Post-war liberal guilt

[Evil_One]

The Associated Press wrote an article that I read in my local paper yesterday. The gist of it was that 4000 civilians had been killed in Iraq since the war began. The lead paragraph described a “bloody ledger written with a hasty hand” at a local hospital. If I can get some of you anti-war types to look up from your navels long enough, here are a few points to consider in response to the general anti-war message that permeated the article.

1. How long would it have taken Saddam and his goons to kill four thousand people? A couple of weeks? A month? How many of them would have had tongues cut out or tortured with electricity How many of them would be helpless young girls raped and killed for the entertainment of Uday Hussein?

2. How many of those civilians were killed by Saddam intentionally as fodder to make the United States look bad? If any of you don’t think he’s capable of that, I direct you to the nearest mental health facility for a regimen of anti-delusional drugs.

3. How many others were killed by the targeting and safety incompetence of the Iraqi armed forces?

4. Now that the war is over, civilians are safer and better off than before. Many of them now have food, running water and electricity thanks to the “evil” United States of America. More is done every day in that regard. And Saddams goons are not kidnapping them out of thier beds at night. Thousands of people will be alive a year from now that would not have been if Saddam remained in power.

5. Do any of your remember how many civilian deaths happened in World War II? They numbered in the tens of millions worldwide. Four thousand people probably died in a matter of hours. Daily. A large part of the 62 billion dollars the United States spent on the war was spent on hyper-accurate ordinance specifically designed and used to hold down civilian casualties and collateral damage. If we were as evil as many of you in and out of the country think we are, we would have used more ordinance less discriminantly and accomplished our goal sooner. Oh…and killed many more people.

Four thousand people died in Iraq during the war. They should be mourned, their deaths regretted. But the conflict that their deaths resulted from freed millions of people. Members of thier own families are now safer and can look forward to a better life. The children born on the day the war ended and from every day forward will not have to fear what their parents did.

So please, go ahead and justify inaction while Saddam committed slow genocide. Bitch about not finding WMD’s when the country has not been fully searched. And for gods sake, don’t be proud of your country and it’s military for giving the people of Iraq hope for the future.

Oh…and please pick one statement from this entire rant to nitpick rather than seeing the big picture. I understand that doing that helps you to avoid having to face the reality of which I speak, thus bringing you comfort.

[Munch]

Update: Oceania has always been at war with Iraq.

[Claptree]

Well-known fact #1138:

The ends always justify the means.

[ElvisL1ves]

1. They’re dead. Does it matter how? It does in terms of who their families blame for it, and will seek revenge from.

2. Don’t know. Do you know of any such instance, or is that fantasizing on your part?

3. Don’t know. Do you have any idea either?

4. Wasn’t a question. There are plenty of stories about the opposite being the facts in much of the country, though. Do you know of any case of infrastructure being restored that wasn’t there before?

5. Irrelevant. WW2 had overriding goals that inevitably involved “collateral damage”. Saving the civilians in Iraq was, ostensibly, one of the goals of this war, and the only rationalization the hawks have left at this point. How many have been “saved” in comparison to those killed?

This ain’t Free Republic, chump. We deal with facts on this board, even in the Pit.

[Munch]

Update: Oceania was never at war with Iraq.

[lieu]

Color me whooshed. Who or what is Oceania?

[tagos]

Fine. Now explain the lack of such pious concern for the people of the Congo et al. Please link to your own impassioned demands for humanitarian intervention in countries with people just as oppressed as Iraq.

Or is this just more hysterical posturing to provide a post-hoc justification now it’s shown the continental USA and the UK was not in clear and imminent danger of attack with the WMD’s the allies are now so insousiant about?

That’s a rhetorical question of course.

[elf6c]

Oops, your Mallard Fillmore-ish anti-liberals rants left out a few things:

1. No obligitory Clinton rant. -15 points.

2. No Cites, not even to far right Op-ed pieces. -20 points.

3. No smiley abuse. -10 points.

4. No mention of the fact that the evil, evil liberals have hidden those tons upon tons of WMD and banned weapons George promised before Congress that Iraq had. In fact, while only a moderate, I am personally hiding a mobile SCUD launcher in my back yard. Hey its an imposition, but anything to advance the massive left-wing conspiracy against GWB and his billionaire pals. -65 points.

:rolleyes:

[Munch]

*Originally posted by lieu *
**Color me whooshed. Who or what is Oceania? **

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/

Orwell’s 1984 is a good illustration of the revisionist history that the OP displays. Seems like every time there’s a thread about Iraq, the pro-war types have come up with a brand new reason/justification for why we sent hundreds of soldiers there to die.

[gex_gex]

Send your rant to the opinion pages of your local paper. They appreciate any letters they get and will print moronic shit from such moronic readers as yourself.

