Bush's "Mideast democracy" speech

Great Debates
41

Posted by Sam Stone:

So? If 2/3 of the Iraqi people want the U.S. troops to stay a while, that still leaves a very large minority who want them gone immediately. And they are proving to be an extremely dangerous and committed minority. We are losing several soldiers to partisan resistance every week, and we must expect that resistance to continue until the last American soldier boards the last ship home. What else could we expect? The Americans soldiers are, for the most part, not Muslims – they are infidels, ruling an Islamic country. Muslims everywhere hate the very idea of that, they think they had enough of it during the age of European colonial imperialism. And the Americans are, of course, foreigners. Nobody likes to have their country occupied by foreign conquerors, not even when that is visibly better than what came before.

Nobody has addressed the question I raised earlier: Assuming we do not reinstate the draft, does the U.S. have the military manpower to invade a third country while we’re still occupying Iraq and Afghanistan?

42

You do know that this was made up, don’t you?

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Sam Stone *
**And you know, as long as there isn’t 100% support for the U.S. in Iraq, you can ALWAYS find a photo like this, especially when photographers are running around trying especially hard to document such cases.**And as long as there isn’t 100% opposition to it, you can ALWAYS find photos of cheering and supportive people. Especially when the photographers and writers are being escorted on quickie 1-day (no overnights in-country, though - they’re too dangerous) Potemkin tours by the US forces.

And the basis you have for believing you know what that reality is would be what? Your basis for using the term “vast majority” would be what? Those who tell you what you want to hear?

Cite? If it’s that Zogby poll, you’d best go right to the source - he’s already gone public with the administration lying about it - are you simply reading RW blogger’s repetitions about those lies?

That was a nice list of opinion pieces which you present as fact, though, in fine decembrist fashion. Thje quote you present as the nubbin of your “facts” is from just such a Potemkin tour, which you are somehow extrapolating to an entire country, and dismissing as “biased” all contrary facts and opinions. Typical, unfortunately - one might have thought that Rumsfeld’s revelation that even the Administration doesn’t believe what it’s telling you would have had a more sobering effect on you.

44

Did you guys actually READ the cites he posted? I don’t know how valid they are, but you might just want to at least look at them. They didn’t LOOK like the standard neocon propaganda to me…

I especially recommend the the Arab News one, and the one on What Do Iraqis Think…for me, they certainly gave me a different perspective.

-XT

45

I don’t know either but I’d ask the question in GQ, if I were you.

What I would say is I don’t believe the US has anything approaching a significant deployment in Afghanistan. Afaik, it has concentrated a small garrison at Bagram airbase and handed the rest over to the UN as soon as it possibly could – the UK took over peace-keeping duties in Kabul (on behalf of the UN) while that last battle in the mountains was taking place. The US was largely gone shortly after, to the best of my knowledge.

It now seems it can’t fully rotate forces in Iraq without calling up reservists, so you get the impression it’s over-stretched now - it’s the need to rotate that’s causing the problem.

From here on in, one assumes its reservists and National Guard units or the UN.

46

With Saddam still wandering around, it is truly amazing that so many Iraqis would already stick their necks out for democracy. Plenty of brave Iraqis have already died trying to implement something better than the Saddamite regime. I wonder what percentage of the minority will come around once the body of Saddam is found in the rubble somewhere?

All I want for Christmas… Yes, I want the mass-murdering Saddam dead. Sue me.

I guess you have to be a dreamer or idealist to suggest that the Iraqis have deserved something better than a guy that shot his way into power and tortured his way into the present. I know, somehow he’s our fault, but getting rid of him was wrong. Because some South American dictator was supported during the Cold War, nothing is justifiable any more. It’s depressing nihilism.

The Right Wing Conspiracy to attack Iraq begain one second after the cease fire terms in the first Gulf War were “accepted.” Subsequently, the rebellions GHWB encouraged were snuffed using attack helicopters in full view of US troops. Some people remember that as a mistake not to be repeated. Let me be the first to suggest a stake through Saddam’s heart.

47

>> To get the real picture, you have to look at what the vast majority of Iraqis are saying and doing, not the few fringe elements who are opposed to the liberation.

Every day in the news I see Iraqis demonstrating against the US, Iraqis cheering at the sites of successful attacks against US forces. Please show me news of pro-American demonstrations, news of Iraqis mourning for the Americans. I have not seen any.

