I was dubious about the need from the first time the idea was floated. The UN weapons inspectors led by Blix weren’t finding anything. Our government’s approach was to accuse them of either carelessness or near complicity. It seemed to me that the war was not because it was necessary but because GW et al wanted it.
Opposed from the onset.
If the poll is still alive, then may I add my vote of no.
It just didn’t feel right.
I supported it when we initially went in, but due to everything that’s happened between now and then I’m very much against it.
Yes, it seemed pretty clear to me that there was one and only one option Bush and his masters would accept - war. All the talk of it being the option of last resort was utter horseshit.
No, not in the least. I think it’s obvious to anyone with an open mind that the Iraq war is an incredibly ill conceived and inept attempt to establish a pro-western government in the oil laden Middle East. Dick Cheney and all his followers which is inclusive of GWB are criminals in my opinion. This makes the lives spent there on all sides all the more sad.
Iraq is going to end up partitioned and strife ridden probably forever now. No one really knows what they’ve set in motion but it’s unlikely that any good will ever come of it.
Why would I want to do that? I have no doubts that you and most others on this board (and in particular in this thread) who say they didn’t support the war from the beginning are telling the absolute truth. I never questioned you or your stance on the war EK.
Hell, I remember when Cecil came out and early on and said the war was stupid (I don’t remember his exact words atm…‘stupid mess’? Something like that)…and there were a LOT of 'dopers who thought the same thing. Most of the 'dopers who disagreed are no longer with us…or like me have re-thought things and have had a change of heart. Very few people on this board still support the war…and I think most of the one’s who DID initially support it (such as myself) are keeping a low profile on this particular thread so they don’t get gang raped.
-XT
p.s. FTR, I retract (most here are claiming) from my first post…certainly I don’t think anyone in this thread is claiming untruths when stating that they never supported the war. Mainly I see a LOT of folks these days making that claim…and I do question that there was this shoulder to shoulder movement against the war while us few poor deluded types were the only ones for it. However, not on THIS board do I question an anti-Iraqi war sentiment. Hell, truth to tell, I have come around to thinking its a huge mistake BECAUSE of this board…FWIW.
Why oh why didn’t we invade Antarctica? Then Al Qaeda could follow us there, and no innocent civilians would be getting killed. Just those poor, cute penguins.
For me, it’s more complicated than “yes” or “no”.
I supported the war when Bush announced it, because I believed the administration about Saddam’s weapons and the support for terrorists. I had no reason to think Bush was lying about it, and honestly I would have believed that ANYONE could have the will and ability to attack my country at that time.
Once we were committed, and the lies started to surface, and Valerie Plume got the royal treatment when her husband tried to reveal the lies, I knew I had been fooled. My first response was “well what the fuck are we doing there? Let’s go home!”, a position that I maintained for a long time. I’m starting to rethink about that, though.
We’re living right now, not five years ago. We can only affect what happens in this world, right now, and we can’t prevent the war at this point. It has already happened. We have to do what’s right, right now, and I don’t think it’s “right” for America to leave Iraq in the mess we put it in. I think that building a strong national Iraqi infrastructure and using the military to protect Iraq from whichever faction has the most guns is the right thing to do, and I think we might be starting to actually DO just that. Patreus seems like the right person to handle this job, and getting Rumsfield out was a major step in the right direction.
So I guess my position in regards to the original question is “sort of”.
I think it was something like “If history remembers him badly (and I believe it will), it will be for getting us into this damned fool war.”
My thoughts precisely. “Terrorism” is not a nation or a person; it’s as you said, a movement, or a strategy or a mindset. This is why the phrase “war on terror” does not make much sense, and neither does Bush’s declaration that “the war on terror will be won on the streets of Baghdad.” Surely those with terror in mind are spread all over the world, no?
I have come to believe that it was a mistake for us to have gone in there in the first place. At the time I stupidly had faith that the powers that be knew what they were doing. I also want to go back and read the Threatening Storm by Pollack and see what he had to say. I have also come to believe the following:
FWIW,
Rob
I was a supporter for this war, but not for any reasons that Bush may have proposed to justify it. I’m for the removal of dictators wherever they may be for no other reason than they are dictators. What should have been done is that enough troops should have been mobilized, from the US and others, to hold the ground and properly police Iraq until it became stable. That could have required 20 years or so to accomplish. It most probably would have required the entire re-culturalization (a word?) of the Iraqi populace. I don’t believe the current culture as is predominant in the majority of ME countries supports, or can support, a democratic polity like we know in the west. The ‘big man’ (great power distance ratios) and tribal infuence (collectivism) leads to corrupt governments and people left on the outside with no possibility of influence in their government.
That being said, these cultures are changing as they have more access to the west, but this will take quite a long time to occur. It would be better if we got out of their way and let them deal with these issues on their own and only act if it affects us directly eg. exporting terrorism.