If you want to debate this, go to Great Debates, where you can stop asking snide questions and provide proof of any assertions you wish to make.

I’m not going to debate this with you unless you provide cites rather than leading rhetorical questions and unsupported assertions.

[Revtim]

*Originally posted by Claptree *
**Well-known fact #1138:

The ends always justify the means. **

Yup. I can’t wait for police enforcement to take the Bush administration’s lead and dispense with warrants and such. As long as they find some excuse for searching a home and locking someone up, it’s all good! And you can bet they always will find something.

[Evil_One]

*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves *
**1. They’re dead. Does it matter how? It does in terms of who their families blame for it, and will seek revenge from. **

Of course it matters how. Saddam used murder as a means to retain power. At least one of his sons used it for entertainment. If he were in power, the killing would continue. If your theory holds that Iraqi family members of civilian casualties will seek revenge, then it must also hold that those civilians whose lives were made better by our intervention will look upon us with gratitude. Which number will be larger?

*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves *
**

2. Don’t know. Do you know of any such instance, or is that fantasizing on your part? **

Since I am obviously not capable of magically knowing the circumstances of every civilian death, I am left to use logic and common sense. Saddam repeatedly demonstrated that civilian lives held no value for him. To make the United States look careless and evil would have political value, especially in the Arab world. It’s not that much of a logical stretch.

*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves *
**
3. Don’t know. Do you have any idea either?
**

Given what I know about his practice of hiding military units among civilians, his outdated weaponry and his poorly trained soldiers, I would say that the chance of a civilian getting killed under those circumstances was extremely likely. It seems to me that debate on this point would be an attempt to be deliberately obtuse.

*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves *
**
4. Wasn’t a question. There are plenty of stories about the opposite being the facts in much of the country, though. Do you know of any case of infrastructure being restored that wasn’t there before?
**

Again, given Saddams disregard for his people, it doesn’t surprise me at all that basic services were lacking. And yes, I heard on the news yesterday that utility service in Baghdad has now exceeded pre-war levels.

*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves *
**
5. Irrelevant. WW2 had overriding goals that inevitably involved “collateral damage”. Saving the civilians in Iraq was, ostensibly, one of the goals of this war, and the only rationalization the hawks have left at this point. How many have been “saved” in comparison to those killed?
**

It’s quite convienient to dismiss a point that you have difficulty refuting as “irrelevant”. I used WWII as a comparative tool regarding weapon accuracy and the care in using it. How many civilians have been “saved” in comparison to those killed? Are you paying attention? Every one of them that is alive today has been saved. Every one of them that won’t be killed tomorrow because of ethnicity or religion has been saved. And every one that won’t be killed to maintain the atmosphere or fear has been saved.

*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves *
**
This ain’t Free Republic, chump. We deal with facts on this board, even in the Pit. **

The only fact you brought to the table concerned WWII and it’s overriding goals. I was already aware of them and I freely stipulate that you are absolutely correct. I found the rest of your statement somewhat pretentious.

[Evil_One]

*Originally posted by tagos *
**Fine. Now explain the lack of such pious concern for the people of the Congo et al. Please link to your own impassioned demands for humanitarian intervention in countries with people just as oppressed as Iraq.

Or is this just more hysterical posturing to provide a post-hoc justification now it’s shown the continental USA and the UK was not in clear and imminent danger of attack with the WMD’s the allies are now so insousiant about?

That’s a rhetorical question of course. **

Could we invade and save the people of the Congo and elsewhere? Yes. Will we? No. Why? Because that would set a precedent that the United States will solve the problem if it gets bad enough. That means the rest of the world would feel no moral or financial burden to intervene. We can’t save the world alone. The Congo also presents a societal problem that has been generations in the making, much like the Balkans.

Then why Iraq? Because it was run by one corrupt individual. Once he was gone, the government collapsed. Because it’s leadership was paying the families of suicide terrorists in Israel, had tried to kill a former president and had already invaded a neighboring country. And yes, to ensure a stable world economy by removing a malice-filled hand from the oil spigot.

[ElvisL1ves]

*Originally posted by Evil One *
If your theory holds that Iraqi family members of civilian casualties will seek revenge, then it must also hold that those civilians whose lives were made better by our intervention will look upon us with gratitude. Which number will be larger?

Isn’t “my” theory, just common sense. Now, granting your morality-by-body-count ethics just for fun, why do you assume the answer to your rhetorical question in the OP?

Since I am obviously not capable of magically knowing the circumstances of every civilian death, I am left to use logic and common sense.

As suspected, you have no actual fact to base that question on, despite its intent to impose “guilt”. You have just pled guilty to the charge of fantasizing.

I would say that the chance of a civilian getting killed under those circumstances was extremely likely.

See above. Guilty on Count #2.

It seems to me that debate on this point would be an attempt to be deliberately obtuse.

