Is is true that the Americans were at peace between 1973 (Vietnam) and 1982 (Lebanon, as part of the MNF)?
Not counting that minor skirmish with the Libyans in 1981.
Honest question.
Do you think it’s possible that our war is creating more terrorists than it’s eliminating? ISIL wants to draw us into the fight in Iraq so that the Sunni Arabs see us as the enemy. It’s entirely unclear to me that ISIL is a threat to the US. It’s a regional threat, but our regional allies don’t seem to be concerned. Same goes for our European allies. No one is “helping” us with our attack on ISIL in Syria, and maybe they know something we don’t know or are unwilling to acknowledge.
You’re arguing with someone who thinks 1984 describes a utopia, not a dystopia. No, I’m not kidding.
It was our meddling in the Middle East and the CIA’s covert actions that created ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc
I’m sure the families of the Iraq War casualties will be comforted to know that their losses were such a comfort to the 9/11 victims families. It’s as if you can’t follow up 3,000 deaths in a tragic attack with 4,400 deaths in an unnecessary war without being criticized.
Would not fighting the terrorists cause them to shrivel up and die for want of attention? I doubt it. We can fight them, and we can kill them. And if killing them inspires more people to become terrorists, we can kill them too.
They’re a threat to our allies in Iraq at the moment, and if they’re allowed to grow more powerful, potentially to our allies in SA, Israel, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, etc.
Well, except for the 18 countries that are helping us with our attack on ISIS in Syria.
The Iraq war has nothing to do with 9/11. It was an unnecessary diversion and you won’t hear me defend it.
And that means it’s our job to fix the mess we made.
… Saddam, the Saudis, Mubarak, the Iranian revolution…
I agree, but sometimes the best way to help is to stop helping.
And how did that work out for the Kurds in 1992? The Tutsis in 1994? The Iraqis and Syrians between 2011 and a few months ago?
If we repeal the laws making activities crime, then all criminal activity would be eliminated and there would be no more endless war against crime. And there would be no criminals with guns!!
Poorly. But there’s a difference in joining and funding international humanitarian agencies to prevent genocide, and constantly intervening to prevent the balance of power from re-establishing equilibrium. We’re doing the latter.
In other words, we have a lot of tools to use, and I think we’re using the wrong set. We appear terrible at diplomacy and hit-and-miss with regard to humanitarian programs. We swing our military hammer in ever-wider arcs, and while we do a lot of damage I can’t see that we have accomplished much in the last 50 years.
First, I think the 2nd Iraq war should not have been started. Given that it was, as well as the Afghanistan war and it’s aftermath, I think that one solution we haven’t tried could work. Obviously it would be politically impossible, and it’s now too late to try in Afghanistan, but why didn’t/haven’t we tried to fix this post WWII style like we did in Japan and Western Germany? By that I mean going in with hundreds of thousands of troops and setting up a government with a western style government run initially by an American, the way that MacArthur was essentially the ruler of Japan after WWII? No messing around with folks like Karzai or al-Maliki that were more interested in helping themselves and their buddies than fixing their countries. Instead, we could have gone in and worked to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, work on the infrastructure, etc. and with hundreds of thousands of Americans to keep a genuine peace instead of supporting corrupt local politicians. Other than a lack of political will here in the US, is there a reason Iraq and Afghanistan could not have been rebuilt the way Germany and Japan were after WWII? And if we had, and done so successfully, would this not have essentially been the end to the war or terror, in the same way that war against Germany and Japan was permanently ended by the rebuilding efforts post WWII?
Great question! I’ll hazard a guess and say it’s a cost issue combined with negative feelings towards imperialism.
I don’t have the full answer, but I think at least for Afghanistan, we were/are not dealing with a cohesive “country” in the way we think about Germany or Japan, which had functioning economies, political, and legal systems prior to the war. The peoples of Germany and Japan as well as their industries could more easily take the position of being lead. In Afghanistan, there is no functioning economy, political, or legal systems governing the country, and no industry to speak-of. There is nothing to really “lead” there in terms of reconstruction - it would be more like construction (no re-). Remember, the Soviets tried to destroy Afghanistan and failed just as bad as us at building democracy there.
For Iraq, it would seem your question is more valid. I think one of the mistakes was firing the army and branding all former Bathe leadership criminals, so there was no security, and no leadership left to help.
All of the above is just my speculating.
I think this is another of the many things Bush messed up. I think if we had had a more competent president at the time, we would better off.
It is very funny to hear people suggest that the police should be responsible for stopping terrorism, when it’s the same people who complain that police stopping terrorism is creating a police state, which is totally unacceptable.
Personally, I think the government should do what it can to fight murders, swimming pool deaths, cancer, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, and angry people overseas who are actually at this moment trying to find ways to kill innocent people here. That’s what makes me a liberal, I guess.
I agree. My point was, some people act as if defense contractors pull immense strings and wield immense power, when in fact a president could say, “I refuse to listen. Go away,” anytime he or she wanted.
I think it was disproportionate too, but more importantly, poorly waged war as a response. I think a relentless, shadowy campaign of assassinations of terrorists - like Israel’s response after the 1972 Munich Olympic attacks - would have been far cheaper and more appropriate.
But retaliation war often leads to far more deaths than the initial cause itself. The USA lost 2,000+ people at Pearl Harbor…and lost hundreds of thousands of people by entering into World War II.