[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
…The idea that someone can take away my freedoms simply because I choose to exercise them is as un-American an idea as I can think of.
[/QUOTE]
Another airman feels the same way :
While we are at it;
We’ve been hearing of lot of protective rationalizations lately.
Yeah, where’s Scott Ritter’s Medal of Freedom, anyway?
[QUOTE=Evil One]
This is too easy. Like these?
“Bush lied, people died!”
“No blood for oil!”
[/QUOTE]
Kindly direct me to anyone in this thread who has trotted out such simplistic slogans. As far as I can tell, the only person arguing at this pre-school level is you.
While you are at it, please direct me to any intelligent discussion anywhere of why - given the info we now know the administration had at the time - the decision to invade Iraq was a good or necessary thing. Hell, I’d like to see any clear explanation for why the hell we invaded Iraq at all, because every reason we were given seems to have been proven wrong. Instead, we simply hear, “Oops! The intel was faulty. It’s a mistake anyone could have made. 9/11!”
Even if we agree to shift the focus from the incredibly foolish and unnecessary decision to invade, to dicuss what best to do at this point, I keep hearing the true believers say, “Mistakes have been made, but we have a chance to win this war.” But no one will ever explain exactly what “winning” means. I presume it means leaving Iraq with a democratic pro-western government. Has ANYONE suggested how that is to be brought about - or explained why injecting more troops will have that result?
If you wish us to believe that your position has any substance or depth, by all means, please reveal it to us. Until you do, however, you create the appearance of someone choosing to live in an overly simplified reality. Where slogans are a fine substitute for reason. And individual actions or events are valid only to the extent that they comport with your chosen predisposition.
My hat is off to you all. You found one! A real live cunt! And such a huge one! An impressive score these days, my friends. Although, as I noted before, the only ones to be seen in the wild anymore are the slower ones. The dim-witted ones. The rest have gone to ground.
They’ll be back, and in greater numbers. Just wait five or, if we’re lucky, ten years. Their nature won’t allow them to remain silent for long. Soon, their fingers will itch to pound the keyboards against some future incarnation of evil. Their memory of being exposed as cunts will propel them with even greater fervor to send our now 10 year olds to some other place to sacrifice for our freedoms. On the other hand, our memory of the degree of their cuntitude will have faded, and we will again sit impotently by while they do it, until the reality again sets in.
The paleocons never go away. They will arise again with even more scores to settle.
And it will be the fault of the damned liberals for not supporting the troops enough.
[QUOTE=Evil One]
They thought so. And once again, WWII analogies abound. Now…are you willing to take a WMD hit before addressing the issue or not?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, WWII analogies abound. And you’re justifying Pearl Harbor. Which side does that put you on?
And please demonstrate the existence of the WMDs before launching a war of agression next time.
Today on Tom Toles - GoComics nails that.
[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
Kindly direct me to anyone in this thread who has trotted out such simplistic slogans. As far as I can tell, the only person arguing at this pre-school level is you.
[/quote]
Shodan is particularly noted for parodying any questioning of The Decider that way, but no, he’s not chosen to participate in this thread so far.
“Saddam gassed his own people! We needed to liberate them!” is pretty much it. It *might * even have been accomplishable if done by people with basic common sense and diligence. Be fair, now.
So Georgie could prove his manhood, and Halliburton could score big. Isn’t that about it?
[QUOTE=vibrotronica]
And you’re justifying Pearl Harbor.
[/QUOTE]
I made the exact same comparison almost four years ago.
(Incidentally, the rest of that charmingly unapologetic trolling thread is well worth a re-read, all these years later, to see that the debate tactics of the heavy-browed hawks have evolved barely a jot.)
[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
My hat is off to you all. You found one! A real live cunt! And such a huge one! An impressive score these days, my friends.
[/QUOTE]
Relax, Hentor. Celebrating because I dared to disturb the acoustics of the echo chamber isn’t becoming at all.
Listen guys…The current situation in Iraq is a clusterfuck. The Sunnis (and the Shiites to a lesser degree) have not shown the slightest interest in rising above religion-based factional violence long enough to make a western style democracy work. That is the crux of the problem as it stands today.