You brought it up, chump.

Again, given Saddams disregard for his people, it doesn’t surprise me at all that basic services were lacking.

More of “He was a bad guy, therefore he must have done thus and such”. Guilty on Count #3 of fantasizing.

And yes, I heard on the news yesterday that utility service in Baghdad has now exceeded pre-war levels.

Cite?

It’s quite convienient to dismiss a point that you have difficulty refuting as “irrelevant”.

Yes, isn’t it?

I used WWII as a comparative tool regarding weapon accuracy and the care in using it.

While overlooking, as already stated, that fighting WWIi was not optional, while GW2 was.

How many civilians have been “saved” in comparison to those killed?

You assert you have the answer as to which is larger. Do you, or is this Fantasizing Count #4?

I found the rest of your statement somewhat pretentious.

You haven’t established a lick of factual or reasoning credibility that allows you to judge other posters styles.

[Evil_One]

*Originally posted by elf6c *
**Oops, your Mallard Fillmore-ish anti-liberals rants left out a few things:

1. No obligitory Clinton rant. -15 points. **

Other than not reacting to the plot to kill Bush the Elder, Clinton was irrelevant to Iraq. He was content to let the UN handle things. The pillaging of the oil-for-food program is one example of how that worked out.

*Originally posted by elf6c *

2. No Cites, not even to far right Op-ed pieces. -20 points.
   **

What sort of cite would you like? An internal Saddam security force memo listing who would be tortured today? Saying that 4218 civilians had been killed instead of 4000? A list of WWII casualties by country? Asking for cites of the obvious seems to be an attempt to undermine the intent of the post itself rather than a concern for accuracy.

*Originally posted by elf6c *
3. No smiley abuse. -10 points.

**

All things in moderation.

*Originally posted by elf6c *
4. No mention of the fact that the evil, evil liberals have hidden those tons upon tons of WMD and banned weapons George promised before Congress that Iraq had. In fact, while only a moderate, I am personally hiding a mobile SCUD launcher in my back yard. Hey its an imposition, but anything to advance the massive left-wing conspiracy against GWB and his billionaire pals. -65 points.

**

Attempt to mock the president and miss the point. -100 points.

[keithnmick]

Do some reading. The Iraqis are, for the most part, worse off now than they were under Saddam:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2970158.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2969704.stm
Food, jobs, utilities and medicine are all in extremely short supply.
The fighting continues - note how those that keep fighting are now called “terrorists” by The Administration.
Foreign soldiers patrol the streets, who don’t speak the language or know the local culture.
Saddam has yet to be found.
There is no link between Iraq and Al Qaida
It looks like there was never any danger in the first place.

Sure Saddam was a bastard, and his son’s did some bad things. This was never about human rights though.
If it was about human rights why the hell didn’t we start with Cuba - it’s just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

I guess I’m not a patriot in your book because I can’t ignore this stuff.

[december]

Originally posted by keithnmick *
** The Iraqis are, for the most part, worse off now than they were under Saddam:*

I don’t think so. Consider these examples

• More than 80 mass graves have emerged in recent weeks, the Washington Post’s Sharon Waxman reports. They have contained prisoners, military deserters, dissident Shiites and, often, children. So far, some 3,100 victims’ bodies have been identified. This figure could climb far higher. “More than 250,000 people were detained or murdered by the government of Saddam Hussein,” Human Rights Watch has stated.

These Iraqis were given the death penalty, most likely with neither appeals nor legal counsel. Any of them gladly would have traded places with celebrated American death row denizen, Mumia Abu-Jamal. Listen: Has the Left ever been this atypically quiet?

• Torture, mutilation and widespread confinement were standard under Saddam. As Newsweek’s April 28 analysis of Iraqi Intelligence Service documents revealed, the Baathists arrested 70 to 80 suspected Army deserters in Basra in May 1994. Local doctors were ordered to slice off these men’s ears. A doctor who refused was shot. One victim paid a $10,000 bribe to have only half his ear removed. Even better, it was severed with painkillers.

“We’ve found plenty of torture chambers,” Bernard Kerik said in the June 1 New York Post. The former NYPD chief is in Baghdad attempting to restore order. “I can’t fathom why every government building here has a jail in the basement.”

• Juad Amir Sayed finally emerged from his own cell. Sought by authorities for following a Shiite mullah, he deserted the Army at age 24 and hid in a three-by-five foot tunnel beneath his mother’s house. He read the Koran, listened to the BBC and, one by one, stored his teeth in a matchbox as they fell out. He surfaced this spring after 21 years underground. He told London’s Daily Telegraph: “I believe that Allah worked through Mr. Bush to make this happen.”

There’s also the Marsh Arabs.

What the Americans will find isn’t so much a challenging engineering project as a colossal crime scene, a wasteland monument to human cruelty and survival.

