# Ten Years Ago, Most Dopers Were Against The War. I'm Proud of Us. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 20, 2013, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409 "2013-03-20T01:37:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/1 "2013-03-20T01:37:10Z")
Not that there weren’t still a lot of voices around here who were passionately pro-war; there were. I remember the debates well. But still, most Dopers who expressed an opinion were against the war, and mostly rather passionately so. It was a war we never should have been in. Our media should’ve exercised at least some modest level of skepticism, rather than becoming cheerleaders for war. But skepticism was present here, in spades. I wish I’d been wrong and the war had been the promised cakewalk with the also-promised quick exit. But I’m proud to be part of a community of rather smart people who mostly got it right. Now if we can only hurry up and get out of Afghanistan… ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/2 "2013-03-20T01:43:59Z")
Are you witnessing? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/3 "2013-03-20T01:54:55Z")
I have seen everything under the sun turn into a debate, even when I was absolutely sure there was no ‘other hand.’ So I figured I’d just put this thread here, because if I didn’t, someone would surely start arguing that the war was really the right thing to do. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/4 "2013-03-20T02:10:01Z")
Well, some of the key SDMB cheerleaders for the war vanished after the WMD claims turned out to be false. They aren’t around to hear your I-knew-its. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/5 "2013-03-20T02:14:32Z")
Ten years ago I was vacationing in Sydney and saw [this](http://www.graffiti.org/war/no_war_sydney032003a.jpg). I hatehatehate graffiti, but in this case I approved of the defacement. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/6 "2013-03-20T02:22:10Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Well, some of the key SDMB cheerleaders for the war vanished after the WMD claims turned out to be false. They aren’t around to hear your I-knew-its. Tru dat. And when the remaining conservatives here complain that this board has a liberal tilt in its active membership, maybe they should consider that things like the war in Iraq had something to do with how we got here. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/7 "2013-03-20T02:22:15Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Well, some of the key SDMB cheerleaders for the war vanished after the WMD claims turned out to be false. They aren’t around to hear your I-knew-its. I’m still here, and I’ll gladly take one for the team. I thought there would be WMD, and I thought that Iraq was a sore tooth that needed to be pulled, that the world would be better off without Saddam, and that the war would be over with quickly and the Iraqis able to rebuild a better country afterwards. I was clearly wrong about most of that (I do think the world is better off without Saddam in it), and am glad that we are out of it now. What the Iraqis do is now up to them…they certainly can’t screw things up more than we did. I guess the OP is really talking about Afghanistan, however. Not sure I remember a huge anti-war movement on the board about Afghanistan, it seemed more mixed. I’m not sure that military involvement in Afghanistan was necessarily a bad call either, though we certainly fucked up by the numbers there as well…mostly by getting distracted and going after Iraq, but also in our unrealistic expectations that anyone could externally provide stability to that region. I don’t think things are substantially worse in Afghanistan today than they were in the 10 years or so before the US invasion, however, so I guess there is that…it was a shit hole, and it remains a shit hole, and, for the foreseeable future it doesn’t look likely to change, regardless of whether we are there or not. I think it’s past time we left, and basically just acknowledge that Afghanistan will remain a humanitarian nightmare in a constant state of melt down for years, if not decades to come. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/8 "2013-03-20T02:23:35Z")
The lead up to war and other subjects (health care, global warming) convinced me that there was no liberal media, only corporate outfits that when a crisis comes they revert to support the corporation and not the liberal backbone that they are supposed to have. > **[When Truth Tried to Stop War](http://consortiumnews.com/2013/01/31/when-truth-tried-to-stop-war/)** > > Exclusive: The year 2013 is the one-decade anniversary of the U.S. political/media system’s failure to stop a criminal President from launching a war of aggression on Iraq. It was a shameful time when only a few brave individuals, like the U.K.’s... > [@](#): > > When Truth Tried to Stop War > > _Exclusive: The year 2013 is the one-decade anniversary of the U.S. political/media system’s failure to stop a criminal President from launching a war of aggression on Iraq. It was a shameful time when only a few brave individuals, like the U.K.’s Katharine Gun, did the right thing, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern reports._ > > By Ray McGovern > > Ten years ago, Katharine Gun, then a 28-year-old British intelligence officer, saw an e-mailed memo from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that confirmed for her in black and white the already widespread suspicion that the U.S. and U.K. were about to launch war against Iraq on false pretenses. > > Doing what she could to head off what she considered, correctly, an illegal war of aggression, she printed a copy of the memo and arranged