I have no problem with anti-war protests, and I am not of the opinion that peace protesters are ant-american. But just as you’re tired of being labeled, I’m tired of the anti-Bush slant this has taken. Comparing Bush to Hitler, calling him a murderer and warmonger, etc. seems to be the the theme of these protests.
I did protest, and I said the same thing that jeel is saying,.
Of course, an anti-US/UK policy protest was simply the wrong place to say such things, but there you go.
Oh, I don’t knot, Panama and Grenada from the not too distant past come to mind.
And of course knot=know, carry on.
And because I can point out 3 out of 5 people get gingivitus I’m obviously pro-gum disease. Is it me or is discourse here getting less intelligent? Maybe it’s just the dumbasses I’ve had to talk to lately.
Look, spiff, you make a bullshit statement that the US has “never attacked another country merely because we thought it posed a danger.” I correct that (SD is about fighting ignorance, remember?). We have been cowboying around the world for as long as we have existed. You were just plain wrong. Now read this part carefully: I did not make an argument. I did not choose a side. I had no “logic” that could be applied to the prosecution of sex offenders. I corrected your false statement; that is all. Read my post again and you will find that at no time did I take a position for or against the war.
If you must know if I’m a hawk or dove: my ass is firmly planted on the fence. I still can, however, correct idiots who don’t know the simplest pieces of history.
Oh my God, you’re right!!! What was I thinking?!? Dissent serves only our enemies! Questioning authority weakens our national security! We must all fall in line behind President Bush, and keep our personal views to ourselves lest we give Saddam any more sound bites for his news bulletins!
(Need I add: :rolleyes: ?)
Firstly, as I said above and for what little it appears to be worth, I didn’t carry a sign at all.
Secondly, if Saddam chooses to base his actions on the protest marches, he’s surprisingly dim, considering that last time around he purportedly based his decision to invade Kuwait on inferred signals from the (last) Bush administration that the US would not interfere. I’d be surprised if he jumps to any conclusions this time around.
Thirdly, freedom of expression and peaceable assembly are some of the things that differentiate Western democracies from countries like Iraq. Maybe, just maybe, the message we’re sending to the people of Iraq is “Hey! We can say nasty things about our leaders and not get arrested or shot! Don’t you wish you had a leader like that?” That’s a powerful message for an oppressed people. Who knows what could ensue? And all from a few million people exercising the freedoms that Bush and company spend so much time talking about.
Viva la Liberte’! 
yes, but your pro-war stance is being used as a rallying cry by Al-Qaeda ( you do remember them, right, the people that actually attacked us???). So i officially declare you a traitor to america and want you arrested for treason.
I never said you fuckheads in Australia are pro-Saddam! If you’re gonna make it personal, read my FUCKING OP in full you fucking fuckstick! You’re the moronic fuckwad if you say that Saddam isn’t gonna listen to your protest and at the same time think that he’s gonna fuckin change his ways without force!!! He’s been in violation of a cease-fire for 12 some years, and if protests aren’t gonna stop him like you claim, I guess we need to resort to cruise missiles you piece of horse shit, gex gex! :rolleyes:
Well, that was truly an impressive response. Your insightful analysis fully invalidates the points raised by gex gex. Clearly, he was no match for the likes of you. Next time, maybe he’ll think twice before posting.
Fuckwad.
Well, that was truly an impressive response. Your insightful analysis fully invalidates the points raised by gex gex. Clearly, he was no match for the likes of you. Next time, maybe he’ll think twice before posting.
Fuckwad.
Here is a pretty good article laying it out so even the lamest of lefties can even understand. 
It’s all about oil!
No, it isn’t. If we just wanted Saddam’s oil, we could easily lift sanctions and make a deal. Saddam is pretty eager to sell, even to us. Besides which, the Iraqi oil output is somewhere around the economic output of Arkansas. If it’s all about oil, why aren’t we invading Saudi Arabia, Venezuala, and Siberia?
We should be going after North Korea first.
Unfortunately, we can’t – and if the anti-war activists have their way, we won’t be able to stop Saddam, either.