“The destruction of Iraq’s marshes involved a genocide,” said Emma Nicholson, a British parliamentarian whose group, Assisting Marsh Arabs and Refugees, has been trumpeting the plight of the region for years. “The best way I could describe it is an open-air Auschwitz.”…

Thanks be to Allah for giving our water back!" declared grinning old Mutashir, one of thousands of nomads displaced by Hussein’s cataclysmic reclamation projects. His dingy robes flapping about him, he hugged himself with his scrawny arms and added, “Thanks be to George Bush!”

[Binarydrone]

Further update:

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

[even_sven]

Originally posted by Evil One *
** 1. How long would it have taken Saddam and his goons to kill four thousand people? A couple of weeks? A month? How many of them would have had tongues cut out or tortured with electricity How many of them would be helpless young girls raped and killed for the entertainment of Uday Hussein? (emphasis added)*

Notice my italics. It would be “Saddam and his goons” and “Uday Hussein” who were the guilty parties in this event. Luckly, we got there first and became the guiltly parties. Just because someone is going to die doesn’t make it okay for you personally to kill them. If I heard that my neighbor was up for a gang hit, it’s not like if I run over there and shoot him first I’m not going to be found guilty of murder.

When evaluating international politics, you have to look at who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. Congrats. We’ve become the bad guy…

**

2. How many of those civilians were killed by Saddam intentionally as fodder to make the United States look bad? If any of you don’t think he’s capable of that, I direct you to the nearest mental health facility for a regimen of anti-delusional drugs.

**

I don’t understand. Are you argueing that it is a good thing that we went over there and actually started killing people? So that Saddam Hussein couldn’t lie about us anymore or something?

**

3. How many others were killed by the targeting and safety incompetence of the Iraqi armed forces?**

How many people were killed by shoddily manufactured toilet seats? How many people were killed by rabid dogs? What I am worried about is how many people were killed by the United States of America, because it’s my country and when we kill people nothing changes the fact that we just killed people. No amount of justification in the world will change that it was the US that killed them. Nothing will make their death blameable on someone else.

**

4. Now that the war is over, civilians are safer and better off than before. Many of them now have food, running water and electricity thanks to the “evil” United States of America. More is done every day in that regard. And Saddams goons are not kidnapping them out of thier beds at night. Thousands of people will be alive a year from now that would not have been if Saddam remained in power.

**

I’m sure the greiveing families are glad that they can take more showers. I’m equally sure that you will be glad when you are finally “liberated” from your Great-Satan government and given the chance to live in a worldwide Muslim utopia, even if it did cost your daughter’s life.

**

5. Do any of your remember how many civilian deaths happened in World War II? They numbered in the tens of millions worldwide. Four thousand people probably died in a matter of hours. Daily. A large part of the 62 billion dollars the United States spent on the war was spent on hyper-accurate ordinance specifically designed and used to hold down civilian casualties and collateral damage. If we were as evil as many of you in and out of the country think we are, we would have used more ordinance less discriminantly and accomplished our goal sooner. Oh…and killed many more people.**

We are evil because we started a war that, if it wern’t for our actions, would have never happened. Not because we fought in one.

**

[quote]
Four thousand people died in Iraq during the war. They should be mourned, their deaths regretted. But the conflict that their deaths resulted from freed millions of people. Members of thier own families are now safer and can look forward to a better life. The children born on the day the war ended and from every day forward will not have to fear what their parents did. **/quote]

I’m glad you can see the future. Because every other scholar and Middle East expert on this planet understands that there is a pretty big risk of these children turning to strains of Islamic fundamentalism that wern’t present in Iraq under Hussein’s secular regime. These families may start looking towards a better life where Muslim countires are strong enough, united enough, armed enough and mean enough not to be taken over by hostile Western powers at a whim. But I guess since you know the future is rosy (just like we knew backing Saddam in the first place was a good idea, I guess) then I’ll stop worrying about the future of the huge critical region we may have just destabilized.

**

So please, go ahead and justify inaction while Saddam committed slow genocide. Bitch about not finding WMD’s when the country has not been fully searched. And for gods sake, don’t be proud of your country and it’s military for giving the people of Iraq hope for the future.**

Ok, as long as you promise to make illogical but jingo-friendly statments and display a completely baseless optimism about your country and the ramifications of it’s actions.

**

Oh…and please pick one statement from this entire rant to nitpick rather than seeing the big picture. I understand that doing that helps you to avoid having to face the reality of which I speak, thus bringing you comfort. **

No thanks, I’ll tear the whole damn thing apart.

[ElvisL1ves]

But the opinions that matter are the Iraqis, not ours, right? If Those who think they’re worse off, that we killed their loved one, and that we’re not leaving anytime soon, are going to create the problems.

But you and Evil One aren’t willing to admit they even exist, much less address how to change their minds. Too hard for you?