# 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:** 6
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/101 "2013-03-21T21:06:57Z")
I am no defender of the war in Iraq…or Afghanistan, for that matter. I believe that as the true costs of these wars becomes known, there will be a tremendous backlash against these interventions. But removing Saddam Hussein made things worse? Saddam was heir to General Kaseem- another bloody tyrant. Iraq was always in a state of disruption. So maybe the present government isn’t the worst thing to come about. ---
**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 21, 2013, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/102 "2013-03-21T21:20:00Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > Those who were against the war should be honest enough to say they are in favor of brutal dictators > who murdered hundreds of thousands of people, tried to acquire WMD, suppressed basic freedoms and paid bounties every time a terrorist killed an Israeli. Whenever you find a brutal mass murderer: Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Husseing..you will find a liberal licking his boots. I think those of us who supported the war in 2003 and those who opposed the war in 2003 can come together now in agreement that this is one of the stupidest posts ever made on the subject. ---
**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 21, 2013, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/103 "2013-03-21T21:22:30Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > The lesson is, “Read James Fallows”. Understand that threat inflation exists: the Cuban Missile Crisis is the only post WWII example where things were worse than the government indicated. Every other time it was the other way around. So the next time war is called for, discount the alleged threat by a hefty margin. What about al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks? Wasn’t the Bush administration under-estimating that threat? ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/104 "2013-03-21T22:58:19Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I think those of us who supported the war in 2003 and those who opposed the war in 2003 can come together now in agreement that this is one of the stupidest posts ever made on the subject. No, he’s all yours. You pro’s were all like that back then. Now it’s your turn to talk some sense into the stupid. ---
**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 21, 2013, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/105 "2013-03-21T23:47:06Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I think those of us who supported the war in 2003 and those who opposed the war in 2003 can come together now in agreement that this is one of the stupidest posts ever made on the subject. I don’t know if it’s the stupidest post, but it’s certainly on the board in the top (or bottom) 5% at any rate. 😛 [QUOTE=Latro] No, he’s all yours. You pro’s were all like that back then. Now it’s your turn to talk some sense into the stupid. [/QUOTE] And, frankly, this is a pretty stupid post as well. Not all the ‘pro’s’ were like this. There were a variety of positions and reasons people supported the war, initially, and not all of them were completely brain dead. You are painting with a ridiculously broad brush. And not all the anti’s were all that rational either, to be honest. Just because it turns out they were on the correct side of history doesn’t automatically make everything they spouted correct or rationally argued or debated. There were (and are) idiots on both sides of the debate, just as there are rational people on both sides. I like to think that, like Nemo, I pretty rapidly came to the conclusion that it was a big mistake and that we’d been duped…and I’ve never attempted to deny my initial pro-war stance, or fess up that it was a mistake in retrospect. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/106 "2013-03-22T00:06:29Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I am no defender of the war in Iraq..or Afghanistan, for that matter. I believe that as the true costs of these wars becomes known, there will be a tremendous backlash against these interventions. > But removing Saddam Hussein made things worse? Saddam was heir to General Kaseem- another bloody tyrant. Iraq was always in a state of disruption. So maybe the present government isn’t the worst thing to come about. You always have to measure the benefit against the cost. Even assuming the present government is an improvement, is it worth 100,000+ Iraqi casualties and 4,500 coalition ones (not to mention untold trillions of dollars)? ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/107 "2013-03-22T00:24:18Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > You always have to measure the benefit against the cost. Even assuming the present government is an improvement, is it worth 100,000+ Iraqi casualties and 4,500 coalition ones (not to mention untold trillions of dollars)? [**Way Worse Than a Dumb War: Iraq Ten Years Later**](http://www.thenation.com/blog/173396/way-worse-dumb-war-iraq-ten-years-later#) > [@](#): > > …The US war against Iraq was illegal and illegitimate. It violated the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and a whole host of international laws and treaties. It violated US laws and our Constitution with impunity. And it was all based on lies: about nonexistent links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, about never-were ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, about Iraq’s invisible weapons of mass destruction and about Baghdad’s supposed nuclear program, with derivative lies about uranium yellowcake from Niger and aluminum rods from China. There were lies about US troops being welcomed in the streets with sweets and flowers, and lies about thousands of jubilant Iraqis spontaneously tearing down the statue of a hated dictator. > > And then there was the lie that the US could send hundreds of thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars worth of weapons across the world to wage war on the cheap. We didn’t have to raise taxes to pay the almost one trillion dollars the Iraq war has cost so far, we could go shopping instead. > > But behind these myths the costs were huge—human, economic and more. More than a million US troops were deployed to Iraq; 4,483 were killed; 33,183 were wounded and more than 200,000 came home with PTSD. The number of Iraqi civilians killed is still unknown; at least 121,754 are known to have been killed directly during the US war, but hundreds of thousands more died from crippling sanctions, diseases caused by dirty water when the US destroyed the water treatment system and the inability to get medical help because of exploding violence. Much more at source. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/108 "2013-03-22T00:31:04Z")
This is very apropos; Phil Donoghue on how he was let go in 2003 for expressing anti-war views - witness the ‘secret memo’, etc: > **[Phil Donohue Recalls how he Was Fired From MSNBC for Being anti-war (Goodman...](https://www.juancole.com/2013/03/donohue-goodman-interview.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%2Bjuancole%2Fymbn%2B%28Informed%2BComment%29&utm_content=FaceBook)** > > At Democracy Now! Phil Donohue recalls how then General Electric-owned NBC fired him from his popular and top-rated talk show on MSNBC in spring of 2003 because it feared his voice in opposition to the Iraq War. It is great to have the whole story... ---
