Post-war liberal guilt

The BBQ Pit
21

Evil One, I for one would like our country to be held to a slightly higher standard than behaving slightly better than a murderous shit like Saddam Hussein. He killed thousands of innocent people. We killed thousands of innocent people. Those numbers are in some sense irrelevant, as this is not over yet – we can’t just count up the deaths and rule ourselves the moral victors.

A few comments:

  1. Before the war, Bush stood before the world and said that we must invade Iraq because he had unmistakable proof that Saddam currently possessed thousands of tons of WMD and was planning to use them against the U.S. and its allies in the very near future. We were in imminent danger, and had to act fast. The danger was so great that we couldn’t take the time for the inspections our allies requested. We couldn’t take the time to gather more intelligence on where these WMD were, in order to secure them quickly when war did come. We couldn’t take the time to plan and prepare for post-war administration of Iraq.

To go to war in this fashion severely damaged an interational reputation that took decades to build. Had we been in imminent danger, it would have absolutely been worth it. However, we were not. Even if WMD are found, there were none that were even remotely close to being immediately usable by the military – canisters of VX buried in some desert somewhere does not constitute an imminent danger.

If a major goal in Iraq was the welfare of the Iraqi people, why wasn’t it mentioned until the war started? International support for helping the Iraqi people would not have been hard to get. But, it may not have been support for a war, which is clearly the only course of action the administration wanted to take.

  1. War and inaction are (thankfully) not the only ways to resolve a problem. This is one of the reason many countries are so pissed at us. Without evidence of imminent danger, the reasonable thing to do is exhaust all other options first. In the case of humanitarian concerns, there are quite a few options.

  2. If we overthrow Saddam but the region decends into anarchy or is ruled by a different military dictator, then we have not made the Iraqi people’s lives better. We’ve only made our own lives worse, as hatred against the United States grows and grows. What is our plan to prevent this from happening? I have yet to see one.

  3. Our actions can not be judged in a vacuum. If you only look at the deaths under Saddam vs. the unintentional casualties of the war, then one could make a case for our concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people. However, our acftions in the last twelve years contradict that. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died under the sanctions, which for several years prevented the import of food and medicine. Even after the Oil for Food program was implemented in 1995, we only allowed food to go through Saddam, a man we knew was a murderous dictator who didn’t care about his people. We didn’t do anything while hundreds of thousands died, but you expect people to believe that we spent hundreds of billions of dollars to stop the deaths of mere hundreds?

This war was a mistake, sold to us as a lie. We’ve traded international relations and hundreds of billions of dollars we sorely need for nothing. If Bush had an ounce of diplomacy or sense, we could have accomplished the same thing without the cost. He is truly a disgrace to this country and everything it is supposed to stand for.

22

Sigh, no. Remember when Clinton bombed Iraq and Al Queda, and all the Pubbies and their drones were crying “wag the dog” and how wrong it was. Guess that makes you all filled with “liberal guilt” too. There are extensive Cites to this in the numerous “Where the hell are the WMD threads”, if you’re dumb enough to claim this didn’t happen. Seeing your grasp of the basic facts seems so shaky, the rest of your poorly thought out sloppy posts are no surprise. Yeesh, at least december bothers to find a few Cites to misrepresent, or tries to come up with a limrick or two.

Try any Cites for anything you are claiming. Everyone else seems to be able to come up with them- there were 5 threads on this topic, filled with Cites. Yet you bravely avoided those threads and posted a simple minded new thread with absolutely no support. Well done.

Wow, how original. Lets see, not just an “attempt” there was actual mocking to be seen even by the dullest reader.

Let me drum up a few Cites for you. Maybe you will learn something. :dubious:

23

thanX, Evil One.

24

WMD threads within the last 2 weeks with lots of actual Cites-- will the wonders ever cease?

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=189071

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=187955

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=189069

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=189236

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=184657

And interesting artcle on why so many people are changing their opinion, on this issue- beyond just the lying about WMD, Al Queda ties point ect. Read and learn:

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16148

Here, I will provide you a Cite, that actually somewhat supports your position, seeing you remain clueless or unwilling to do the work yourself:

http://www.charleston.net/stories/061303/ter_13karbala.shtml

See that wasn’t so hard now was it?