for a friend to give it to the London Observer. “I have always ever followed my conscience,” she said, explaining what drove her to take such a large risk. > > Those early months of 2003 were among the worst of times – and not just because the U.S. and U.K. leaders were perverting the post-World War II structure that those same nations designed to stop aggressive wars, but because the vast majority of U.S. and U.K. institutions including the major news organizations and the nations’ legislatures were failing miserably to provide any meaningful check or balance. > > The common excuse from politicians, bureaucrats, editors and other opinion leaders was that there was no way the momentum toward war could be stopped, so why take on the career damage that would result from getting in the way. And if Ms. Gun were made of lesser stuff, she might have hidden behind a similar self-serving excuse or found solace in other comforting rationalizations, like the government must know what it’s doing, or what do I, a Mandarin-to-English translator, know about Iraq. > > But Katharine Gun could smell a rat, as well as the sulfur of war, and she would not put her career and comfort ahead of the slaughter and devastation that war inevitably brings to innocent people. In that, she distinguished herself, just as many others in positions of authority disgraced themselves. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/9 "2013-03-20T02:27:35Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I guess the OP is really talking about Afghanistan, however. No, it is the Iraq war alright, the 20th of March 2003 marks the start of the invasion and occupation. The War in Afghanistan began on 7 October 2001. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/10 "2013-03-20T02:30:54Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > No, it is the Iraq war alright, the 20th of March 2003 marks the start of the invasion and occupation. The War in Afghanistan began on 7 October 2001. Yeah, was the last line in the OP that made me think the OP might be talking about Afghanistan. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/11 "2013-03-20T03:33:38Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I guess the OP is really talking about Afghanistan, however. Not sure I remember a huge anti-war movement on the board about Afghanistan, it seemed more mixed. I’m not sure that military involvement in Afghanistan was necessarily a bad call either, though we certainly fucked up by the numbers there as well…mostly by getting distracted and going after Iraq, but also in our unrealistic expectations that anyone could externally provide stability to that region. I don’t think things are substantially worse in Afghanistan today than they were in the 10 years or so before the US invasion, however, so I guess there is that…it was a shit hole, and it remains a shit hole, and, for the foreseeable future it doesn’t look likely to change, regardless of whether we are there or not. I think it’s past time we left, and basically just acknowledge that Afghanistan will remain a humanitarian nightmare in a constant state of melt down for years, if not decades to come. That could have been written by a Russian in the early 90s. They came, they saw, they went. Lessons will be repeated until learned - why did we think Afghanistan would be different for us? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/12 "2013-03-20T03:39:15Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > That could have been written by a Russian in the early 90s. They came, they saw, they went. Lessons will be repeated until learned - why did we think Afghanistan would be different for us? Because we didn’t really think much about it at all. We just needed to get it out of the way as fast and dirty as possible so we could go after the target we actually cared about; Iraq. Then Iraq turned into a disaster, and we found ourselves stuck in Afghanistan without even a definition of victory, much less a plan for one. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/13 "2013-03-20T03:58:16Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Because we didn’t really think much about it at all. We just needed to get it out of the way as fast and dirty as possible so we could go after the target we actually cared about; Iraq. Then Iraq turned into a disaster, and we found ourselves stuck in Afghanistan without even a definition of victory, much less a plan for one. In short, this. Honestly, I don’t understand how [**PNAC**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century) has been forgotten by so many. It was all laid out right there going back to Bush’s senior’s tenure. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/14 "2013-03-20T04:08:07Z")
I wasn’t here then, but I was against the war. We all failed to stop it, even thought we knew with a high degree of certainty that it was all bullshit. I don’t see why failing to stop a war is something to be proud of. Most wars are a pile of bullshit and should be opposed. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/15 "2013-03-20T04:08:54Z")