**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 22, 2013, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/109 "2013-03-22T03:18:33Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Looking at the [Freedom House](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World) index, there are 47 nations classified as non-free. Better get those tanks rolling! I see that Iraq is currently rated, “Not free”. And over 100,000 have died due to sectarian violence since the early 2000s. Clearly it is time to intervene. Oh and the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad! > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > What about al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks? Wasn’t the Bush administration under-estimating that threat? Yes they did. But the claim encompassed cases where an administration has advocated military force. That is when it is time to pull out the checklist. The Bush Admin was not advocating military force against al Qaeda before 9/11. You are correct that there are false negatives to consider as well. But threat assessment is a separate issue from evaluating a case for military action put forth by one US administration or other. ETA: Would the checklist be too daunting? I dunno. But once you’ve drafted one, you could run several thought experiments on it, starting in 1900. ---
**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 22, 2013, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/110 "2013-03-22T04:33:16Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > You always have to measure the benefit against the cost. Even assuming the present government is an improvement, is it worth 100,000+ Iraqi casualties and 4,500 coalition ones (not to mention untold trillions of dollars)? That’s one of the traditional definitions of a just war. It’s recognized that any war creates some measure of evil. For a war to be just it must stop more evil than it causes. ---
**Author:** ![NotfooledbyW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f475e1/32.png) [@NotfooledbyW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NotfooledbyW)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/111 "2013-03-22T04:37:10Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > The initial invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban government and was fine. Control should have been turned over quickly to existing non-Taliban leaders (yes, many were corrupt – what else is new?) and large funds should have been provided with few strings attached to build goodwill and help the Afghan people. > > Instead Afghanistan had to be turned into yet another Friedmanist experiment, based on “creative destruction,” and with local politics bypassed to install an American-selected leader. Even worse, Afghan laborers and companies were bypassed in infrastructure-building contracts, to maximize graft for buddies of the Cheney-Rove Administration. > > Anyone who has anything good to say about post-invasion U.S. behavior in Iraq or Afghanistan is under-informed. Before you start calling people uninformed, have you given up your source for your claim that Saddam Hussein didn’t KNIW he didn’t have any WMD? I apologize if I missed it. I don’t have anything good to say about pre/ or post invasion Iraq, because there is nothing good to say except it’s good to be out of the quagmire. Afghanistan suffered because of Iraq, but you’d need to explain how toppling the Taliban, and then leaving would have ended the terrorist haven there with Pakistan supporting the Taliban at the time. Look what the Taliban were able to with 30,000 NATO troops there for five years. Now they’ve been thrown out of most the populated areas which should have happened by 2005, except Bush decided to invade Iraq and empower the Taliban to take large swaths of territory and control it, until 2011. ---
**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 22, 2013, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/112 "2013-03-22T05:15:49Z")
[James Fallows](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/wapo-the-good-the-bad-then-a-different-good-again/274252/) points us toward 2 former advocates of The War of the Missing WMDs. David Ignatius: > [@David Ignatius](#): > > ``` > Ten years ago this week, I was covering the U.S. military as it began its assault on Iraq. As I read back now over my clips, I see a few useful warnings about the difficulties ahead. But I owe readers an apology for being wrong on the overriding question of whether the war made sense. > > Invading Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein a decade ago was one of the biggest strategic errors in modern American history. > > ``` And that gentlemen is the way you deliver a mea culpa. Another advocate of war was the Washington Post’s editorial page. They remain under the same leadership: what do they have to say during the 10 year anniversary? > [@The Washington Post Editorial Page](#): > > . . . That’s right: nada, zip. A veritable profile of intellectual cowardice. Last month they asked whether the US was kowtowing to Iran in nuclear talks. So colorful sabre-rattling is still popular at WAPO and we have confirmed that they feel unconstrained by any sense of accountability or even basic respect for the fallen. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/113 "2013-03-22T06:14:59Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > It is important that we teach our children about what really happened in the run-up to these wars and about how the public was mislead by the **government and the major media outlets**. This is some spin here. Don’t you mean the Republican administration and Fox News? In some circles, “the government and major media outlets” is code for “liberals”. Kids, don’t let those damn Democrats get away with what the Republicans just got away with. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/114 "2013-03-22T06:20:06Z")