You see, the North Koreans can blackmail us, scare us, intimidate our allies, and orchestrate the most awful famine in the history of the world, because they have the bomb. We know that any military option must include the realization that the lunatics in Pyongyang may lob off a missile at Tokyo or Souel or – assuming they actually can do it – Hawaii, Alaska, or California. We have to explore diplomatic options because we don’t want our people or troops to get nuked.
Saddam, on the other hand, doesn’t have nuclear weapons – yet. He wants them, and he’s tried to get them in the past. If we let him get nuclear weapons, he’ll be able to commit genocide against the Kurds, invade his neighbors, fund terrorism, and have his officers’ sons and daughters raped in front of them with impunity. If we act now, and oust him from power, he won’t get to that point.
We should give inspections more time.
That is a strategy that failed in the '90s and brought us to the current crisis.
Saddam had twelve years to disarm and didn’t. He delayed until the United Nations gave up, and eventually expelled the weapons inspectors. He just draws things out until the world gets tired of it and then does whatever he wants anyway. If you think he won’t try that trick a second time, think again. He says he’ll unconditionally work with the United Nations, and then sets conditions the next day to make it seem like he’s compromising. He says he’ll unconditionally permit U-2 overflight of his country, which was demanded by the UN anyway, and then says the United States must reciprocate by not launching airstrikes in the no-fly zones.
The man has no idea what ‘unconditional’ means, but he does know patience. He won’t adhere to any resolution. He’ll just wait until nobody cares enough to enforce it anymore.
We should act through the United Nations.
That would be nice if the UN enforced its own resolutions. Saddam violated a resolution for twelve years, so the UN responded by… passing another resolution. Even then, it only did it because we were threatening to go in and take care of the problem ourselves. Saddam is now violating that resolution, so the UN acted swiftly to. . . discussing passing another resolution. Some nations are even opposed to doing that. In light of such firm condemnation, it’s clear now why Saddam has disarmed. . . wait, you mean he hasn’t? Time to pass another resolution.
At what point does it become apparent that only force of arms can stop Saddam, as it did during the Gulf War?
Face it. If the UN was serious about stopping Saddam, it would act to do so. It’s not serious, so it engages in a bureaucratic game to delay and eventually prevent war.
We should go after bin Laden first.
The United States military is quite capable of multitasking. What makes you think that they’ve stopped hunting terrorists just because we’re planning to remove the lunatic in Baghdad? Do you think, because it’s not in the news, that we’ve just given up? Quite the contrary – the United States is united with a vast array of nations that is working daily to catch terrorists.
We shouldn’t act unilaterally.
Britain, Australia, Japan, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Holland, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait are just some of the nations supporting war against Iraq. In other words, saying we shouldn’t act unilaterally is just code for saying we should only act with United Nations approval, and that’s code for saying we shouldn’t act at all, assuming a French, Russia, or Chinese veto. But it’s obvious that many nations, including a laundry list of countries that only recently overcame their own murderous dictators, are on board.
We shouldn’t violate the sovereignty of Iraq over this.
Iraq deserves to be a sovereign nation if it upholds its international obligations and recognizes the sovereignty of its neighbors. Instead, it invades its neighbors and flouts the UN resolution that bought peace at the end of the Gulf War. It violates numerous treaties and then hides the evidence. These aren’t the actions of a sovereign nation. These are the actions of a criminal state. In any case, by violating the terms of the resolution that ended the Gulf War, Iraq has effectively broken the terms of the cease fire and returned itself to a state of war. The UN, whose authority has been snubbed by these actions, has declined to act.
We can’t attack Iraq. It will just create more people who hate us.
It’s true that our foreign policy has consequences. If we attack Iraq, some lunatics may become inspired to commit acts of terror against our civilians. This isn’t a reason to back down, though. It’s actually a reason to step up to the plate. If we’re deterred because we’re afraid of provoking a terrorist attack, then we allow terrorism to dictate our actions and we give it power. That encourages MORE terrorists to act against us! Liberating Iraq will put us in the roles of the bringers of food and freedom to needy Muslims. This cannot be a bad thing.
And it will also demonstrate that bin Laden is wrong, weakening his terror network even more. Remember, he built his war against us by claiming that we’d back down and appease rather than fight. Our weakness in the middle '90s encouraged terrorists to bring down the World Trade Center. Advocating weakness in the face of Saddam’s crimes will not discourage terrorists. It will create them, and they may do more than just blow up buildings with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons being available to them.