25

We went to great lengths and expense to avoid killing civilians. Anyone who disputes that is blinded by ideology. Again, if we were there just to “spill blood for oil” by “sacrificing our minorites and poor for the sake of the rich” we would not have been so careful. Now, more people are alive that would not have been had we not intervened.

Yes. The vast majority of the people we killed were fighting for Saddam. They were warned not to and given instructions on how to surrender. They chose not to do so. In dealing with these people, innocent civilians were killed. Had we not been so concerned, their death toll would be higher.

You have not bothered to separate combatants from civilians. Your statement also indicates an unwillingness to let circumstances or reality stand in the way of your ideology.

I see what you are trying to do…put me in the place of an Iraqi civilian. Got it. However, your scenario will never take place, and we both know it.

Saddam had to go. I’m not going to try to educate you as to why because the above statement indicates an unwillingness to accept facts in the real world.**
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26

elf6C, forgive me if I have offended your sense of board ettiquite. Most of my OP is opinion…therefore posted here. The facts I do reference are basic and understood by most people, i.e. Saddam killed people by the thousands and we spent a lot of money on hyper-accurate weapons.

“Now that the war is over, civilians are safer and better off than before.”

Is this one of them you have a problem with? I believe it to be true in general. We could debate the meaning of “safer” and “better off” all day long with multiple cites. However, I feel that you will question the validity of any cite I give you rather than accept it at face value. Therefore, no, I not willing to do the work myself.

Finally, allow me to opine on the playing of “Cite Tag”. I realize my paltry 120 posts make me a SDMB baby in many eyes. That’ where some of the condesention is coming from. But in many cases it seems the last resort of trying to knock down a post or a poster is to scream “CITE”. I don’t recall anyone asking for a cite of a fact they agree with. I feel like what I posted was along the lines of “The sun is bright”. I would not feel it necessary to provide a candlepower analysis and current GPS coordinates and National Weather Service data to support my claim that the sun is bright in the very spot at the very time I claim it to be. Therefore, when I make statements like “Saddam was evil” and Genocide is bad" and “We did a good thing in stopping it”, a linking and quoting frenzy will not follow.

27

But why? Or rather why him, and why now?

I have yet to encounter somewhat who was against this war (oops I mean battle or police action or whatever doubleplusgood newspeak I should call it) that is not also convinced that Iraq was in the clutches of a ruthless dictator.

That being said, there are as bad or worse out there that we are doing nothing about. The logical conclusion is that this after the fact humanitarian argument is false.

This is not to say that the Iraqi people do not have the potential to be better off because of our intervention. I will be waiting to see how much effort we really put in to reconstruction and so forth (how are things going these days in Afghanistan, by the way?).

The main point is that it is really looking as if we were lied to about why we went there. Like it or not WMD that were a direct threat to the USA was the main reason that we were handed. Given the fact that a lot of us do not trust Bush, and the mounting evidence indicating that we were misled, you can understand our ire. If there was some Jack-Secret reason to be there, the time to lay the cards on the table has come.

In any event, I guess that if I feel any “Liberal guilt” it is that we are not screaming as loudly for positive reconstruction efforts as we could be.

28

Good points. We owe it to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq to keep our promises and clean up our mess. We also need to do it for our credibility. And on the credibility note, WMD’s in large numbers have not yet been found. More time is needed to search before the “I told you so” frenzy begins. If they are never found, then the intelligence failure needs to be addressed. For those of you desperate for a conspiracy of an evil President Bush intentionally lying…sorry. I don’t think it’s there.

29

We should finish in Afghanistan. So far we have secured Kabul. Most of it anyway.

30

So you’re admitting that the US never was and current is not in grave danger?

31

How much “more time is needed to search”? On what planet?

Reality check: They’ve already quit. There’s nowhere else left to look.

Try again.

32

even sven---------- “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.”

HEY,Speak for yourself. That’s your guilt trip not mine.

33

I completely agree.

Now, please stop staring at the sun.

34

Evil One, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I sometimes think you might be retarded.

I’m not going to bother wading through your foaming, dittoheaded, freeperisms and re-educating you point by point. I am instead going to attempt to illuminate, for you, an important fact.

THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT HAS NEVER IN THE LAST 12 YEARS, AT ANY TIME, FOR ANY REASON, STOPPED FUCKING THE IRAQI PEOPLE IN THE ASS.

America has insisted on the enforcement of sanctions which did nothing to loosen Saddams grip on power and nothing to stop him getting his hands on WMD’s. The Iraqi people, on the other hand, were getting fucked in the ass.