Recriminations are due for the mistakes made in planning and execution. The invasion itself was a stunning success…after that is was all downhill. But what would those of you who are putting yourself on an intellectual plane I can never hope to aspire to have done in 2002? In hindsight, it would have been cheaper in blood and treasure to leave Saddam alone. Let him go on killing a few hundred people a year…let Uday snatch a few more 12 year olds off the street..in general, just maintain the status quo.
We could have gone on trusting the United Nations and the IAEA like we are in Iran…negotiate like we are in North Korea…and wait for justification before attacking again. We wouldn’t have had any problems getting the French or Russians to do the right thing…and the oil for food program was feeding the hungry so the defenseless were being taken care of.
We’ve ignored human tragedy before. Darfur being the latest example. We could have gone on ignoring Saddam. Does that sound like a good plan for everyone? I hope so. Because I’m certain that there wouldn’t have been a peep out of any of you in protest if that was the course that Bush had taken instead.
But back to the present day. What now? If I were in charge, I would tell the Iraqis that they had three more months before the money spigot was turned off and the troops pull out. After that, if insurgents attacked the oil or public infrastructures, they would be only be hurting their own people. And yes, it may degenerate into a civil war, with Saudi Arabia pulling the strings on one side and Iran on the other. It may be horror on a grand scale for years. But the United States has spent enough money and lives giving them a chance that not enough of them seem willing to take.
It’s time for another picture of people climbing into helicopters from the embassy roof. We have tried to do something that would have been a strategic victory in an unstable area of the world and we have failed. We didn’t win enough hearts and minds fast enough to reach critical mass to establish a democracy that meets our standards. Now we may never have the example we wanted for the people of Iran and other countries to follow. The grip of Islamic fundamentalism and teachings is just too strong. Religion is once again getting in the way of self-interest and common sense.
So there you have it. My feelings on the current situation in Iraq. If it still makes many of you feel better to tell me “you support GWB so therefore you are a cunt”, then so be it.
[QUOTE=Evil One]
We could have gone on trusting the United Nations and the IAEA like we are in Iran…negotiate like we are in North Korea…and wait for justification before attacking again. We wouldn’t have had any problems getting the French or Russians to do the right thing…and the oil for food program was feeding the hungry so the defenseless were being taken care of.
[/QUOTE]
Well I just want to point out that the reason Iran and North Korea are acting the way they are is that they know perfectly well that there is not a goddamn thing we can do about it. Especially Iran. Every carrot we might have offered them to stop developing nukes and supporting Hezbollah we’re now going to need to get them to get their paws off of Iraq.
I knew back in 2002 (so there’s no reason why the Administration shouldn’t have) that Iran was actually not that upset about the way Iraq was organized. Saddam’s oppression of the Shiites meant that the Grand Ayatollah wasn’t going to be able to undermine the Mullahs’ authority. Now that we’ve cracked the country open, they need to control it. Otherwise the basis of their authority evaporates. They’re not going to give up on that project without some pretty generous bribes and dire threats. We’ve created a political capital sink.
Evil One, I also wanted to say that I wouldn’t call you a cunt. I appreciate the fact that you’re willing to take the heat you’re getting here. The cunts are the ones who won’t show up and comment.
[QUOTE=saoirse]
Evil One, I also wanted to say that I wouldn’t call you a cunt. I appreciate the fact that you’re willing to take the heat you’re getting here. The cunts are the ones who won’t show up and comment.
[/QUOTE]
Thank you, saoirse.
Oh, what a shame. And just last year you were feeling so proud of them!
The fact is, Iraqis are neither the pro-democracy heroes nor the irresponsible violent factionalists that you, at various times, have been trying to make them out to be. For the most part, they are simply ordinary people caught up in catastrophic anarchy, which our government not only laid the groundwork for but did far too little to prevent.
And now because they’re proving unable to fix what we broke, and the consequences are starting to embarrass the politicians that you support and show up the stupidity of their decisions, you turn around and start scolding the Iraqis for not “rising above factional violence”.