Which, I am increasingly coming to believe, was the true objective all along.
It’s not so much that there are/were evil alien overlords, but that the stated cause for the war (WMDs) was really not the true cause for the war. The real drive to invade Iraq came from the neocon gang, who believed that the US could depose Saddam and create a democratic society in the Middle East. I won’t go into all the detailed arguments, but the public was sold using reasons that were not the true reasons for the war. This has been pretty well established in numerous articles and books (State of Denial, Woodward, for one).
I think there was enough circumstantial evidence for WMD to be a possibility, and that was played up as the reason for the war. I think there was a real belief that Iraq had poison gas and biological weapons - the troops definitly thought so - so I don’t believe that the administration lied about that. On the other hand, I do think they fabricated the info about nuclear weapons, or at least willingly looked the other way when any info to the contrary was even suggested. I don’t think there’s a substantive difference between out-and-out fabrication and willing ignorance in this case.
I was against the war from the outset. I argued with my brother about it to the degree that we simply had to ignore that the war even existed if we were going to continue to speak to one another.
On the other hand, I believe that when the decision was made to invade and start the process toward the neocon vision, it should have been done in such a way that there would be no question that we would win and achieve our goals. I really believe that the timing of the war was set so that we would be in and out before the 2004 election. That’s one of the biggest crimes of all, in my mind - to use war, and create a military strategy, to ensure a re-election.
That’s fine, no worries.
Well, honestly I’m not going to worry too much about who said exactly what four years ago. I will agree, though, that there definitely was not anything close to shoulder-to shoulder opposition to the war on this board, during the run-up to the invasion.
According to Greg Palast’s analysis, the problem runs much deeper than “ineptitude.” It’s that several factions within the U.S. government had different, and imcompatible, agendas for Iraq. That’s what was and is “going on behind the scenes.”
There’s also the oil thing.
I was also against it from the start, not so much because I thought Saddam had no WMDs…I thought he might well have some. But, I doubted he had that much and I didn’t understand how they constituted a significant threat to us, even if he did, and didn’t understand why the inspections weren’t (more than) enough. I also thought it was pretty silly to believe Saddam would give WMDs to terrorists and thought that it might be more likely that they would end up in the hands of the terrorists if we did invade…although I never in my wildest dreams imagined the degree to which we would not even really try to guard the weapons depots!
After the invasion, for a while I believed in Colin Powell’s “You broke it, you own it” doctrine…And, I still have some difficulty with the idea that we will be pulling out and leaving the place a royal mess. But, I don’t really see a better option. We are just choosing between lesser evils at this point.
The irritating thing about this statement is it was the exact thing that we were being told on the eve of the invasion…Only then, we were being told it by people who claimed to actually know the behind-the-scenes stuff and were telling us, “If you only knew what we know…”. It was a rather difficult argument to fight against but I will point out one thing that I did then again now: When the people who have access to the intelligence (and even the power to declassify pieces of it as they see fit) are the ones who are in favor of the war, what gets out to the public is rather unlikely to make a weaker case for the war than what would get out if everything were known…rather, it is more likely to make a stronger case. And, basically, everything we have learned in the interim between March 2003 and now only further supports this notion!
No, no I don’t support the war in Iraq.
It’s all very interesting and puzzling. We’re in that part of the globe and we have our chosen bedfellows because of money and oil. We need (what if we circumvented OPEC completely and stuck to new oil reserves/ the oil sands in Canada/Alaska? Would that lower the price and cause us to be less dependent on warlords or to supply weapons to people that will use those same weapons against us in ten years?) that abundant oil to keep life as we know it churning. This is the sticky part. We can fight this war and keep things going and preserve our status quo, at least as far as oil and such are concerned, or we can do the wildly unpopular thing amongst the people that have a vested interest in How We Do Things and change our infrastructure, and how we do business.
What’s so wrong with divorcing ourselves from the Middle East regarding oil (even in degree)?
Back to the original question, no. I don’t like it. I thought the move to Afghanistan was “correct” because the people that dinged us were there. That may or may not be true, but it morphed into taking Iraq. That’s where we shit the bed.
Edited to add: that’s fine, xtisme. We’ll probably disagree on many things (minus our taste in video games), but I’ve got no problems if you change your mind. And, for what it’s worth, if anyone gives you shit for changing your stance on it, now that we have a clearer picture, fuck 'em. I’ll be next to you.
And that’s the bitch. The government should be a shitload more transparent with these things. The government should be afraid of the people, not the other way around.
20 - 20 and all that. I don’t really think you’re going to find anyone who still ‘supports the war’, more likely they now see it as ‘support not losing the war’. Make no mistake, if face wasn’t at stake we’d be hell and gone by now, bet. And Americans and Iraqi’s dying to save face is a horrific thought.