I do not buy the argument of the “silent majority”. During the Vietnam war there were massive demonstrations against the war and no demonstrations in favor of it and yet Nixon said the majority of the country supported the war. They were the “silent majority”. It was a lie then and it is a lie now. The silent majority in Iraq does not support the USA, they are very clearly helping and supporting the resistance. Without popular support the resistance could not operate.

Again, at every site of an attack you see Iraqis cheering over the remains of American equipment. Show me the opposite. Show me news of Iraqis in mourning. Show me news of Iraq8is demonstarting in support of the USA. Show me cites of Iraqis confronting those who openly proclaim their hate for the USA. Because I can’t see them to any representative degree.

48

>> Any comparison with American forces in Iraq and the vicious crackdown on freedom by the Chinese Communist government is repulsive.

The photo is of an Iraqi being arrested and threatened for expressing his opinion that he does not wish to be governed by Americans. He is a hero in my eyes. He is standing up for his most basic human rights which are being infringed by a foreign army of occupation.

At any rate, the fact is the USA is not succeeding in governing Iraq. Things have gone from bad to worse. The Red Cross has pulled out, the UN has also pulled out most of its staff, The Spanish have pulled out all their diplomatic personnel after a couple of them were murdered. The fact is the USA is failing in the task of governing Iraq. The fact is that at this rate Iraq will only be a mess The fact is that the US forces are disliked and can only exert control by fear. that is why they are attacking unspecified targets as a show of force. They are not going after specific individuals, rather they are intimidating the general population. Their tactics of invading homes and abusing dwellers are only alienating the locals and making enemies out of them.

Why the fuck are American soldiers invading private homes in Iraq? Were the dwellers of any of those homes ever a threat to America? The young man who stands up for his rights is a hero in my book. I do not care if his rights were threatened by the Chinese or the Americans, he is standing up for his rights and those of his people and he is a hero. He has not killed anyone, he has not used violence against anyone. Violence is being used against him and he refuses to submit. He is speaking his mind as we all have the right to do.

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Why should I? I’d like to see him dead too.

Wow. The power and rhetorical force of your strawman leaves me speechless.

Lots of things aren’t justifiable. Taking time off from the war on terror to get caught in this mess isn’t particularly justifiable. Claiming that it is so part of the war on terror isn’t justifiable. Getting bogged down in this mess while two Third World countries flirt with going nuclear is pretty dumb too. Claiming that we needed to invade Iraq because of the (WMD) threat they represented to us wasn’t justifiable at all. And of course, essentially pretending that there wasn’t going to be a messy part, depriving Americans of the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they wanted to make a major commitment to the whole frickin’ region before we invaded, that was unquestionably unjustifiable.

If the Administration had played straight with us beforehand, and the American people - knowing that Saddam had no WMDs and had essentially nothing to do with al-Qaeda, and knowing too that taking Baghdad wouldn’t be hard, but the aftermath would be long, messy, dangerous, and perhaps even insoluble - had decided it was worth it anyway, there would be an argument for its justifiability. But not now.

Well, no joke. And yet that’s quite analogous to what we may be in the middle of.

By not getting the buy-in of the American people in advance to anything more than Wolfie’s wet dream, as opposed to the reality, we may very well wind up pulling out before the job is done, leaving unprotected those who threw in their lot with us.

Like father, like son. How many times can Iraq be screwed over by Presidents named Bush?

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Are you sure you posted the correct article Sailor?? I don’t see the part you are talking about with 'attacking unspecified targets…" or with American soldiers going into private houses. I’m not digging here, I really don’t see it. Unless you mean this one blurb:

From CNN

[QUOTE]
U.S. forces Saturday attacked targets in the Tikrit area in what they called a “show of force.”
[/QUOTE

Is that what you meant?? If so, I don’t see how you are drawing the conclusions you are drawing from that short blurb. I don’t see the part about American soldier going into houses either, but I know that this happens. Maybe you posted the wrong link??

-XT]

51

I see Iraqis demonstrating against US troops and think, “man, if they tried that under Saddam, he’d have cut their appendages off and shot them in the head. What nice guys we are compared to that rat bastard.”

52

Well, yes, because we’re the Good Guys. That’s why we wear the white hat. But you see, Beagle there are some things that the Good Guys do, and things they don’t do. Because they’re the Good Guys. You follow?

One of those things that Good Guys don’t do is start wars on flimsy pretexts of self-defense. Definitely on the “don’t do” list.

53

I think we’re still running under the Clintonian national military strategy, which requires us to “be able to defeat aggression of any kind. Especially important is the ability to deter or defeat nearly simultaneous large–scale, cross–border aggression in two distant theaters in overlapping time frames, preferably in concert with allies.”

