There are different kinds of teracts. Saddam might have planned teracts against US in response to looming threat of invasion, which changes everything. If there was a wave of suicide car bombings in American cities after US started bombing Iraq, then they wouldn’t be teracts, but legitimate acts of war.
There were Russian military advisors working in Iraq until few days before US invasion, Saddam even gave them some medals at the end. Were they advising him on guerilla warfare, something Russians have a great experience from WWII? In any case, they seem to have been working not for Saddam alone.
Well, it seems to me that by the U.S.'s logic, even if such suicide bombings had started before the U.S. bombing started (e.g., during the build up to the war), they could still be considered a legitimate act of war since it would have been a pre-emptive war in response to an imminent threat. (And, in this case, I think Saddam’s claim of an imminent threat from us would have been much stronger than our claim of an imminent threat from him.)
Not that I am endorsing this sort of action. But, I am just trying to understand your distinction on logical grounds.
(One could probably make a better case against car bombings on the argument of not purposely attacking civilian rather than military targets, IMHO.)
What arguments are you talking about? Is it my original argument about bottomless duplicity of Bush-haters, as demonstrated by their turn-about on Putin? Or is it an argument about usefulness of international coalitions that you are trying to foist and that nobody cares to discuss?
Do me a favor, next time you conceive an expectation of my response beforehand, just take it as an answer and don’t ask unnecessary questions, please.
Lord love a duck, Isk, is it possible that you are this dense? Look, all you gotta do is cite one example, even one, of one of us “Bush-haters” who praised Putin before, and denigrate him now. Just one. Take your time.
But failing that, could you kindly slam shut the pie-hole? Its not our fault we refuse to accept your point if you refuse to make it.
You don’t understand why people would want to have a more ‘multi-national’ coalition. Your appraisal seems to center around ‘Bush-hating.’
It presents no discussion of the other, more explanatory and ‘realist’ reasons for such a sentiment. It fails miserably to account for proponents of a more multi-national coalition like Brent Scowcroft and George H W Bush. It exceeds the bounds of believability that these two men would reach their conclusions on the basis of some desire to see GWB bedraped in ‘more dogs’.
Not knowing why people would favor a different sort of coalition and not knowing why this would be a good thing for America hampers you ability to rebut these positions.
There, are, in fact, very sound reasons for these things.
Once you’ve acquired a greater familiarity with these reasons, your ability to argue against them will be significantly enhaced.
To start you off, here’s a Scowcroft piece from WSJ.com’s Opinion Journal:
Don’t Attack Saddam
It would undermine our antiterror efforts.
BY BRENT SCOWCROFT Thursday, August 15, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
Just abolishing a small bit of my own ignorance. I didn’t know if you understood the position you were belittling or not.
I don’t know what standard you’re using when you say “legitimate act of war” in your statement above since you didn’t explain that – However, it is important to note that the translation of Putin’s words used in the article and quoted in the OP indicates that Putin referred to “terrorist acts” —
“After the events of September 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received information that the official services of the Saddam regime were preparing ‘terrorist acts’ on the United States and beyond its borders,” he told reporters.
Considering the provided definition of terrorism ---- flying planes into buildings full of innocents, exploding bombs in the middle of bus loads of morning commuters, and lopping off heads and disseminating the related video and pictures seems to fall within that definition. Planned terror events designed to achieve the maximum terror bang for their terrorist resource buck. You saying this is a “legitimate act of war?”
Once again, I don’t care to get involved in the irrelevant argument that you are trying to sneak in. I find your tactics underhanded and very unpleasant. This thread is about Russians suddenly giving some justification to Iraq invasion. It is not about importance of international coalition. Certain Bush-haters who were always saying that Russian opposition to Iraq invasion makes it “illegal”, suddenly saying now that Russian are nothing but KGB liars and not to be trusted at all. I find their arguments duplicitous. Clear enough?
Without trying to put words in the keyboard of jshore (and without actually supporting this logic, myself), let’s look at one possible thread of logic.
*- Is it a terrorist act to kill civilians for the purpose of affecting change by their government?
Does the method of killing them make a difference?
