Did Scylla not get the invite to this thread? I would like to see an explanation of his previous posts.
Will this do?
See here, FWIW.
FWIW, it’s my understanding that only the Pope, the Queen of England, the President of the United States of America, and in some instances, bishops in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have the power to compel people (and then, usually their adherents) to appear on command*. You might have had more success had you indicated that his presence was requested, rather than required.
*And Wizards adept at performing the Rite of Ashk’Ente. Although they’re only able to summon the anthropomorphic personification of Death.
Do you suppose there’s a ritual that can summon anthropomorphic personifications of mythical Greek rocks? It might be worth a try…
I don’t believe that for a moment and neither do you.
It doesn’t show up when you quote it, but I did emphasize might.
I’m just gonna stop using italics for emphasis, and train myself to use bolding and underlining.
On preview: DAMMIT!
I think this ire at Scylla is uncalled for. I wish more people had accepted at the start that an invasion of Iraq could only succeed if was engaged as a no holds barred act, where there would be hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and acts of barbarism required to win. That way, it might never have happened.
Instead, under the fantasy that there could be a polite, minimal war where we could take control and kill only those who fought back, we’ve engaged in a stupid, futile exercise that has lead to 10’s of thousands of civilians dying for no gain.
Looking at the linked post, I find I have to agree with a lot of it:
“Seeing as we have the ability to kill every man woman and child in the entire Middle East, the only way we lose is if we give up and decide to lose.” Well, that’s true. We could do that. The only way we can lose is if we pull out - they can hardly put together enough military force to push the US and the UK out of Iraq.
“We don’t wish to be draconian or worse than the terrorists and we may only be willing to go so far in this regard to win. If we are unwilling to openly advocate and commit moral atrocities than winning or losing depends on how many lives and how much money we are willing to lose fighting the war without crossing whatever moral line we don’t wish to cross. Or, perhaps things get so bad that we decide the cost for victory is so high that we give up.” Again, this is true.
Far as I can see, there are 3 options at this stage:
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We continue with current tactics, which is just going to prolong this mess. It’s not as if the insurgents are going to give up or run out of recruits, so we can expect to spend several billion more on killing 10’s of thousands more for no good reason.
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We accept that we’re the bad guys, but at least do it properly. Hell, we’ve already invaded another country on a fabricated motive. Let’s just go the whole way, and invade properly. In the long run, as Scylla seems to argue. it’ll probably lead to less fatalities. We drop any pretense that what we’re doing is civilized or restrained, bomb the shit out of any city that doesn’t accept domination completely, and occupy Iraq like Germany did France. There’ll still be freedom fighters working against us, but we can resort to much more extreme tactics to fight them.
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We withdraw. We ignore any moral obligation we have to try sort out the mess that we started, and run away. Over the next 10 years there will be god knows what chaos in the middle east, many thousands of casualties as the various factions and interests slug it out for control. Likely winner will be Iran, but certainly it’s going to be nasty whatever happens.
So here you go. 3 options I can think of, all of them will see thousands of people die, all of them our fucking fault. Tell me why Scylla is subhuman for picking 2, when there’s a good argument that it could see less death and carnage than the others? We’ve already fucked up beyond all possible hope of moral victory, so now it’s time to pick the least worst of a set of bad options.
[QUOTE=Gary Kumquat]
I think this ire at Scylla is uncalled for. I wish more people had accepted at the start that an invasion of Iraq could only succeed if was engaged as a no holds barred act, where there would be hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and acts of barbarism required to win. That way, it might never have happened.[.quote]Or, we’d have done it anyway. Frankly, I don’t see many people all that worked up over what we have done to them, only the relatively little they’ve done to us.
Except win what ? Defeating Saddam ? Big deal; he was no threat. Islamic terrorism ? NO amount of killing in Iraq will do that; every dead body makes it stronger. A democratic ally ? The more force, the more brutality we use, the less possible we make that.
And it’s hypocritical, because we already have commited “moral atrocities”. We have no “moral line” that we are unwilling to cross in Iraq.
Agreed; and unfortunately I expect that’s what will happen.
That would let us ocupy Iraq and control it’s oil, but it would hardly lead to fewer fatalities. After all, what do you think the rest of the Islamic world, or the world in general would do ? They’d supply the freedom fighters with weapons and reinforcements and weapons, among other things. In fact, I expect we’d be kicked out of NATO, and much of the rest of the world would join/ally with it against us, as the obvious next step is a general conquest of the ME and it’s oil.