With 8000 troops in Afghanistan and 180,000 or so total in the middle east, we’re running at around a major war and a half. Even before the announcement of new plans to increase troop strength in Iraq the responders to this week’s Army Times manpower poll felt, by a 3 to 1 margin, that the US lacked the manpower to meet current demands, much less take on someone new.
Sure it’s a nonscientific poll, but what are you going to do, ask Rumsfeld ?

–
With regard to the national military strategy: If Bush et al. have released an updated version, you’d expect a site like http://www.eucom.mil/Command/Strategy/preface.htm&2]EUcom to at least mention it.

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Fix link: EUcom

And just in case the poll link fails: Army Times (Polls at bottom of page)

55

I’ve never seen a people so ungrateful to be occupied in my life!

Fwiw:

“As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.” . . etc. . . . etc . . .

I’m sure the Iraqi’s are particularly keen to see who ‘we’ come up with this time . . .

56

I haven’t quoted the Zogby poll. Gallup did a poll as well, earlier on, in which two thirds of Baghdad residents said that all the post-war hardship they had gone through was ‘worth it’.

So far, the only polling that I know of has only taken place in Baghdad, which is the heart of the ‘Sunni Triangle’ and the city which received the major benefits from Saddam’s regime. If 67% of them are in favor of the ouster of Saddam, can you imagine what support levels must be among, say, the Marsh Arabs or the residents of Mosul or Kirkuk?

The Globe and Mail article I linked says that 80% of Iraqis “Support U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein”. It doesn’t cite this number, so I can’t verify it.

But it’s telling that EVERY account I’ve read so far from people who have actually travelled to the region and talked with the people has said the same thing - the media is only reporting the negative, the good news isn’t getting out, and there is actually significant support for the U.S. in Iraq. I’ve read reports from three Democratic Congressmen who travelled there, and all three came back saying that the view we get here is distorted. These are people who have nothing to gain in supporting Bush.

Look, there are tons of resources on the net you can go read yourself. There are dozens of Iraqi websites on the net now - newspapers, blogs, Iraqi institutes, etc. There are dozens of blogs and web sites posting letters and commentary from soldiiers and workers who are actually in country. NONE of them sound as alarmist as the portrayal you get in the media. The picture I get is that there are a few ‘hot zones’ with lots of terrorist activity, and in those areas people are hunkered down and wary, but still supportive. In other areas where there is little or no violence, there seems to be amazing support for the U.S. Kids run after humvees smiling and shouting. Soccer games are held between soldiers and Iraqis. Soldiers are invited to the homes of residents for suppers.

As for the demonstrations against Americans… Well, at least one Iraqi blog above thinks they are staged. People are paid on the street to demonstrate. Hussein’s regime was really quite good at setting up ‘demonstrations’, and it wouldn’t be surprising at all if they were still doing so. On the other hand, it also wouldn’t surprise me to find that some Iraqis were willing to honestly demonstrate against the U.S. Maybe there’s a chapter of international A.N.S.W.E.R. there, or a bunch of clowns from the Worker’s World Party, Baghdad chapter. If people can protest in the U.S., they can protest there. Be wary of extrapolating from a bunch of people jumping up and down on an overturned Humvee and drawing conclusions about what the average Iraqis wants or believes.

So I’ve offered plenty of evidence and links to make my case. I was very careful to stay away from the neo-con sites like NRO. I picked sites specifically that have no reason to like Bush or his policies and in fact may be hostile to them.

Have you read them? Would you like to refute them substantively, or just wave your hand dismissively because it’s just ‘opinion’?

57

What’s your source for this:

58

Yes, I want to review CIA operations from the early 1960s to determine the obviously keen relevance to the active military situation in Iraq. :dubious:

That’s so predictable. Because the US opposed Communism back before I was freaking born, I can’t oppose Saddam Hussein now without being a hypocrite. Because I think our troops behave better than Saddam’s henchmen I’m a one dimensional American appartchik. Is this on auto-rewind?

Well, actually, yes I can think whatever I want! I’m free to not let foreigners put strawmen in my yard!

Opposing sanctions before and giving no aid to Iraq now is really hypocritical, in the present. I hope angry Iraqis take note of their helpful colonial oppressors under Saddam, France and Germany.

59

Desmostylus: The Gallup poll. Unfortunately, it’s not available on their site for free any more.

60

I wouldn’t call it hypocritical. The US is apparently quite happy for Chalabi to steal money from it. I can’t blame other countries for being a bit more careful with their citizens money.