If the method does not make a difference, is there a genuine difference between using high-level bombers or cruise missiles against which they have no defense or using bombs planted among them by people who walk among them? (If it makes a difference, what is that difference?)
Now, based on a presumed reply that in war, civilians are slain as part of efforts to reduce the enemy’s capacity or will to fight (say, by high-level bombing), then what is the difference between using a bomber against which they have not the technology to defend or using a suicide bomber against whom they cannot defend?*
If you have followed (not agreed with) the argument thus presented, let us move it one step further.
- GWB has publicly declared that the U.S. has a right to launch pre-emptive attacks on countries that we deem a threat.
The United States was clearly a threat to the sovereign nation of Iraq.
Following the Bush Doctrine, Bush’s stated goal to overthrow the government of Iraq gave Iraq the right to take pre-emptive measures against the United States.
Given the discrepancy in military might, Iraq might choose to launch terrorist attacks against the U.S., fully justified by the two separate phases of George W. Bush’s rhetoric and announced intentions.*
There are several points in the above chain with which I disagree, but it seems clear to me that Bush’s unilateral declaration of pre-emptive strikes has, indeed, justified any future nation’s (not terrorist group’s) pre-emptive strikes on the U.S. Thanks George.
Your thesis is entirely false and your conclusion is wholly without merit.
The opposition to the war was not based on “Russia” opposing the war. It was based on the U.S violating the covenant in the UN charter which was basically written by the U.S. that said a country may not wage war against another country unless it has actually been attacked. Iraq was not in a position to attack the U.S. and Russia was not the primary opponent to the occupation, so you are delberately misrepresenting the position of your opponents on two key points. (Russia continues to oppose the war, so that point has not even changed from early 2003.)
Beyond that, there is no evidence that the Russians actually supplied any information that indicated an attack. (And there is no evidence that any attack that might have been (but probably was not) planned would have justified a war. (Unless you are willing to agree that U.S. terrorism launched against Nicaragua and El Salvador justified their launching a (futile) war against the U.S.?)
We only have Putin’s unsupported comment that “some information” was passed to the U.S. (which denies knowing what he was talking about).
Well, you might try noticing who first used the phrase “legitimate act of war”. I was in fact simply responding to this (which should have been obvious from the fact that I quoted it in that post):
And, my point was that, in light of the current U.S. view on “pre-emptive” (really “preventative”) wars, I did not understand why there was a distinction in legitimacy based on whether these acts occurred before or after the US started bombing, since the U.S. did in the months prior to the start of the war clearly constitute an imminent threat to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
However, I did also note:
So, in fact, I was not arguing that I thought these were legitimate acts of war but rather questioning why New Iskander’s definition of whether they were or not seemed to hinge on a largely irrelevant point of whether they occurred before or after we started bombing (at least irrelevant by the Bush Administration’s own logic).
I agree. As much as I hate Saddam, he had full and complete right to prepare for war in any way he liked and even go pre-emptive. Obviously, he decided not to.
With what? Put up or shut up time, New Isk. With what could he go “pre-emptive”? With his WMD’s? Didn’t exist. His mobile trailers of bio weapons? Didn’t exist. His intercontinenteal anthrax chickens? Well, you may have me there, I really can’t actually prove he didn’t have them. But I’m willing to bet he didn’t, aren’t you?
So with what, precisely, was he going to “pre-empt”? Voodoo?
Whoa, a new twist! So Saddam was not “misoverestimating” US, but was simply lacking the means?! But I know that I shouldn’t read too much from this: any semblance of truth is purely accidental as the next turn is sure to demonstrate…
Well, gosh, Isk, I’m just a country boy, maybe not up to it with a sharpy like you, but seems to me if you say “the only reason”, it means that you think there is no other reason. Unless “only” means something I didn’t hear about.
So I figure I don’t have to claim that Saddam didn’t have the means. As it happens, that is what I think. But you claim that can’t have been a reason, seeing as how it is excluded (see “only”, above).
Seems to me, then, that you must have some reason to think so, some means by which Saddam could force his malignant will upon us. And if you don’t, seems to me your original conjecture more or less falls apart, now doesn’t it?
So what is it that you know that absolutely nobody else on the planet knows?
(By the way, snide slurs on my honesty won’t get you diddly-squat…)