The goal was “freeing Iraq from Sadam” (well other then that pesky freeing the world from the WMD threat). Sadam is gone. Why can’t they get democracy on their own?
Is it still democracy if it took guns, bombs and thousands of deaths at the hand of foreigners, to achieve? Is it still democracy if it takes foreign soliders to maintain it?
Yes. We implemented it in Germany and Japan, we fought two World wars, we can do it there. (and yes I know both countries had the experience of weak democratically elected government, which were both taken over by militarism)
Why should the coalition leave a people who elect a government but who cannot maintain it due to massive internal security problems? We took out Saddam, yes, that was one
The Iraqis are getting Democracy on their own, but lets use an example of how the US acquired its freedom and its democracy, which was through French military help (I know they didn’t help the US form its constitution or its rights etc, but it did provide the military muscle to defeat a portion of the British commitment against the American militias) I don’t think its wrong to help Iraqis achieve their dream of a democracy through military force against insurgents. I don’t see it as right to pullout and let the country completely collapse because we didn’t commit ourselves to helping them help themselves. Withdrawing before they are ready is a crime within itself.
I’m dreadfully sorry but Fallujah doesn’t seem like democracy in action to me.
I know you enjoy getting those pesky muslims under control, but I thought democracy was about what the people wanted. The people who live there, that is.
Psst, it’s guinea pig. If you’re going to try and insult my intelligence, you might wanna try and check your spelling first, mmmkay?
I never said living under Saddam was great. It fucking sucked. But, is the alternative now any better? So far, it doesn’t look like it.
Yeah, because I’m very predujice and in wanting of Muslims to put up and shut up :rolleyes:
Fallujah was a last resort tactic, and I have no qualms about attacking a redoubt of millitants which have brutally executed Iraqis and Western hostages, or the Saudi/MENA militants which bought safe houses and used them as bases of operations in which to attack targets in other parts of the country.
How can you gauge what the people want when they obviously have a gun to their back telling them what to say, in order to push an agenda by a group of militant islamists which the majority of people in Fallujah don’t want?
Democracy is what people want, you’re right. So in effect we went into Fallujah to stop the people bombing and killing from influencing the wrong message onto the Iraqis, the message which is that they’re too weak and too powerless to do anything without them. They are wrong though, and they’ll be proved wrong.
Iraqis (with our help obviously) sacrificed security for liberty, and will eventually get both.
Why yes you are. I’m glad you realise that. Your next mission is stopping the bigot urge.
I didn’t doubt for a moment that you would have no qualms…they (were) are muslims after all. Which part of Britain should be bombed because it has a higher level of criminal behaviour?
Does it matter who holds the gun? Is putting one gun in place of another the best way to tell? I “thought” the “war” in Iraq finished ages ago. Is it only finished when everyone agrees? Is that democracy? Or just Sadam in different colours?
The wrong message? Don’t the people decide what is the right or wrong message? Shit Bush gave me the WRONG message!..Guess what I didn’t get a vote because I’m not American 
It’s extremely odd to say that Iraqis sacrificed security for liberty, when in fact they had no say in the matter. A loss of security was imposed upon them, in exchange for a so-far nominal but largely meaningless increase in liberty. It is far too soon to proclaim that the situation vis a vis either security or liberty will be improved to any significant extent in the near or mid-term future. Now, if the Bush administration hadn’t been so willfully blind as to believe their own BS propaganda about Iraqis greeting US troops with flowers and parades, then maybe, just maybe, they’d have been intelligent enough to make viable plans for maintaining security after the fall of Saddam, but apparently this sort of elementary foresight was too much to be asked. And maybe, just maybe, when Riverbend blaims the current situation on the US, it’s this terrible planning failure to which she’s referring.
Whats the problem, am I not fitting the stereotype of anti muslim bigot?
Muslims who need a good government which caters to the people and not to itself, thats why I think its a good reason to stay the course in Iraq, if we don’t finish what we started, I only dread how many generations it will take before they begin to realise that what they’re doing, is a bad idea.
People are entitled to their opinion in an Iraqi democracy, they just have to understand they cannot kill and shoot people who have a differeing one either. Thats the order we’re trying to implement. Open criticism of anything without reprisal will expel most extremism.
Heh, nice try, I suppose shooting people and killing them to implement a sharia based theocracy is also their ‘democratic right’ eh?
And yes wrong message, why can’t people be free to decide whether they disagree with militants without the threat of being shot or raped or murdered?