I was for the war in 2002. My excuse was I was 17, and very very stupid at the time and didn’t have a clue that our country was NOT always the good guys. I don’t know what conservative adults in their 50’s excuse could’ve possibly been. They either have blood on their hands because them and their buddies profited from the war, or they’re incredibly stupid. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/115 "2013-03-22T08:38:43Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > I was for the war in 2002. My excuse was I was 17, and very very stupid at the time and didn’t have a clue that our country was NOT always the good guys. > > I don’t know what conservative adults in their 50’s excuse could’ve possibly been. They either have blood on their hands because them and their buddies profited from the war, or they’re incredibly stupid. You are excused. The others you speak of, not so much. 😉 ---
**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 22, 2013, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/116 "2013-03-22T09:35:17Z")
> [@NotfooledbyW](#): > > Before you start calling people uninformed, have you given up your source for your claim that Saddam Hussein didn’t KNIW he didn’t have any WMD? > > I apologize if I missed it. It’s impractical to keep up with all the irrelevant requests for Cites, but to stifle your snark, [Here’s something I found just now with Google](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/the-vanishing). (This was not my now-forgotten original source for the widely-repeated claim.) > [@](#): > > The idea that Saddam did not secretly continue building chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons directly contradicts White House claims. But the Iraqi scientists I met insist that the combination of U.S. bombing, U.N. inspections, disarmament efforts, unilateral destruction by Iraqi officials, and stiff U.N. sanctions had indeed eliminated Saddam’s illicit weapons by the mid-'90s. At the same time, however, Saddam’s efforts to hide or destroy documents hindered efforts to ultimately resolve scores of questions about the disposition of missing materials and equipment. **In addition, fear of Saddam kept many scientists from telling the dictator the truth about their WMD programs.** Ultimately, the scientists and others say, Saddam may have feared that admitting his WMD were gone would have shown a weakness that could have threatened his hold on power. These overlapping theories may not fully explain why American forces have not found WMD in Iraq. But, for now, they’re the best we have. I’ve emphasized the relevant sentence. Yes, this was arguably a minor aspect to the larger picture … as was my tangential comment about Saddam in my post. Does this help? ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/117 "2013-03-22T10:21:45Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > Those who were against the war should be honest enough to say they are in favor of brutal dictators > who murdered hundreds of thousands of people, tried to acquire WMD, suppressed basic freedoms and paid bounties every time a terrorist killed an Israeli. Whenever you find a brutal mass murderer: Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Husseing..you will find a liberal licking his boots. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I think those of us who supported the war in 2003 and those who opposed the war in 2003 can come together now in agreement that this is one of the stupidest posts ever made on the subject. Yup. We heard it all at the start of the war and it makes just as little sense now as it did then. It’s especially stupid when one considers just how cosy Rumsfeld and company were with Hussein previously when he was just as brutal, and the stupidity expands exponentially if you notice that while we were busy striking a blow against tyranny in Iraq that same Donald Rumsfeld and Bush Jr were happily doing business with other brutal dictators in Central Asia including Turkmenbashi and [this guy](http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3943.htm) who boiled his opponents alive. If we were worried about WMDs we should have focused on North Korea. If we were worried about dictators subverting the democratic process we should have focused on Burma/Myanmar. But the PNAC wanted their own little oil-filled playground, so we invaded Iraq instead. Frankly, there’s a far better argument for saying that “Whenever you find a brutal mass murderer, you’ll find a conservative doing business with him.” ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/118 "2013-03-22T10:39:05Z")
After 9/11 the war in Afghanistan was unavoidable. Probably Iraq as well. But in retro-perspective the whole nation building things was a big mistake. Perhaps the USA had been seduced by its success in nation building in Europe and Japan after WW-II. The lesson from Afghanistan and Iraq must be: 1) when you need to go to war, do it to destroy your enemies, not to build a better state. Nukes would have been a reasonable response after 9/11, but conventional arms could also have done it. 2) the whole world is not your responsibility. Taliban stoning women in Kabul. That’s awful, but not your responsibility. If Iraq invades Kuwait. Let the Saudis handle their own problems. Kurds being genocided in Iraq. Too bad, but not your problem. Ergo, stay they hell out of Syria, Libya, etc. – not your problem. 3) do not start a war on credit. Raise taxes to pay for it. As for Denmark. Denmark has been in from the start both in Afghanistan and Iraq, and suffered more casualties per capita than any other ally of the USA. But in fact Denmark never really made itself believe it was done to help the Afghans or Iraqis or whatever. It was felt that we owned the USA and Britain from all the way back to WW-II. I think the consensus now is that the debt has been repaid. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/119 "2013-03-22T11:33:08Z")
Oh dear. \*\*Red \*\*has quite some scraping to do again… ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409/120 "2013-03-22T12:40:42Z")
Oh dear. A **Red** fanboy… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-years-ago-most-dopers-were-against-the-war-im-proud-of-us/653409.md?page=7)