What a cogent analysis.
Oh, please. Our conquest of Iraq was an example of greed, stupidity, amorality, ideological fervor, and malice, without a shred of any redeeming impulses involved. There’s no “grey” to it.
Tell that to our victims.
Oh, please. We’ve never had any desire for a democratic Iraq. America hasn’t ever been a friend of democracy; quite the opposite, we’ve tended to tear it down where we could. And the welfare of the world was never any motivation in our conquest anyway.
You just ignore all the facts. The fact is that Iraq is among the five worst failed states according to the twelve criteria in that page. You just ignore that and pontificate on generalities. The facts are clear. The invasion was inmoral but it has also failed. That is a fact. Iraq and Iraqis were better off ten years ago than they are now. That is a fact.
You can tell yourself it will take decades but the fact is that since the invasion the Iraqis have paid a huge price, in lives and in their quality of life. America is the cause of the problem , not the solution.
Well, I agree. Did I say anywhere that our invasion was ‘justified’?? What has this got to do with the price of tea in China, though? The number of ‘justified’ invasions in the past are notable mostly due to how infrequent they have been.
In addition, since you don’t have a time machine, we have take the situation as it actually is…not as most of us would like it to be. We DID invade…it happened, it’s done. Now, the question is…what do we do NOW?
No…I think not. No breaks for you. Explain to me how a nation acquires this ‘right’ to not be invaded or attacked? Perhaps you could give some historic examples?
As for staying to clean things up…explain to me how it would be better to have invaded (no time machine, ehe?) and then cut and run, leaving the locals to clean up the mess. Again, use some historic examples. You could use some of the nations in North Africa, say, or perhaps in Latin America to illustrate how well this has worked out in the past.
Certainly. This is a revelation, how?
Certainly. And…?
And your point in bringing it up again is…?
Nothing? Well…I think you are exaggerating there. If you are trying to build a case that the US is doing more harm than good in Iraq, then you should probably build your case, instead of attempting to state things I’m not disputing and then use hyperbole to carry through your, um, argument.
If military control was our goal why haven’t we sent over whelming military force to Iraq? I’d say if by putting 20k more troops on the ground has gotten Iraq more stable then sending, I don’t know, say 500k more there would have certainly ensured military control…if that’s what we were aiming at.
And what has this got to do with what I was responding too…assuming this post was directed at me, of course?
-XT
If all of the foreign troops were teleported out of Iraq tomorrow, would the country descend into open battles? That’s how I would define on the “brink” of civil war. I think, while the US and its allies have calmed the country down, without our troops it would be a few short months before infighting plunged the nation into chaos. All of the lingering resentments of the past few years didnt just disappear, they either moved to Afghanistan, Pakistan, or simmered beneath the face
As far as failures go, its partial. The US did not accomplish its goal going in to Iraq, thus it failed. Salvaging something good from a failure doesnt mean the original policy wasnt detestable and ineffective.
You asked where “right” came into it; that’s one place.
“Everybody does it” is not a valid justification.
We leave, as soon as possible. We have neither the ability nor the desire to do anything more constructive.
They wouldn’t have had us continuing to add to their problems.
We won’t salvage anything good, because our motives there are not and never were good.
Who enforces such a ‘right’ then? How is it granted? In the words of Inigo Montoya, I dinna thin’ that word (‘right’) means what you THIN’ it means, Der.
Again, I’m not disputing that the US was justified in it’s attack on Iraq…I don’t think ‘justified’ comes into the equation, to be honest. I think the US was wrong to attack Iraq, but not because of any innate goodness or light, or tenuous ‘right’ that the Iraqi’s supposedly had to not be invaded. We were wrong because the invasion of Iraq was a stupid thing for US to do…it distracted from the war we were waging in Afghanistan, it spread our military thin unnecessarily, and it was a political failure on the international as well as US national front. It was stupid. But ‘right’ doesn’t, IMHO, come into it…no nation has the ‘right’ to be invaded or to invade another. They either have the ability to prevent it or carry it off…or they don’t.
