THE IRAQI WAR IS OVER!
We are the government. Attacks on our troops are not attacks by freedom fighters defending their homeland against aggression, they are the acts of ** TERRORISTS**.
Now…once more…sans pseudo-intellectual temporizing…
Do you or do you not want democratic government in Iraq?
(Check one only)_______YES ______NO .
Geez! Finding a plain talking man here is like trying to find ticks on a turtle.
IT TAKES TWO TO DISENTANGO!
While GW may have claimed the war is over, those are empty words without the consent of the Iraqi’s. The war ain’t over until they lay down their weapons.
Milum,
GWB said that “major combat operations” were over. I know that they had a huge “Mission Accomplished” banner up, but that’s just forsubliminal effect.
Since all sides are still fighting, what criteria do you use to judge that the war is over?
How do you make the distinction between guerrilla fighters and terrorists?
Are you posting in this manner, (quoting out of context w/ crucial words missing, attributing false positions to other posters etc.), in an attempt to filch goats? Are you posting for goats?
Beagle, you are really missing the point. There is no court that has jurisdiciton to hear the case against the Husseins. The first step in prosecuting a criminal is bringing charges. What crimes have they violated? You seem to think that what you know of as a crime under U.S. state law applies everywhere in the world. They’ve undoubtedly violated Iraqi law, but that’s for an Iraqi court to decide, and there are no functioning Iraqi courts. They’ve violated international law, but that’s for an international tribunal to decide, which also doesn’t exist. Are you arguing for universal jurisdiction for crimes under international law? Many support this idea, but that would mean a lot of U.S. leaders would have to curtail their foreign travel. The only thing I can think of is that the U.S. or Kuwait could bring charges for war crimes committed against their citizens as part of the 1991 invasion of Kuwait, but I don’t know of any facts linking the sons to those acts. If Saddam were captured today, that’s likely what would happen to him, but the U.S. government has a strong preference for having the prosecustion in an ad hoc, mixed international-Iraqi tribunal, for reasons I don’t need to go into here.
Once again: in order to indict someone for a crime, you have to have a court that has jurisdiction and an applicable body of law. The scenarios you’re imagining overlook these major limitations. Yes, a hypothetical court could indict them for a hypothetical crime, but I’m talking about the real world as it exits today.
First, spare me the cheap coloring tricks. It is unamusing.
Well my dear person from Alabama, the soldiers are part of a military occupation force. Unless you are conceding that my dear forefathers, religious cranks and tax evaders that they were, were terrorists in fighting the British, these fellows are not terrorists except in some empty abusive sense.
They are opposing guerilla fighters. Period. Soldiers are valid targets in war. Same as the British soldiers back in the day, etc. etc. That is no comment on the American soldiers per se, it is purely analytical.
Understanding what they are does not mean one supports these guerilla fighters, only rather one is not caught up in some cheap and empty ‘patriotism’ in abusing words for some equally empty self-satisfaction.
Where does this little non-sequitur come from? Are we engaging in that trite little habit of puerile jingism, when faced with facts not to one’s liking he attacks the patriotism of someone?
I shan’t speak for sailor, however, for myself, I see no relationship between my comments pointing out your empty usage of “terrorist” for guerillas is nothing but empty, abusive political posturing. Somehow it makes you feel better to call the Iraqis terrorists, although this rather disregards any proper usage of the term and is simple political abuse, rather like calling opponents Commies.
Your “thought” is nothing of the sort.
If one must know, I stand to substantially profit from an Iraqi reconstruction that goes right. And I do mean substantially. As such I rather do hope that the efforts succeed. However, pious hope driven by ideology or faith is no substitute for rigorous analysis of a situation or its challenges, and empty emotion driven posturing is a recipe for losing.
Now should one care to consult my writings to date, one would find that I am an opponent of this misbegotten waste of resources, however since it is over, and for both personal greed and for a desire not to see this a morass and an utter waste, I have argued that there needs to be political pressure to deliver the proper resources to get the job done, not empty fatuous political posturing posing as some kind of patriotism, color coded at that like a children’s book.
As I have argued in my thread on Reconstruction – where we can dispense with the pious nonsense about “shining motherfucking examples” and other hideously overdone rhetoric – the US collective prestige is on the line here. Failure in this endeavor will be a serious blow to national interests. I am, above all, a man of realpolitik. In that context, I want to see this succeed, it is in my multiple interests to see it succeed. I do business with very nasty people time and again, and as I have said in the past, in MENA politics, there are no virgins. Now, to succeed over here, pious ignorant posturing needs to be put aside, for a clear eyed, clear-headed view of the issues, the problems and the tools most appropriate to addressing those problems.
I have edited out the coloring tricks.
Really? Apparently some people did not get the memo.
It may escape you, but Bush (a) only declared (prematurely perhaps in a similar fit of empty chest beating) that 'major combat was over) (b) is of course in no position to make declarations for the enemy. No Iraqi government surrendered, it just went underground.
However, the war being over or not does not change matters.
Guerilla combat continues, one way or another.
“We” are not in fact the government, we are a provisional occupying authority. Insofar as the Iraqis opposing an American presence have not surrendered, this remains a bit of a wrinkle - occupation forces being valid military targets and all.
Argument by assertion, and rather unconvincing. You have some need to call them terrorists as part of a cheap strategy to denigrate. Well, it’s rather typical but really most unhelpful if one wants to truly understand the situtation.
