So, would your non-interventionist foreign policy make exceptions for going in quietly and killing guys we really don’t like, as you seem to imply here?
From the get-go.
Right after 9/11, the rumbling was in the media – listening to the stories coming out, you could pull out a subtext of blaming Iraq. I didn’t give it much credence, until the SoU speech referencing the Axis of Evil. As soon as I heard it, I knew we’d be in Iraq within a year, for many years to come.
So my timing was a little off, but I was still right. I will never understand how so many people could be so willfully blind about something so obvious. I had no love for Saddam, and I thought his removal (well-planned and internationally supported) would be good, but I knew we wouldn’t do it right.
Trouble with that is, we start getting a rep for taking out evil leaders, its likely to make the rest of them nervous, edgy, difficult to do business with. And we do, of course, we’ve done cheerful business with monsters who would make Saddam pee himself and clutch his banky.
And maybe we’re not really qualified to assume the position of Global Moral Arbiter. Not that I don’t love America, just maybe.
In certain special situations, ABSOLUTELY.
You know, one of our complaints about Saddam is that he tried to assasinate Bush Sr. when he visited Kuwait, so we should punish him by assasinating him?
Also the idea that the CIA can just assasinate national leaders is fantasy, too much Tom Clancy, not enough reality.
You said in your last post that “We need higher quality people in government.”
If you’re attitude is indicative, what we need is better quality people.
Oh yeah? Why don’t you ask Castro just how much of a fantasy it is! Oh, wait. . .
I knew after 9/11 there would have to be some military action even if we weren’t exactly sure who was responsible. Whole we were in Afghanistan and Bush was starting to make noise about Iraq I realized how little I knew about our history in that area. I read about our involvement in helping the afghans fight Russia. I read about our involvement with the lingering Iran/ Iraq war and how we helped both sides and stood by while Saddam used gas until world opinion turned so bad we were forced to choose a moral position. Not because we actually held it but because it was politically expedient. We, through our representative government had been real self serving asses in that region for decades. There was no reason for any Arabs to believe the good ole USA gave a rats ass about them, democracy, liberty, human rights, all those nice words our leaders like to fling around.
The thing that really convinced me was when I discovered Saddam had communicated with Bush Sr before he invaded Kuwait asking what The US response would be. He was told it was none of our business. That meant that even though he was a brutal saber rattling dictator he had some real concept of where he was in the world in terms of military strength. He was never ever any kind of threat to us and after desert storm he was no real threat to the stability of the region. I realized our president was a lying asshole who was creating a war for his own purposes. After reading the Statement of Principles on Project for a New American Century I understood a more.
The Iraq war was a lie from the beginning and as such it was wrong. I held onto some hope that we might actually succeed in establishing a democracy there for a while until I realized that even that goal was a lie.
On another board (snopes, to be specific), in late 2001, I actually defended Bush (or more generally the U.S. actions) for going into Afghanistan by referencing Iraq. Someone was asserting that there was not enough evidence about Al Queda or the role of the Taliban in supporting them to justify the invasion of Afghanistan at that time.
I recall making the argument that if the administration were just attacking Afghanistan to be attacking someone without justification, they would probably be attacking Iraq instead, since that would be a much more target rich environment.
I was pointing to Iraq (and the fact that we weren’t just attacking them) in an argument that we should trust the judgment of the administration!
I was so fucking naive.
Sorry, no attempt at whooshing. Simply seriously didn’t imagine anyone would be interested in seeking out whatever I had blathered on about way back when.
Here you go! Now a whole lot of fun reading there. But in case anyone is stupid enough to say “Why weren’t these questions asked back then?”, well, they were. A whole bunch of people just didn’t want to hear them, and didn’t believe they merited answers, and was content on trusting the administration to do what was right and necessary absent evidence.
On 9/14/01, 3 days after the towers fell and folks were all eager to go into Afghanistan:
From a thread I initiated on 10/2/02:
1/23/03, in response to an OP asking what it would take for me to support war against Iraq
From 2/28/03 re: what it would take to forestall war:
And from March 2003, following Bush’s press conference:
Of course, I should admit that when making the case for American Imperialism on 9/10/02, I wrote:
Some of the things I read in the papers about him and his sons was that they were so out of control that they’d crash weddings and kill the husbands and rape the brides. But if I understand you correctly, you think that sort of thing isn’t so bad, that we shouldn’t do what I suggested. Okay, to each their own, I guess.
Yeah, and they kill babies on the point of a bayonet. A family of evil murderous cunts to be sure but still, your country and mine, lied into a pointless unending war.
Next you’ll be telling me that the stories of Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators to die on the cold floor in Kuwait was a fabrication… Oh wait, that was indeed pure horseshit. When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators - CSMonitor.com
well then you’re going to be really disappointed when I explain that I’d asked so that we could look at the threads wherein discussion had occured so we could see everybody’s position way back when. I’d only bookmarked one, myself. So, it was never really about your personal words, it was more about the threads themselves (I assumed that the threads involved weren’t talking about Britney/Madonna or whoever the dujour news hound was back then)
But I still like you.
There goes your credibility!
As soon as the Germans came out against it.
If you can’t convince the Germans that a war is a good thing, who are you going to convince?
You could ask Salvador Allende as well, except, of course, that he died in a CIA organized coupe in the early 1970s.
And we bomb weddings, or just level the city. A vast improvement I’m sure.
Here’s a thread enumerating who was for the war before it began, and who was against it. It also asked the follow up question about who’d changed their minds since their earlier stance, as of 10/06.
This thread included another list of dopers for and against the war before it began: Should the US invade Iraq? Yes or no, folks... - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
Well, I am on record, here, as having pointed out on September 24, 2002, that it was a stupid bit of nonsense, but I am pretty sure I was aware of the idiotic nature of the war the very first time i heard it bruted about.