[QUOTE=elucidator]
Hey, that’s pretty good! You evade my question by suggesting that it is just gameplay, then demand the sort of answers you just evaded providing! Snazzy!
[/QUOTE]
Eh. If you want me to retract that post I will. That leaves us with DT’s unsupported assertions. Same dif.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
I disagree with this assertion. I don’t think the USA has any moral obligation to guard the people currently in Iraq.
When we discuss moral obligation, it must occur in a framework of somebody’s desires. Specifically, if A has a moral obligation to do something for B, it goes without saying that B wants that something.
[/QUOTE]
I think the Iraqi people just don’t want to get shot.
Everyone on this planet likes some of the things their government does, and hates plenty of other things, but what we really want is just to be left alone. It seems to me the most successful of governments are the ones that do the best job of providing security and staying out of the way. Hussein’s regime was horrible, but you could walk down the streets of Baghdad.
In 1979 the USSR invaded Afghanistan. Unable to control it with their initial thrust, they ended up occupying the country with 100,000 soldiers. With equipment not built for the environment and a lack of counter insurgency training, they were stymied at every turn by the Afghan insurgents, who hid within the local population. The Soviets were reduced to using ham-fisted, brutal tactics, which ended up inflaming the populace even further.
The Soviets were unable to build a loyal, competent Afghan army to replace its occupation forces. Back in the USSR, officials heaped scorn upon their puppet ruler, who had little influence outside of Kabul, for not bringing the rebellion under control.
Stop me when you’ve heard any of this before.
The Afghan resistance used classic, tried, true, and tested insurgency tactics against an overwhelming occupation force: bombing and killing Soviet collaborators at all levels, bombing supply lines, bombing police stations, electrical grids, bridges, factories, convoys, and isolating small bands of Soviet forces with ambushes. Humiliated, exhausted, and just downright battered, the Soviets withdrew all their forces by early 1989, after years of worldwide condemnation.
Afghanistan hasn’t been the same since. Over a million people were killed, who knows how many wounded, five million left the country, and another two million were internally displaced. The infrastructure was just absolutely torn apart; the irrigation systems, vital for farming in the drier regions, were devastated. Afghanistan still has these deep scars (which, might I add, aren’t being addressed very well by the current occupation force, but I digress).
So, let us pose a hypothetical: in 1987, high ranking Politburo members communicate to the U.S. that yes, they would love to withdraw Soviet forces but…there’s this one thing…bit of a snag, really…it might lead to destabilization. It might lead to a civil war. Lots of people will die if they just up and up leave. Besides, do you know how difficult it is to withdraw 100,000 soldiers? What about all the equipment? We have to go forward with both eyes open on this one, comrade.
Well, I’m pretty sure what would’ve happened. The U.S. officials would have replied, most likely in a more diplomatic manner but along a similar vein: are you fucking kidding me? You’re not serious, right? You just invaded and occupied a country in a straight up land grab for the basest of reasons, destroyed its society, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and now you say you can’t leave because it might cause further instability?
So the claim is that the USSR can’t leave because the USSR is so concerned about the safety of the Afghani population. Despite the fact an overwhelming percentage of them want the Soviets to leave and have not only been saying so, they’ve been demonstrating the fact using bullets and bomb. Despite that the USSR has demonstrated 1) no capability of making Afghanistan more livable for humans (quite the opposite, actually) 2) no concern for the Afghan population over the last several years and 3) no desire to shape Afghanistan beyond a puppet state in order to exploit its resources and its geographically strategic position.
What would we have made of it? Did they take us for idiots? Was there some sort of chemical leak in the Kremlin, causing the Soviet officials to become delusional? Was it a ploy to kick the can down the road a little further?
I wonder how much propaganda the Kremlin shoved down the poor Soviet people. As I understand it, the war wasn’t very popular at home. I wonder how many appeals to “spreading communism” they attempted, doubtlessly dressed in the lovely hammer and sickle flag.