Again, I didn’t bring up ‘justified’ or ‘justification’…you did. I never said the US was ‘justified’ in it’s invasion of Iraq. Hell, I didn’t even say that 7 years ago when I actually thought it was still a good idea.
Yes…I acknowledged that this is a possibility. And, today, I think you might be right, actually. Try not to faint. I think that now, today, under Obama and in the current political and military situation as it exists in Iraq now, we might be able to leave and not having things worse off…in fact, I think they might be better off, at this point, if we left as Obama seems to be saying we will.
Hopefully you are correct. I THINK you are, FWIW.
-XT
I’m talking about “right” as in “right and wrong”.
You are describing the kind of attitude that leads to nations being ruined, as they engage in an endless series of wars against the world. And the sooner they are brought down the better.
And right and wrong ALWAYS matter. Without America being in the right, your arguments about practicality are irrelevant, because if America is in the wrong there’s no good reason to want it to do well; rather the opposite. One of the few good things to come from the war is the damage America inflicted upon itself.
Then we shouldn’t be hoping for it to do well.
They would have been better off at all points.
Ah…well, in that case, I think that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are rather nebulous concepts when speaking of nation states. It’s all a matter of perspective. However, I misunderheard what you were saying there, so…I agree. IMHO, we were ‘wrong’ to invade.
I am describing reality, as it exists. And yeah…it HAS lead to great nations being brought down. Look at the French, Spanish, Brits…heck, Rome, Carthage, Egypt.
Rarely do they matter. Usually what matters is…who wins. In the great sweep of history anyway. For that matter, who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’ generally flip flops, historically, as new generations of historians put their own stamp and their own times spin on events.
From the perspective of Iraq and the US I’d say…both were ‘wrong’. Both fucked up. Saddam and Iraq have paid, and the Iraqi people as well as the US are still paying for the fuck-age.
Well, yeah…but you don’t like the US, so your view point here is a bit, um, biased. As is mine. I, however, freely acknowledge that I’m biased…and, more importantly, I actually realize that I am on the inside, where it counts.
I don’t think that any good things will come out of this abortion.
Sheesh…and you accuse ME of being cold and heartless! Get real…we can still hope (in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first) that the Iraqi’s pull things out and become a stable nation. I don’t wish massive death and unrest on anyone…not even the NK’s, though I’d dearly love to see lil’ Kimmy tossed into a vat of starving piranha. The thing is, even if the Iraqi’s DO manage to pull things out, I don’t see the US doing any more international adventures for at least a decade or so. Even ‘success’ in this isn’t exactly going to leave the US public or Congress rarin’ for more, after all. And it’s not exactly going to make other nominal countries step out and flaunt at the US either…they would have to worry that we’d shoot our collective selves in the dick again as we pull down their own houses.
Perhaps. It’s a debatable point. If they go completely tits up in the next few years then you will certainly be correct.
-XT
By being a signatory of the UN?
Nuremberg?
Again, it is totally disingenuous to clain the right to invade and kill and then say you have the obligation to stay and rebuild. Yeah. Sure. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
If America cared about rebuilding Iraq it would have cooperated with other countries. Instead it insisted in retaining all control itself.
Let’s get real. Iraq is a failed state, a humanitarian crisis, and the only thing America has done is try to hand on to as much power as it could. It has done close to nothing to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. It has done little to avoid “collateral damage”, the euphemism for killing innocent Iraqis without caring much. It refused to cede any authority to the UN or other nations. Its only obvious and ostensible purpose is to retain as much control as it can.
I really don’t get how an additional fifteen years of military occupation is supposed to transform Iraq into a flourishing secular democracy. Hell, it spent thirty years under a secular totalitarian dictatorship, and the lid still blew off after we invaded.
The only really moral solution I see is an immediate, drastic drawn-down of our troop strength, followed by infrastructural aid at least equivalent to our current yearly military expenditures. Call it a trillion dollars or so over the next ten years. It’d probably be a good idea if we made that aid conditional on UN-certified free and fair elections.
