[QUOTE=John Mace]
Eh. Not really the same, and the guy is a Guest poster.
Look, like it or not, the US is in Iraq with the consent of the legitimate government of that country, and acts in agreement with the laws of that country. It’s not substantially different from UN peacekeepers in other parts of the world. I’m really surprised you can’t see a difference between actions taken by a legitimate government to keep order and actions taken by groups intent on overthrowing a legitimate government by violence, purposing killing as many civilians as it can in the process.
[/QUOTE]
Dead is dead and the question of legitimacy or not of a govt makes not difference to whether it’s okay to wish people dead. And I don’t see it keeping order. I see it adopting an ‘own safety first’ approach that inevitably maximises civilian casualties compared to our own. I see it fighting not to keep order but to establish a friendly regime consonant with our own short sighted view of strategic interests.
If we had the slightest interest in peace-keeping and the good of the Iraqi people we’d sit down and talk with others in the region. We’d throw our hands up and admit we’ve made a huge mistake, write a blank cheque to fund a multi-national force excluding our troops and show good faith by cutting a fair deal for the Palestinians. As it is we want a peaceful iraq on our pie in the sky, it’s going to rain ponies terms.
I wish those ethnically cleansing dead too because i’d like to see the civil war end. I don’t believe the current government is legitimate beyond a legalistic sense. It’s writ does not run in the country and it does not hold a monpoloy of force in its borders. It is in practice a set of factions and ministerial fiefdoms engaged in a civil war which will determine what is eventually the ‘legitimate’ government of Iraq in practice.
In theory, if this were more clear cut like the French resistance, I’d hope for an iraqi victory over the coalition. But the coalition aren’t Nazi’s and the the Resistance are a bunch of murdering religious savages.
I do want to see the Coalition defeated. ‘Defeated’ being defined as being denied its strategic aims of regional bases and a compliant govt. I want the USA to learn that might does not make right. That it does not have the right to use force on specious pretexts to pursue the narrow short-term interests defined for it by a bunch of neo-con nut jobs.
I want it to come to its senses and like the Iraq Study Group said - negotiate in good faith with Syria and Iran. I want it to accept the fact that the most likely outcome of the Civil War will be an Iran-friendly Iraq.
I want it to stop trying to shape events to its will and do what it can to sort out the mess it, and its UK lapdog, has created.
Like in Vietnam I would welcome the army just saying, fuck it, we are not risking our lives in pursuit of an unattainable goal just to save Bush’s face.
Unfortunately all I see is more ethnic cleansing and more civilian casualties and a ‘Surge’ that in practice will see the coalition bombing and shelling the parts of the city it is trying to clear, killing more civilians, causing more anger, resentment and butchery in response and making this generally worse all so Bush can hand over the mess to someone else.
And in practice in this situation I do value the lives of civilians more than invading soldiers. I absolutely deny they have the right to adopt tactics that put their own lives above civilians and shrug it off as ‘collateral damage’.
When you bomb a building with civilians in it to kill a sniper you fully intend to kill everyone and you share in the moral culpability. I’m incandescent with rage that US and UK soldiers have been put in harms way, put in a position where they have to take such terrible and understandable actions, by the lying chicken hawks and lapdogs back in Washington and London.