There are differences, to be sure. For example, I’m unaware of the USSR killing 1.5 million Afghanis before the war with crippling, inhumane sanctions, in addition to random bombings which killed a couple dozen here and there so the Soviet premier could “look tough” back home. I’m also unaware of a super power currently giving support to the Iraqi insurgency (guess which country is the source of the most foreign fighters/material in Iraq? Syria? Good guess, but no. Iran? Ha! Here’s a hint: their king can oftentimes be found holding hands and cuddling with our elected representatives).
We’ve already heard a lot of this claptrap. This September it’s going to intensify, we’re going to hear a lot of excuses from Very Serious News Show Experts as to why, golly gee, we just can’t pull out, it’d be awful. One could probably just go back to 1968, copy paste, change the names, and be done with it.
One very fascinating thing will happen, though: if a Democrat is elected, or if it looks extremely likely, these excuses will increasingly be coming from the mouth of the Democratic Party. It’s already out there from all the top tier presidential candidates, if you look hard enough. But as the potential of a withdrawal comes out of the fog, we’re going to be told why it won’t quite be what we’ve been thinking.
And the aftermath of the pullout? It will be bad, make no mistake. Just look at what happened after the USSR pulled out. A complete disaster, really. But the mindset of forcing your will on the local population isn’t all that different than what led you to stupidly invade them. After all, didn’t we really invade to bring freedom and democracy anyway? We’ve said it so many times, it must be true…maybe we should just stay there until they like us! USA and Iraq: BFF!
If it were up to me, I would, with the permission of Abril, leave a defensive force in Kurdistan. They like us up there and, compared to the rest of Iraq, is paradise on earth. They have a spirit for actual democracy, social liberty and all that mushy crap, and would work with us in good faith (like they are now). Following that, when the rest of Iraq gets itself together I would pay appropriate reparations for repairing their country.
Sevastopol’s post is also a good starting point, except I can’t support the death penalty. Life is good enough.
Since we’ve already established beyond the shadow of a doubt that we’re incapable of acomplishing anything useful in Iraq (Baghdad gets, what, two hours of power a day?), this is not a question about what we’re morally bound to do. If we had any of the answers, surely they would have been in evidence before now.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
So, that would mean we should pay to re-establish a police state and a dictator to bring order back to the country. Somehow that doesn’t seem right.
[/QUOTE]
If that’s the way it turns out:
__ Sucks to be us, then, I guess.
__ Yup. The irony, it burns, doesn’t it?
__ Somebody should have thought of that before March, 2003. (Oh, Look! Somebody DID!)
__ All of the above.
Take yer pick.
I think our obligations are akin to the obligations incurred by Saddam when he invaded Kuwait, or the obligations of the Soviets when they invaded Afghanistan. We invaded a sovereign nation illegally and tried to export our revolution with guns and tanks, not that different to what the Soviets did. We owe them reparations, but I don’t think it is fair that the US be the ones to assess what we owe, I think an international war crimes court should make that decision.
[QUOTE=madmonk28]
…We owe them reparations, but I don’t think it is fair that the US be the ones to assess what we owe, I think an international war crimes court should make that decision.
[/QUOTE]
Hah! Rub the lamp again.
I’m not saying we are going to give them reparations or that we would allow an international court to assess them; I’m saying that we deserve to be treated the same as other nations who launched unprovoked war against another nation.
[QUOTE=madmonk28]
I’m not saying we are going to give them reparations or that we would allow an international court to assess them; I’m saying that we deserve to be treated the same as other nations who launched unprovoked war against another nation.
[/QUOTE]
Hah! Rub the lamp again.
“Deserves got nothing to do with it.” - The Unforgiven
Mere mockery fails as an argument. And just because its impossible doesn’t mean he isn’t right.
He (sitnam) doesn’t appear to be advancing an argument that he (madmonk28) isn’t right.
IOW, it didn’t look like mockery to me; it looked like sardonic ruefulness.
Entirely possible. Snark accordingly withdrawn.