Gee, if we’d wanted them to rise above violence, maybe we should have set a little better example in that regard ourselves? We take out several hundred thousand people in response to losing three thousand, and then we whine about how the Iraqis aren’t sufficiently willing to “rise above violence”? :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=Baldwin]
You beat me to it. For the past couple of years, I’ve been getting tired of hearing the shennanigans in Iraq referred to as “the war in Iraq”. In March 2003, we went to war, invading Iraq. Won pretty quickly; then we found ourselves having to occupy a country without any plan for doing so (thanks to Rumsfeld). (I even remember Paul Wolfowitz specifically saying something like, “I can’t imagine that it would take more troops to occupy the country than to invade it.” I’d like to get him a history book for Christmas.)
But that may have been the last time anybody in the administration publicly used the term “occupy”, and I never hear it questioned by the major news sources. (Where’s that media liberal bias when you need it?) If it’s a war, who are we fighting? The insurgents are mostly native Iraqis; so are the people we’re supporting. Yes, there’s a war now, but it’s the Iraqis’ civil war, and at this point, any effort we make to strengthen the official police or “security” forces does nothing to create actual security; we’re just helping one side in a civil war.
The current neocon line, as expressed by Bill Kristol, is that, even though things on the surface seem to be not going so well, it’s all part of a grand 50-year plan for reshaping the world, and you’re just a short-sighted whiner if you can’t see that. They never mentioned it before because they didn’t think we’d understand. (Saw him on “The Daily Show”. I don’t know how that guy gets to be a famous “political analyst”, because if he posted here, his arguments would get ripped to shreds in short order.)
[/QUOTE]
The web site Project for a New American Century is still up and running. They are un unapologetic and will be pushing again.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
Oh, what a shame. And just last year you were feeling so proud of them!
[/QUOTE]
A years worth of violence and not much progress has changed my opinion. People that are not wedded to a particular ideology or party line do that from time to time.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
The fact is, Iraqis are neither the pro-democracy heroes nor the irresponsible violent factionalists that you, at various times, have been trying to make them out to be. For the most part, they are simply ordinary people caught up in catastrophic anarchy, which our government not only laid the groundwork for but did far too little to prevent.
[/QUOTE]
You are correct. A small percentage of the population is responsible for the carnage. Our government is spending lives and money trying to fix the problem. The issue is that apparently there are not enough Iraqis onboard. They are either directly participating in the insurgency or allowing religious fervor to drive them to violence against the opposing sect. Many of them are sitting back to see who wins…hence my reference to a “critical mass” necessary to turn the tide.
A western style democracy supported by oil money and protected by the United States would seem to me to be more attractive than a steady diet of Sunni-Shia violence…but apparently not enough Iraqis feel the same way.
Well, I’ll name some names, then. Mind you, I don’t know if there are any examples of Poster A explicitly saying to Poster B “You are a traitor because you oppose the war on terror”, but I think the following remarks are definitely in the spirit of what you’re looking for:
(Actually, that one was so pitifully cowed and panicky it’s kind of hard to feel resentful about its insults.)
How about kanicbird? (Is he still around?)
There was also manhattan, though he’s no long here
Yes, I believe it’s what you conservatives call “flip-flopping”.
[QUOTE=Evil One]
We could have gone on trusting the United Nations and the IAEA like we are in Iran…negotiate like we are in North Korea…and wait for justification before attacking again. We wouldn’t have had any problems getting the French or Russians to do the right thing…and the oil for food program was feeding the hungry so the defenseless were being taken care of.
[/QUOTE]
Do you mean like trusting them to run inspections, which were turning up nothing in the places where we were sure there were WMDs? We’re not talking about what people thought in 1999 or 2000 or 2001, but what the evidence was right before the invasion. Do you think Bush had good reasons for thinking there were WMDs then? Was there an imminent threat (with UN inspectors running around?) Why couldn’t he wait another month, or another six months?
There is something to be said for a humanitarian intervention - I presume you were pro-Bosnia. But there are and were a few places in the world where the intervention would have been cheaper and would have potentially saved more lives. But Bush’s daddy didn’t let them get away.
Even with WMDs, please give us any rumors that Saddam had something at the time that could even remotely threaten us. Otherwise the “they’ll attack us” argument is utter bullshit.