Saddam isn’t a threat.
Most Americans believe that he’s got chemical and biological weapons. Most of us believe he is working on getting nukes, too. We also believe that he’ll strike Israel if he thinks he can get away with it. Even if he doesn’t, here’s the important point – Saddam armed with an effective nuclear deterrent is a Saddam that is free to conquer Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, thereby controlling the supply of Persian oil. He’ll be supremely positioned to blackmail the world, jack up the price of oil, destabilize Turkey (and by extension, Europe), risk nuclear war with Israel, and jeopardize the governments of our moderate Arab friends.
And that’s the scenario in which he doesn’t attack us or give his nukes to Al Qaeda.
But he won’t give his arms to terrorists, surely…
The man has committed genocide against the Kurds, would murder every Jew if he could, has gassed his own people, finances Palestinian terrorism, attempted to murder former President George Bush, set fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields, fired missiles at Israel, uses rape to keep his officers in line, dreams of acquiring nuclear weapons and the Saudi oil fields so he can become a modern-day Saladin, and has wrapped himself so deeply in Islamic mysticism to the point that he’s commissioning Korans written in his own blood. But he won’t discretely let nuclear weapons fall into the hands of those who want to kill Americans?
Saddam is already financing terrorism against foes he hates. If he could supply a nuclear device to someone seeking to smuggle it into New York and he could do it without having any links back to him, do you think he would?
Are you willing to gamble New York on Saddam Hussein’s honesty?
There’s no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam.
If there’s no link now, Saddam would eagerly create a link if he thought he could get away with using Al Qaeda to hurt the United States. Lots of people claim that bin Laden hates Saddam and vice versa, but the two men are blatant opportunists who have publically set aside their values in order to strengthen their position. Bin Laden only started talking about the plight of the Palestinians (a people most Saudis hate) when it became a useful way to rile up people against the United States. Saddam was always a secular ruler until he started using Islam as a way to portray himself as a holy nationalist. Neither man particular believes in either of the causes they co-opted, but they were perfectly willing to shamelessly use them when it became useful to do so.
Betting that these two opportunists would not help each other when faced with a common enemy is risky. History is littered with ideologically-opposed foes who joined forces for less.
In any case, the reasons to oust Saddam are distinct from the reasons to destroy Al Qaeda, so it doesn’t matter if there’s a link or not.
War is too risky. Too many innocent people will die.
War is dangerous, true. Despite the vast technological superiority possessed by the United States military, and despite our historically unmatched commitment to avoiding civilian casualties whenever possible, people will die. (Compare our reluctance to kill civilians with, say, the Russian army.) But sometimes war is necessary. Some people cannot be reasoned with and cannot be negotiated with. Saddam has demonstrated that he is unwilling to follow the letter of the United Nations resolutions. The United Nations has only two choices: do nothing, or act militarily.
But if we act militarily, we will save lives. Iraqis who would have been starved by Saddam – don’t forget that he spends millions on his palaces and his extensive collection of liquor, but blames the United Nations (or, more correctly, the United States) for the starvation of his people – will eat food brought by the American army and live. And Iraqis who would have been raped, murderered, and dismembered by his regime will be saved when we liberate Iraq. Saudis, Kuwaitis, Iranians, Kurds, Jordanians and Israelis who would be threatened and killed by his wars of conquest will be protected when he dismantle Iraq’s war machine.
It’s sad that there are leaders that are not as rational about violence as our anti-war protestors are. If they were, then we wouldn’t have to act to save these people. But Saddam is not an anti-war protestor, and he is perfectly willing to use violence to achieve his ends. That is unfortunately why we must use violence to stop him.
So why do people (as opposed to countries) really oppose the war?
There are many reasons why someone might oppose the war. They will often try to disguise their true reasons by speaking in code. For example, instead of admitting that they’re pacifists who would have protested WWII, they say we need UN approval, all the while hoping and believing that the UN won’t give that approval. Here, then, are some examples of the real reasons people might oppose the war:
They are ignorant of the facts listed above.
They are anti-American and are against anything that strengthens America.
They are anti-George Bush and are against anything supported by Bush. (This one is common.)