Handing the Bush administration over for trial by the Iraqis wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
Garbage. Slaughter and torture and conquest are wrong whether or not the winning side calls it right. Their claims otherwise aren’t worth taking seriously, because they are not just wrong, but liars when they say so; they certainly wouldn’t say that it was right if they were the ones being stomped on. I don’t believe for an instant you would be making your might-makes-right speeches if you were the one living under occupation.
Garbage again. Nothing Saddam or Iraq did or didn’t do was going to affect our attack; it was our choice and ours alone.
But I didn’t say that I wanted the Iraqis to fail, I said I wanted America to fail. America’s intentions are not remotely benevolent, and there’s no contradiction in hoping for Iraq to pull itself together, and for America to suffer as severe repercussions as possible. Success on Iraq’s part pretty much demands failure on America’s part, since America’s intentions are fundamentally selfish and malignant towards Iraq.
The distinction between actively wanting massive death and destruction, and between inflicting it with utter lack of concern for your victims the way you are advocating is so small as to not matter.
Nonsense; Iraq tried everything it could to talk us down to no avail. Our attack made it quite clear that there’s no point in treating America as a rational nation that can be negotiated with.
How is that working out, so far?
Ah…so, the trials of supposed American war criminals still on schedule, then? Do you have when they will start the televising? I’d like to tune in, to see how it goes.
Ah…so, pointing out reality is now ‘disingenuous’. Well…who’d thunk it?
We DID cooperate with other countries. One example would be the UK, which, last time I checked, was a country, but most definitions.
I think, if the US ‘cared’, it wouldn’t have invaded in the first place. But that’s a moot point, now…that reality stuff. Once we had invaded though, I think we were obliged to stay when things went totally tits up. And by that point, cooperation with most other nations not already involved was also moot…no friggin way most of the rest of The World™ (a.k.a. Europe) was going to stick THEIR dicks into the meat grinder. Hell, it was hard enough to keep them focused on Afghanistan.
Well, I wouldn’t want you to be ‘disingenuous’…
You REALLY like hyperbole and exaggeration, ehe? I mean…it’s your bread and butter. Iraq is NOT a ‘failed state’ (yet…jury is still out). It’s a ‘humanitarian crisis’, to be sure, depending on what metrics you use, and what you compare it too. And American is not a country of only black and white, despite what Der tries to say…we are all about shades of gray. The US NEVER has ‘only’ one thing, or ‘only’ one view on ANYTHING…including whether the sky is blue or space aliens crashed in Roswell in the 40’s. Not even the Bush administration was some kind of monolithic entity with only one view point, or political direction wrt Iraq. It really doesn’t help your case (IMHO, FWIW and all that jazz) to speak in such ridiculous broad terms. It make things into a comic book…instead of a discussion about real life with all it’s nuances and shadings.
Complete horseshit. If we didn’t care at all about ‘collateral damage’ we would have simply carpet bombed the entire country and then sent in guys to paint the lines. Even the Bushies cared about ‘collateral damage’, at least wrt it’s political impact. Again…comic book vs reality.
Ok…I’m unaware of when the UN tried to take control of Iraq. AFAIK, the (after the fact) provisions from the UN actually made the US (and our allies) the occupying authority. So…fight my ignorance and show me where the UN tried to take control and the US refused to cede authority.
Saying that in several different ways really does not make it true. You can say it several more times, however, if you like…I won’t mind.
-XT
Just because in this case the scum got away with it doesn’t make them any less scum. It just proves that America is a nation that deserves to be held in contempt.
Yeah, and if a man rapes a woman, he has a duty to keep on raping her until she likes it. :rolleyes:
No, it IS a failed state, listed as such.
More handwaving. We aren’t talking about America; we are talking about what America did to Iraq. Which was an act of unmitigated evil, no shades of grey. Including, yes, removing Saddam because he was actually better for Iraq than we are. Not because he was any good, but because we are so bad. America has succeeded in one thing; in making the rule of Saddam the “good old days” for Iraq.
