The Great Pro-War Massacree Thread (and General Meltdown)

The BBQ Pit
101

Bc: *But I have a hard time accepting that doing nothing while others suffer and one has the power to intervene is the correct choice of action. *

Forgive my going all thoughtful and reasonable on you here in the Pit, but I’ve calmed down now after my initial irritated reaction to the quotes in the OP. This issue, of course, is exactly the crux of the larger problem: when and why do we go to war? I think that all of us are pretty much in agreement that we shouldn’t go to war based on spin and bogus intelligence. And it’s now becoming more and more apparent that the chief declared motives for the war—the “Saddam’s WMD pose a serious danger to the US” and “Saddam is helping al-Qaeda attack the US” motives—were based on spin and bogus intelligence.

But there is no question, and nobody ever has questioned it AFAIK since the current war was first mooted, that Saddam is an eeeevvvvviiil man. So what should we do about people like that? I’m a diehard liberal and multilateralist/internationalist and all the other things that the neocons love to hate, but I’ve said all along that what fundamentally made this war possible was the liberal/multilateralist/etc. failure to formulate a consistent and effective policy of intervention. (I don’t think we should beat ourselves up too hard for that, because nobody else has such a policy either.) We were all sitting around for years not having a good solution to the problem of Saddam, stuck between the principles of respect for national sovereignty and support for human rights. If we had really been able to suggest a practical alternative to invasion that would have effectively ended or changed the Iraqi regime, I truly believe that not all the Administration’s spin and scare tactics and propaganda would have convinced the American public that war was necessary.

So what should we do about eeeeevvvvvviiill dictators, so that we don’t keep running into this same problem in the future? Any good and lasting solution is going to require more international cooperation and “permission slips”, not less, so I think we should get started figuring it out now.

(I really need to start that “Which US-supported regime will be the next Saddam Hussein/ObL?” GD thread that I promised to start when I came back from Kerala. Maybe I’ll get to it after I come back from Bihar. :slight_smile: )

102

And you base this on what, exactly? Have you some special insight into the minds of hideous men? Ms Cleo on your speed dial? Or your own personal clairovoyance? You put forth a popular view of Saddam as though it were a proven fact. Is it?

With what force was Saddam going to conquer? That tissue paper army that the US went through like shit through a goose? Personally, I have my doubts that Saddam could have whipped Belgium in a fair fight. Who was he going to attack? Iran? Been there, done that. Turkey? NATO-member Turkey? Not likely. Syria? Why attack a beggar in order to adopt him? Saudi Arabia? If the UN/US wouldn’t stand for him annexing Kuwait (for which he had some actual pretext) how much less so for Saudi?

Clearly, I lack your insight into Saddam’s mind and his intentions. I have enough trouble understanding why sane and reasonable men do what they do.

Note to Big Svin: I’m afraid you’ve been too long amongst the Scandahoovians. This is your idea of a “meltdown”? Where’s the flecks of liberal froth spraying from a raving maw? You haven’t even claimed “persecution!”. When inciting a riot, one simply does not set up a table to serve coffee and pastries. There are a number of posters (propriety forbids naming names) who could give you lessons in how to conduct an honest-to-goodness, down home, Pure D meltdown! Bile and vitriol, lad, bile and vitriol! You can’t seem to get past “a bit testy”. And I got two bits says even then, you felt vaguely guilty.

103

Yada, yada, yada BITCH !!

(and, when you can, don’t forget Nepal)

104

I lurve you, too, babe. :slight_smile:

And it wasn’t directed at you, obviously, or anyone like you, who can say: “Man, it sucks, but the wool was pulled over my eyes.” Because people like you have nothing to be embarrassed about. I wrote that last because of the people Mr. S referred to in his OP who seem to have dropped off the face of the earth, but had no trouble at all being smug and rude in their certainty at the time.

\

105

Well, if it isn’t irrelevant, then the US government could have saved a lot of money: Instead of waging foreign wars of aggression, simply arrest all those CIA operatives, make a big show for the public, and announce that the ones who supported OBL, Saddam and other evil doers are finally caught.

106

I base it on my study of the man from when I was earning my degree in International Relations. It is conjecture, but I thought I was reasonably up front with that from the start of my post.

You are looking at Iraq as it is now, not as it might be in 10 years or 20 years. Not many folks would have believed that Germany would have emerged as a threat after stumbling through defeat and a financial crisis in post war Europe. Try to picture Iraq decades after the UN sanctions have fallen away. And don’t picture it going after a modern military but rather taking advantage of a crumbling state. On paper the Saudi Arabian military looks good, in reality it has severe shortfalls as a result of the government it serves. In 20 years Iraq’s military will be rebuilt. The French, the Russians, the Chinese have always been willing partners in that effort.
How well would Saudi Arabia defend itself from an Iraqi attack while its own army is being used to put down a religious uprising?

107

Well, this might all mean something, * ** if Saddam Hussein were Muslim. ** *.

Since he isn’t, it doesn’t.

What were you saying about space?

I just want you to know you made me laugh out loud, and I mention it only because I am an extremely tough audience and I rarely do that.

Mr. Svinlesha, I have long admired your intelligence, articulateness, reason, logic, and especially your patience. But I gotta say… it’s even better when you finally cut loose. You rock, sir.