In the aftermath of Gulf War 1 George Bush urged the Iraqi people to rise up but then didn’t bother giving them the manpower and weaponry to finish the job. The result? 40,000 Iraqi’s lost their lives and Saddam retained power for another 12 years. America, again, fucked the Iraqi people in the ass!

After Gulf War 1 America did not properly orchestrate a cleanup operation to eradicate the radioactive waste from our depleted uranium shells. It could easily have done so but just…didn’t. Apathy, I guess. The result is that the amount of Iraqi children developing cancers of all shapes and sizes, has increased 5 fold since Gulf War 2 while it has decreased virtually everywhere else in the world. Read ‘The New Rulers of Earth’ by John Pilger to fiind out more. To cut a long and tragic story short, the Iraqi people were (surprise!) bent over and cockshafted without lubrication.

The pseudo moralistic ‘Johnny Come Lately’ handwringing you warheads have engaged in as it becomes clearer and clearer that it is your only remaining casus belli rings as hollow as the inside of your Cromagnon skull.

Here’s a little test:

Assume that each of the above asterisks represents 100 Iraqi children (making a total of 10, 000). How many would you have been willing, at the start of this conflict, to sacrifice to liberate Iraq?

Assume that each of the above asterisks represents 100 American children. Also assume that This child was killed in an attack which was a direct response from Al Quada to the US invasion of Iraq. Also assume such attacks would continue unless America stopped its invasion of Iraq.

How many American children would you have been willing to sacrifice?

If there is any disparity in the figures please account for it.

Oh, and by the way

This is a complete fucking lie. We could have been far more careful than we were. Case in point:

Premeditated Slaughter of Innocents

Click on the above link to read about the American bombing of a residential complex in an attempt to kill the by then the deposed, powerless and completely impotent Saddam Hussein. While I’m sure it would have made an absolutely luscious little PR coup for baby Bush, I doubt that justification (compelling as it is) would make much difference to the innocents who perished in its execution.

Question:
Imagine I were a vigilante who knew of an active serial killer who, for reasons I’ll leave to your imagination, was above the law and I decided to take him out. If I planted a bigassed bomb in his car which killed him but also 10 innocent bystanders can I be considered a moral man if the serial killer would have killed 20 more people if I hadn’t intervened?

Or would my actions betray my actual disdain for human life and make me the killers moral equivalent?

35

**
[/QUOTE]

What the hell is this nonsense?

They were fighting for their country. If the U.S. is invaded by Canada to relieve us from the oppresive regime of George Bush, do you advocate that we not fight back? Do you advocate that we surrender immediately so that there is no collateral damage? To apply that line of reasoning to people defending their country from a foreign invasion is specious and sophmoric.

Countries have, just as people have, a right of self-defense and a right not to get beat up by the neighborhood bully. Out of all the simplistic things you’ve said in this thread, this ranks right down there.

36

Good call TYM. I can’t believe we missed that particular piece of bullshit.

37

You know, I was going to hazard a guess that you’ve been lifting your comments from Anne Coulter op-ed pieces. Now I see that this was wrong, however… you’ve been lifting from pro-war television commercials.

Enjoy your “real world,” there, bud.

38

Here’s the problem, friend: that you “believe it to be true” is meaningless; it might or might not be true. Now that the war is over, reportage from Iraq is way down, and it’s difficult to get a good fix on where things stand. But there are reports that armed gangs rule the night in Baghdad and other major cities, and that Iraqi women are virtually prisoners inside their homes out of fear of the lawlessness - and these women and girls hadn’t felt so constrained under Saddam.

So there is evidence suggesting that, for many Iraqis, postwar Iraq is more dangerous than prewar Iraq was. Now you see why cites are helpful? You don’t need one for “Saddam was evil” but you just might for “the current situation is an improvement,” or for how much of an improvement it is.

39

I’ve presented my case on that in a number of threads, including this current one. Nobody’s had much of a counter-argument yet. C’mon over and give it your best shot.

40

Y’all should realize that the deaths mentioned came from hospital records. You don’t really believe that every civilian who died in Iraq made it to the hospital do you? How many remain in the rubble of buildings? How many were vaporized in a direct hit? The true number, if it is ever known, will be much higher. But, according to people like evil whatever, any cost in civilian lives is worth it.