evil, and if it gets us some OIL then why not.
my mistake was to think that we ( the us people ) will see some benefits from that oil, but instead cheney and halliburton will pocket all the profits they made by investing our money they stole through taxes.
Sorry about the confusion blowero as to who was using my account. I’ve urged my wife to get her own account, but she thinks people on the SDMB are too ‘mean’. Thanks for not handling her too roughly.
Kind of straying off topic here though as the thread was about Bush vs ObL with respect to body count.
I think she meant that she has never seen the UN invade nations to depose some of these guys that upset her. Personally, I think thats a GOOD thing, as I’m unsure if having the UN invade nations and fix the world is any better than having the US do it.
Well, I agree with you here. I have no idea why she (and my father) love Bush so much. But they do…they think he’s a ‘great president’. snort I have to step lightly in my own house when I start ranting about Bush and his latest capers.
Back to the OP
The problem with your scenerio is that it doesn’t take into account how many civilian casualties would be incured from those ground troops. Also, its fairly unrealistic. Usually the reason you use smart bombs in civilian areas is because there are military targets in those areas that you can’t get too any other way. Take the initial strikes into Baghdad in the Iraq war for example. Early in the war we were trying to take out command and control…thats when the majority of the smart bombs were used in civilian areas in the cities (used because SH had put his command and control IN the cities and in civilian areas). It wasn’t feasible at all to ‘send in ground troops’ to those areas at that time, but it was essential to disrupt Iraqs command and control…to shorten the war and keep the Iraqi’s off balance. Had we NOT done that, the casualty figures would have been a hell of a lot more, not just for us but on the civilian side as well (and probably even the Iraqi military would have taken more casualties too as it would have been a long drawn out and grinding war of attrition), as we would have had to grind our way through Iraq instead of being able to make a lightning ground advance and win the war early.
Again, I agree with you that the Iraq war was stupid. I agree that the US shouldn’t have gone into Iraq. However, once we DID go commit to the fighting part, it would be insane not to fight to win as rapidly and at as little cost as we could. I don’t think anyone has accused the administration or the US military of using excess force or violence in Iraq. The accusations seem to be of the ‘why were we there in the first place’ variety.
Your scenerio isn’t glib, its just unrealistic, nor does it take into account all the factors as I said above. You seem to be under the impression that, if we used ground forces instead of smart bombs, that this would reduce civilian casualties. Why you think this is a mystery to me. Do you REALLY think that tanks, helicopter gunships, artillary, and soldiers on the ground are somehow going to inflict less casualties in civilian areas (if thats where the enemy military is) that percision guided munitions?? After all, if you have to go INTO the cities to dig the enemy out you are going to cause a hell of a lot of carnage…especially if you avoided taking out the enemies command and control because you didn’t want to hurt civilians. That means the enemies defenses are going to be a lot stronger, he’ll be able to move his troops around better, and he’s going to be able to mount a much more effective defense.
If we REALLY wanted to ‘kill emall, let god sort em out’ then Iraq would currently be smoking glass. Even if we stuck with only convention weapons, if this was REALLY our philosophy we could have destroyed Iraq with almost no casualties on the US side by simply indiscriminately bombing the shit out of them until they surrendered. This, of course, would have caused 10’s or even 100’s of thousands of casualties and completely wrecked the country, but we COULD have done it…easily. However, we didn’t do this. Its not our way.
Thanks for not handling her too roughly.