I expect this is what the Bushites would prefer to do, but they are too dishonest and egotistical to act in a straightforwardly evil fashion.
True, and what will happen after # 1 plays out.
Because it would just kill more people for an evil cause.
That would be # 3.
Since it screwed up last time
Or, we’d have done it anyway. Frankly, I don’t see many people all that worked up over what we have done to them, only the relatively little they’ve done to us.
Except win what ? Defeating Saddam ? Big deal; he was no threat. Islamic terrorism ? NO amount of killing in Iraq will do that; every dead body makes it stronger. A democratic ally ? The more force, the more brutality we use, the less possible we make that.
And it’s hypocritical, because we already have commited “moral atrocities”. We have no “moral line” that we are unwilling to cross in Iraq.
Agreed; and unfortunately I expect that’s what will happen.
That would let us occupy Iraq and control it’s oil, but it would hardly lead to fewer fatalities. After all, what do you think the rest of the Islamic world, or the world in general would do ? They’d supply the freedom fighters with weapons and reinforcements, among other things. In fact, I expect we’d be kicked out of NATO, and much of the rest of the world would join/ally with it against us, as the obvious next step is a general conquest of the ME and it’s oil.
I expect this is what the Bushites would prefer to do, but they are too dishonest and egotistical to act in a straightforwardly evil fashion.
True, and what will happen after # 1 plays out.
Because it would just kill more people for an evil cause.
That would be # 3.
And we ‘lost.’ And the relative positions of the U.S. and Vietnam in the world indicate that America’s loss wasn’t exactly a fatal blow.
And sometimes, the best course in terms of remaining standing in the long run is to cut your losses in a particular situation. If a nation is too stupid to do so, it is less ‘fit’ and will weaken itself by pouring resources into a black hole.
But thanks for the nice way of framing the question.
But it seems to me that on this you’re in perfect agreement with Scylla, and indeed myself. Because this war was kicked off as an exercise in marketing, where we were going to free the iraqi people and make safe these weapons of mass destruction, then there were no clear objectives. Instead, we’ve invaded Iraq, many people have been killed…and for what?
If we’d been straight up, said we were invading because we felt like it, wanted the oil, fancied somewhere sunny to build some holiday homes, whatever, then at least we’d have an objective that we could win.
And as you say yourself (and it seems to me again in agreement with Scylla) we’re already commiting atrocity as it stands, in a scenario which has no clear end in sight, and no way of winning. So really, it seems to me that you agree with the 3 possibilities I give, and all you are arguing over is whether option 2 or 3 is going to be marginally less hideous? That’s a good item to debate, but I don’t see how supporting one or other gives grounds to accuse someone of being subhuman or preaching genocide?
He did, but concluded (not without foundation, IMHO) that his presence wasn’t necessary.
No, I’m saying option # 2 is the most evil, and will probably lead to genocide or close to it. # 3 is the least evil; # 1 is both evil and pointless.
Besides, as I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t want America to win. I want it to lose, and badly. I’d be quite happy if this affair somehow broke America as a world power; more realistically, it could have an effect similar to Vietnam and make America shy of foreign conquest for a generation or two.
The problem was with the metrics, as defined pre-invasion, when it was (supposedly) all about the WMDs.
I remember arguing that there was a good chance that Iraq would descend into chaos, but I assumed we’d be gone by then. I wasn’t aware that our government intended to stay for quite some time, even though that was evidently the plan from the very beginning.
And indeed, there was seemingly a lot of confusion within the Administration itself over whether we were going to hand over Iraq to someone, anyone, and make a quick exit, or settle in and stay awhile. If you don’t know what you’re going to do after the brief combat phase, how can you forecast what the costs might be?
As with Dutchman, I’d recommend that this be re-posted in the original thread. I’d reiterate, though, that only Bush has option 2. (Which strikes me as the equivalent of hammering everywhere, because we don’t know where the damned nail is.) The rest of us only have 1 and 3 to choose between.
Uh…excuse me? How is this undermining what I just said? At all?
A few third-world communist states (with a number of Nike™ factories in them) scattering the world today isn’t a fatal blow to us, no. Another satellite state to a totalitarian nuclear-armed superpower? Not a “fatal blow” in and of itself, it was something else on the pile. But the fact that the loss of Vietnam (and other countries like to) to the Iron Curtain didn’t destroy us is irrelevant…without the “king”—the USSR—standing behind it, the “pawns” are no threat.