The Iraqis fighting are most certainly guerillas fighting to defend their homeland against what they perceive to be a foreign invasion - indeed it is a foreign invasion. That says nothing as to its correctness or not, so do try to get down off of this hobby horse.
No, I’m really not. Some people think due process is a get out of jail free card, and that everyone is entitled to bail. The same people seem to think empaneling a war crimes tribunal–in my hypothetical an Iraqi high court–is on par with developing a new vaccine or a perpetual motion machine.
All these assertions about our inability to try U&Q must make everyone feel very sanctimonious right now. After all, they’re DEAD, it’s a tautology, see, we really can’t try them!*
We’re they alive my guess is that we could put together a panel of Iraqi judges and have a trial going in one or two years. This crap about having to try them right now is, well, crap.
I refuse to retype my arguments in this regard for a fourth time, as it is becoming obvious nobody wants to debate legal reality, but would rather whine about various international tribunals snubbed by the US. Which is fine, but has no bearing on what we’re actually talking about: putting two dead men on trial in Iraq.
You can spin it all you want but to me it does not seem like it is “saving American lives” unless we agree that the attacks on American troops would have grown even more had Uday and Qusay not been killed.
Milum, I would like to see democratic government in Iraq. Can you provide it?
Hell, I’d like to see world peace while we’re at it. If you’re playing Santa, do you have that in your bag, too?
But defining away conflict doesn’t mean we don’t have it. Just like claiming we’ve brought freedom to Afghanistan doesn’t make the warlords and drug lords go away.
I thought this thread deserved a bump. About two months have passed and clearly there has been no decline in the attacks. Just the opposite in fact with several big attacks on key targets like the UN headquarters and Shia cleric.
Check the first page of the thread to see which posters were more accurate in their assessment of the impacts of the deaths. The exchange between Sam Stone and minty green is especially interesting.
Having just read the ‘exchange’, I don’t see what you’re on about. I said that their deaths would:
Be a morale booster for U.S. troops. It certainly was that.
Be a morale booster for the Iraqi people. It was that too. There was a lot of cheering when they finally came to realize that those two bastards were dead. Well, except perhaps for Tikrit, Fallujah, and some other areas.
I said IF they were involved in day-to-day operations, it would be a blow to command-and-control. We don’t know if they were, and we also don’t know if it was in fact a blow. Perhaps there was a major plan underway to launch a series of massive attacks, and their deaths screwed it all up. Or maybe these two sick bastards were on the run and no longer had anything to do with the government or resistance. Impossible to tell, and I said so at the time.
I said that their deaths would hurt the resistance because people were unwilling to come forward out of fear, and their deaths would cause a lot more people to come forward with intelligence. That’s EXACTLY what happened. There was a big uptick in intelligence gathering soon after, leading to the capture of a number of high-ranking officials like “Chemical Ali”.
Surely you jest.
Come on. The rate US soldiers being killed has remained more or less the same. The attacks on non-US targets have become much more serious. By any rational measure the security situation is no better than when the two were killed. It’s had little or no impact.
BTW your point 3 was:
“Third, it probably damages the resistance, big time. Whatever power over the people they have had is rooted in fear - fear of direct violence, and fear that Saddam could wind up back in power one day, and people who cooperate with the U.S. today would be the first targets of reprisals. That was no doubt limiting the amount of cooperation the coalition is getting. This is a big blow to the idea that Saddam may be back one day.”
There is no evidence that the resistance has been damaged bigtime.
"There was a big uptick in intelligence gathering soon after, leading to the capture of a number of high-ranking officials like “Chemical Ali”. "
Source?
There were plenty of captures and surrenders before the deaths. I haven’t read anything to suggest that the rate increased afterwards.
In short those who argued that the deaths would have little or no impact were probably right.
Well, for what it’s worth, the average number of dead American soldiers has gone down since the Hussein brothers died:
May - 37 dead (avg. 1.23/day)
June - 28 dead (avg. .93/day)
July - 46 dead (avg. 1.48/day)
August - 34 dead (avg. 1.09/day)
As of Sept. 20 - 13 dead (avg. .65/day)
The Hussein brothers died on July 22.
Surely** Minty Green** you wished, and still hope, that the prognostications of Sam Stone were, and are, right.
Don’t you?
http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx
Here is a site that keeps track of the casualty statistics; it says 67 have died since the death of the Husseins a 1.15 per day. This is more than the June rate and only a little smaller than the May rate. And there have been especially serious attacks on non-US targets in that period. So overall the security situation clearly hasn’t improved.
If there are foreign fighters flowing in, and an al Qaeda presence, it’s going to be hard to reduce the numbers of deaths. Keeping them constant, with increasing threats, arguably is progress.
OTOH, what is the end game? Where is Saddam? Is the war over until Saddam is killed or captured?
We don’t have to defeat the resistance to win. All we have to do is make sure the rebuilding and political processes progress to the point that we don’t have to be there anymore.
I am not an authority by any means on the makeup of the resistance, but I would imagine that a certain percentage of it are people who want foreigners out, but would not fight against a democratically elected Iraqi government once we were gone. So some of the resistance would cease when we left.
The Islamists are another matter, but hopefully the Iraqis can handle that problem on their own once we leave.
My wish is irrelevant. We deal in cold, hard facts around here, not Republican porn.
What kind of silly reasoning is that? Wishing things does not make them so. Or are you saying that if we all wish hard enough things will happen the way we wish them to happen? Because if that were true the invasion would not have happened in the first place.