The message of ‘I’ll decapitate you because you’re different, and bomb and shoot civilian targets for no apparent reason other than to implement fear’ IS a wrong message, and you know it.
I, for one, am willing to give friend Liam a fair hearing.
On the one hand, we have a native Iraqi, on the ground as it were, one familiar with the customs and geography of (presumably) her native land, and (again presumably) the history and politics thereof. Mr. Liam is, on the other hand, a resident of Manchester, England, offers his own expertise and insight in contradiction.
Hence, the first question…perhaps the only question…then becomes: what sources of intelligence, or what demonstration of unbiased awareness of fact, does Mr. Liam offer? Has he shown us any reason to trust his interpretation of events is somehow superior to that of Riverbend? I am given to understand (having no real knowledge) that Manchester boasts a formidable soccer team, perhaps this is foundation of his self-proclaimed insight into the nature of the Iraq conflict?
One is left in doubt, until he shall clarify.
These are the types of blogs I read.
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/
These are adults, who are insightful and intelligent, with one recently being shot at. It is where I drew my thoughts and interpretation of opinions from Iraq.
I must have missed that moment. You are always so very typical every time I look.
Oh I see! Muslims need a non Muslim govt. Yep that makes sense.
Should we let the Pope know he has it all wrong? (surely he has had enough generations?). How many generations do Republicans get? I want to add it to my diary.
Ok I understand. If I don’t agree with you, you can kill me. If you don’t agree with me you can kill me.
Your side can kill anyone who disagrees…the other side can’t. Killing one person at a time is very evil. Bombing the shit out of loads is noble and kind.
K got it.
You are right. Killing people is only good if you are on the “good” side.
Not sure why anyone bothers to give this xenophobic little shit the time of day.
Fuck him – and those like him.
Yes, I sometimes am and sometimes not.
What? How is an interim government (which is headed by a Muslim, and is full of Muslim shock!) which is soon to be disbanded when elections take place to make room for a elected party a non-Muslim government?
Plenty of Muslims in Iraq want a secular democratic representative government, no matter how bad the violence has been, people are still on course in making it happen.
Aww what a shame, I think the insurgents gave up their moral highground when they started to behead innocents, beat them, torture them, blow up hospitals, schools town centres, countless kidnappings, raped women, kill countless in the name of their extreme interpretation of Islam, yeah you’re right, it is evil.
The main difference between the US/Coalition and the insurgents is that we don’t go out and intentionally murder innocent civilians in order to maintain a balance of terror, where is the condemnation from you of the Islamists, the people in Fallujah who made sure the gun was the rule of law? Who establised terror houses where people were tourtured and executed? Wheres you anger when things like that happen?
In a representative democracy, your views are tolerated to a point where you take up arms to try and enforce them, the US isn’t trying to enforce democracy on the Iraqis since it is the type of government they want, they are trying to establish an evironment where elections and recontruction can take place free from violence.
Look, the US is no patron saint, but they and the Brits are a bloody hellova lot better than the scumbags you seem to think are freedom fighters.
That completely true. Bad people who kill for the sake of killing should be executed themselves.
I don’t see how supporting the Iraqis towards democracy can be translated as Xenophobic :rolleyes:
Stop spitting your dummy out.
You understand that that means that they get to choose what kind of government they want. If that means (and it might well) a religious-based government, hostile to the US, you support the right of the Iraqis to make that choice?
Let me draw your attention to the words of Peter W. Galbraith,a professor at the National War College. He was in rebel-held Iraq during the 1991 uprising.
bolding mine
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Of course right now the alternative now is even worse. But Iraq is in the middle of a war. As you say “So far, it doesn’t look like it”. This might take as long as WWII.
The problem today is that the Iraqi government, the US military, and the al Qaeda/republican guard insurgency will not give up as easily as the Iraqi troops in Gulf War I and the Kurd and Shiite insurgents in 1991.
Excellent! Now we’re getting somewhere! You read blogs!
We have riverbend before us. A liar and a propagandist, you sternly assert. You have the clear truth from another source, who, not surprisingly, is in complete agreement with your position on the matter.
But beyond the coincidence of your views, yours from Manchester and whomsoever from “Messopotamia”, have you more to offer in terms of substantiation. So far we have your insistence that (a) is a lying hound and (b) the font of all that is wise and true.
You have more, of course?
Which means he has even more sense to know what is at stake in Iraq if we play appeasement with Insurgents, and pull out.
Why oh why didn’t we install Chalabi as president when we had the chance? 