James Fallows covers some of the grim post-mortem: [Invading Iraq: What We Were Told at the Time](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/invading-iraq-what-we-were-told-at-the-time/274179/) Dec 2002: President Bush fires his economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey for saying that the war might cost us $100 - $200 billion. ## March - April 2003, after the invasion: Paul Wolfowitz claims that the Iraqis can finance their own reconstruction. Andrew Natsios of USAID thinks the US bill will run to $1.7 billion. So far the direct costs have summed to **$800 billion**. [QUOTE=James Fallows] The cost of veterans’ care and disabilities would be another $400 billion to $700 billion. And Iraqi reconstruction, which Natsios and Wolfowitz had said would be essentially self-financing? This is how it compared not simply with Natsios’s “one-point-seven billion dollars” but also, in inflation-adjusted dollars, with outlays for the Marshall plan and other recovery efforts after World War II: Iraq: $60.64 billion Japan after WWII: $17.88 billion Germany after WWII: 34.51 billion [/QUOTE] …and there’s been massive waste during the reconstruction efforts. If you want to juice the numbers a bit you can come up with $6 trillion through the middle of this decade: [Charts: Bush Lowballed Us on Iraq by $6 Trillion – Mother Jones](http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/charts-cost-iraq-war) ## There is also the matter of some 4,400 US lives lost-- as well as over 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. I predict that most modern conservatives will remain unperturbed by these facts, ideologically speaking. But what about normal people? There are lessons to be learned, in particular about [threat inflation](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/03/james-fallows-threat-inflation). Of the security challenges faced by the US over the past 60 years where combat was advocated, only one was worse than portrayed. The other security challenges were very real, though inflated. We should keep that in mind the next time some conservative starts rattling sabres. ## Now I am biased. I am an ultra-liberal by US standards insofar as I believe that pundits should be evaluated on the basis of their track records, as opposed to their posturing. With that in mind let’s pause for a moment to consider [33 experts who got this one right](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/how-we-thought-and-think-about-iraq/274101/) and [those who do this very day let us down](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/ten-years-later-what-paul-wolfowitz-owes-to-the-country/274129/). Full disclosure: I advocated the Iraq War in Jan 2003, got cold feet as it became clear that GWBush was thumbing his nose at the international community. I admit that I was hoodwinked, given that there were military teams in place to secure [oil infrastructure](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/03/yes-course-iraq-war-was-partly-about-oil), but not alleged WMD sites. The latter was pablum for the masses, of which I was one. Shoulda listened to Hans Blix, vilified by US conservatives and vindicated by the facts. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/16 "2013-03-20T04:15:41Z")
This is an [interesting opinion piece](http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/blogs/blunt-instrument/scouring-through-iraqs-scorched-earth-for-what-went-wrong-20130318-2gaot.html) on this subject from one of my favourite columnists, John Birmingham. He quotes Paul Krugman’s column on the topic. I found the comment about the circularity of the _““everyone” thought that there was a solid case for war”_ gambit very true and well put. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/17 "2013-03-20T04:37:18Z")
I recall very clearly posting a thread here in GD, expressing my conviction that invading Afghanistan was a damn fool thing to do, and we ought not. Suffice to say it was not a popular opinion. And leave it at that. There wasn’t any rope handy, happy to say. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/18 "2013-03-20T09:34:32Z")
I wasn’t posting at SDMB in 2002 but had Letters published in the _N.Y. Times_ showing that I’m no Johnny-come-lately to the stupidity of the Iraq War(\*). And I was, relatively, a militarist, supporting Gulf War I, and some of the stupid wars of the 1980’s – it was GWB’s gross stupidity that woke me up to the fact that many of these other wars weren’t all so smart either. When discussing Afghanistan, please note that their problems are largely not _despite_ the “benevolent” efforts of U.S.S.R., U.S.A., etc. but _because_ of those efforts. (\* – What name will history give to the Iraq War of 2003-2012? Wars need mnemonics, e.g. “The War of Jenkins’ Ear.” Suggestions? The War of Cheney’s Amygdala?) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/19 "2013-03-20T09:59:27Z")
I admit it. I supported the war at the time. I’m one of the people who believed Bush when he lied about WMD’s and I felt that was a just reason for invading. I also supported the invasion of Afghanistan and I still think we had a just cause for that: the Taliban regime that was running the country at the time was actively supporting terrorism against the United States. Leaving aside the causes, what both wars shared was the Bush administration totally screwed up the execution of the wars. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/20 "2013-03-20T10:58:20Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I wish I’d been wrong and the war had been the promised cakewalk with the also-promised quick exit. But I’m proud to be part of a community of rather smart people who mostly got it right. I don’t recall it was as emphatic as you do. I do remember pit threads about cheese-eating surrender monkeys, I remember people like Scott Ritter being laughed at and I recall posters - Sam Stone comes top mind - telling us, just wait, the WMD will be found under his palaces… Equally, I remember scepticism clear-headed analysis. Mostly though, I remember an awful lot of people not really knowing what to make of it all and looking for something that made sense enough for them to side one way or the other. Of course, that never came. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409.md?page=2)