They are extreme pacifists and think violence is only an answer if you’re being shot at.
They believe other solutions, like sanctions, resolutions, or assassination, will work, even though they’ve been historically proven to be ineffective.
They support Saddam Hussein.
Who are you?
I’m a registered Democrat who liked McCain and voted for both Clinton and Gore. I’ll vote Democrat in 2004 if they field a good candidate. (I think Bush’s domestic policy is flawed, but his foreign policy is clear-eyed and honest. He reminds me of Harry Truman, who everyone said was too stupid and simple to be president.) I’m a proud American who has lived half of his life in Italy, Germany, and Great Britain. I have a degree in history and like Europe as both a place to live and a place to visit.
I believe Saddam is an evil man. I know that innocents will die if we invade, and I think that’s heartbreaking, but I also know that more innocents will be starved, raped, tortured and killed if we don’t invade, or if we try some ineffective band-aid solution, like assassination. The people who are worried that an invasion will turn into a bloodbath or WWIII said the same things about the first Gulf War when our army was weaker and Iraq’s was stronger. A war now will be faster and easier, and Saddam knows it, and the proof is evident whenever he scrambles to do just enough to convince France, China, or Germany that he’s not a threat.
It… certainly illustrates the divirsity of the word.
I guess he posted twice to make sure everyone would catch the sarcasm. This is the pit Giraffe. If you want insightful analysis, go to Great Debates…
Touche’
Dude, our allies are divided on this issue, what makes you think Joe Islam, who doesn’t really care for us now, will suddenlty bow before us and fellatiate the invading US forces?
Maybe we should ask the citizens of Afghanistan how they feel about the “invading US forces” now that they have the freedom to use their own voice (or certainly moreso than they did 3 years ago).
Actually, I posted it twice to give you a chance to sound out the big words the first time through. Since you’ve excused yourself from the burdens of insightful analysis, I’ll just compliment you on having mastered the f-word. Way to go, sparky.
Freap – these issues are a lot simpler when you realize that Saddam is actually a comic book villain, aren’t they? It’s lucky for us the author knows Saddam so intimately, otherwise I’d worry that most of the article was baseless speculation and fear-mongering. But it doesn’t matter – since the only alternative to full-scale invasion is doing nothing, only the cowardly pacifists will be stupid enough to argue against the war, and it will go ahead as scheduled.
Well, I guess if downplaying what Saddam is makes your point than thats ok. Tell the people murdered by Saddam they were slain by a comic book villian.
There are things we can do, we have done them, most of the left wants UN resolutions, they want the UN to make the call…of course this is of course while knowing it WONT do anything. So, ultimately nothing is the alternative, isn’t it? Lip service is what it is.
Limbaugh said it right when he touted no one could have been able to prove the possibility of 9/11 on 9/10.
Clinton made moves against Saddam, none of the left said a peep about it, no big deal because hey “Clinton can feel your pain”. I am told by left leaning opposition that is because “It wasn’t a real war”. Well, this one wont be either, in fact, it will be much more successful and expedient.
I think this is any excuse for the left to rail on Bush, the party has taken such a hard hit it will take leaps in logic Charles Manson would be in awe of to save humiliation and struggle to survive.
I don’t agree with Bush’s domestic policies, I think he needs work. But I do agree with his foriegn policy. When the left understands that this whole thing isn’t about “what they want” but more about what they WONT want, the better off they will be.
Christ, you’re quoting Limbaugh. I’m not sure why I’m even bothering to respond.
Two things:
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Talking about “the left” like that makes you look like a moron. This thread and many others like it are filled with people discussing why they think this war is a dangerous mistake. Maybe you could get your information about what they want to do and why from them, rather than Rush Limbaugh.
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Starting a war solely on the basis of a perceived future threat is a big deal. To do so while sneering at our long-standing allies for daring to be hesitant about starting such a war without proof of immediate danger is just plain stupid. What possible reason can we have to treat war so casually? How does it help us to needlessly trash our international reputation, rather than working with other countries to try other options first?
Because some things are too much fun to ignore?
Furthermore, using the word “left” five times in as many short paragraphs suggests a less rational, more ideological basis for your argument. At the very least, please use a thesaurus. And a few more apostrophes wouldn’t go amiss either.