We used cluster bombs, the modern equivalent. And we did wreck Fallujah and kill much of the population ( after labeling them all “terrorists”, of course. ) We didn’t kill them all because we weren’t trying to; not because we cared in the slightest about their lives.
I suppose one can say the Iraqis have no right not to be invaded and killed but it immediately follows that Americans have no such righ either and so the demolition of the World Trade Center was not wrong either.
Just a couple of parting comments then I’m out of here. I’m not going to bother with another of these silly ‘debates’.
Horseshit (for future reference this has much more impact than ‘garbage’). This completely ignores history and context. But then, it doesn’t make as good a comic book, so I suppose it’s a wash.
Well, leaving aside the hyperbole and bullshit about the US…ok. You seemed to be saying something different than how I read it.
Horseshit (though in this case ‘nonsense’ was a good alternative). Had Saddam et al REALLY wanted to avoid an invasion then they would have thrown in the towel and made some kind of deal early on that would have seen Saddam and some of his merry men on a beach somewhere earning 20%. Saddam played the brinksmanship game for over a decade, playing chicken with the US…and then events change the over all situation too fast for him to adapt, he pushed again and this time the US pushed back with more than cruise missiles and no-fly zones. To say that Saddam and Iraq were the innocent party here is to ignore history. One can certainly make a case that none of this ‘justified’ the US invasion…but you are painting a ludicrous picture here that is disconnected completely from the complex reality.
You missed my point there. The only repercussions for the US have been internal. Neither the UN nor any other body or government has officially (or unofficially afaik) censured the US about our invasion of Iraq. And this is because most of the powerful nations on earth have either done similar things in the not so distant past or want to keep their options open in the event they need to do something similar in the future. This is called ‘reality’.
Yeah, because that’s applicable AND it’s just what I said. Either that or perhaps you are on a fishing expedition of some kind?
I could probably find a list that ‘proves’ Iraq is actually one of the hot spots for alien sightings, or just about anything else. And, correct me if I’m wrong here, but hasn’t Iraq gone from like 2nd or 1st on that list to like 5th or 6th now? So…they seem to be going in a direction different than your statement predicts, no?
This of course doesn’t even touch on what ‘failed state’ actually means, or give any really meaningful information about where a state is going. If a state is a ‘failed state’ this year, but not next year, does that mean they are still a ‘failed state’? What’s the time limit?
We didn’t drop cluster bombs indiscriminately…thus, we had some sensitivity about ‘collateral damage’. QED. If we had none (as our hyperbolic friend sailor stated) then ever time we even THOUGHT there MIGHT be a terrorist we would have bombed the crap out of the entire area…just to be sure. Instead we sent ground troops into those areas, even though we knew this would cause more US casualties than had we done it the easy way.
Fallujah is actually a good demonstration of how you are wrong. We KNEW there were terrorists there. If we REALLY didn’t care about civilian casualties then why the fuck do you suppose we would have sent ground troops in there before we had surrounded the city until it starved all the while continuously bombing the holy crap out of it. Do you suppose we couldn’t have done so?? We have artillery, we have bombers, we have missiles…hell, we have FAE’s for that matter. We could have leveled the city, then starved it out (or both at once)…and then, after a few months of constant bombardment, sent in a few troops to pick through the smoking rubble.
Um…whatever you say, chief.
And with that I think I’ll bid everyone ado. Have fun storming the castle, boys…and let me know how those international trials and embargoes against the US go.
-XT
In that case, I won’t bother arguing with your garbage in that post. And I doubt you are impressing anyone with your standard apologist “you aren’t worthy of debate” cop out.
Yeah. Difficult to argue with such an obvious concept, isn’t it? Because the only alternative is that American life is worth more than others. Which you may think but would not dare say publicly.
Good riddance.
And I maintain that Iraq is a disaster and it is among the bottom 5 failed nations list and anyone who says it was a success is totally ignorant on the facts.
Facts are stupid things, as Reagan said.
All of them.
Etc. Excluded middle.
Yes, btw, “your position is not worthy of debate” is an even chickenshittier tactic than claiming a comprehensive rebuttal to be a “personal attack”.