108

Kimstu:

That’s a very good point. In my opinion, the UN needs to play a more proactive role; I would probably have supported the invasion if it had garnered UN support. But once you start invading sovereign states on the basis of human rights abuses, where do you stop?

Anyway, given that the global hegemons (Russia and the US) tended to be the most egregious supporters of autocratic regimes like Hussein’s, our hands have been kind of tied to start with.

Or how about this: consider the recent US War College paper that got so much attention because of its scathing critique of Bush’s “War on Terrorism.” What does it recommend that the US do in Iraq, now that we’ve toppled Hussein’s regime?

In other words, the neo-con fantasy of an Iraqi democracy is probably unrealizable, so we need to be pragmatic and install a pliable head of state, instead.

Just dandy, ain’t it? Now we’re really stuck between a rock and a hard place. As is, if we allow elections to go forward in June, Sistani stands a good chance of becoming the new titular head of an Iraqi theocracy – one in close alliance with Iran. But if we don’t, US soldiers may spend the summer battling rioters who only want the right to a free and fair election.

The moral dilemmas in this situation make my head spin.
elucidator:

First my grammar, now my meltdowns.

Yeesh.

Some people are never satisfied.

(And yes, if you must know: I did feel a bit guilty about it, afterwards.)
Stoid:

Now stop that. You’re making me blush.

(Did ya hear that, Boris? Natasha thinks my meltdowns rock.

109

Gosh, Sam Stone seems to have chickened out after page 1. Who’da thunk it?

And as long as we’re on the subject of conservatives who have finally realized that Beerless Leader lied to them to start a war with Iraq, maybe Airman Doors can explain to me why anyone in the armed forces is going to vote for Bush in 2004? I mean, I fully understand about the sacrifice involved in risking your lives when the nation is endangered, but here we have a case where the lives of servicefolk were placed at risk when the nation was not endangered – and the CinC knew there was no threat for you to defend against. “Hey, I almost got killed in Iraq in a war to find WMDs that didn’t exist, let’s vote for Bush again so I can put myself at risk again!” :confused:

Then again, I still can’t figure out why anyone would vote for Bush in 2004, yet he’s still polling in the 45% range, so maybe it’s just part of a bigger trend of people reflexively voting “Republican” irregardless…

110

Good point Rjung.

111

:eek:

:smiley:

112

-Well, if you’ll accept the anecdote, a friend of mine finally retired after some 23 (ish?) years in the Air Force as a C-130 Loadmaster, a career that included Panama and the first Gulf War, and one that was extended (he was due to retire earlier) after 9/11 which then included Afghanistan and briefly Iraq.

He’d had some 600 combat flight hours, including being shot at with SAMs in the Gulf War, and added another 600 hours after 9/11, including having the airstrip mortared as they were taxiing. He got a medal for something, but he can’t tell me what.

He’s a reasonably intelligent person, loved the job, and is fairly middle of the road, politically. Thought some of Clinton’s policies were good, but didn’t like him as a CinC, didn’t like how he treated the military.

He met some of the folks in those embattled places, and while he agrees there was no laurel-filled parade for their arrival, it was at least twenty-to-one appreciative. Afghanis giving the troops hot food, saying nothing but “thank you thank you thank you” and parents bringing the sick children in because they know the Americans have medicine.

He says he’d still be over there (and in fact is taking a civillian job training C130 loadmasters) but his own kids are around eight and ten and he’s been gone for more of their lives than he was home.

Last we chatted a couple of weeks ago, we agreed: Bush isn’t an “ideal” choice, but the Democratic canidates have given absolutely no reason to assume they’ll be any better, and in many cases, strong hints they’ll be worse.

Please don’t assume the servicepeople are mindless drones.

113

I really fucking hate it when some asshole makes up shit and pretends I said it. What you didn’t make up you misrepresented. Dipshit.

That’s not what hypocrisy means, moron.

114

Dipshit, moron?

It is sad to see, friend Scylla, that the strain of processing our President and Vice-president’s self justifications and general blather has caused such an astonishing loss of control. Go back to the Thanksgiving thread and read your justification of the invasion. If my characterization of your comments and defense is no as I represented it—the Big Dawg theory-- I’ll promptly apologize for misrepresenting your position.

In fairness to you, the “America wants oil” approach is not yours, it is Brutus’s. None the less, the Big Dawg does not go off biting people merely for exercise. Even a Big Dawg ought to have some objective other than reinforcing the impression that it is indeed the biggest dog in the pound. It seems to me that my syntheses of your Big Dawg stance and the “America gets to steal what ever it really wants” rational is fair, reasonable and accurate.

Incidentally, there was a time when men went armed and chose to abuse each other face to face instead of hiding behind user names and long distance telephone lines. People were a lot more polite then and a considerable more careful about what they said.

115

Then go ahead and apologize.

And that’s why you’re a dipshit and a moron

Probably they didn’t walk around putting words into other people’s mouths either.

Don’t get all huffy about being called a dipshit when you build strawmen and put my name on them. If you didn’t start shit, there wouldn’t be any.

116

Blackclaw: I really, really need to be reminded why I would give a flying fuck about Iraq invading Saudi. I have a hard time figuring out why we gave a fuck about Kuwait. If the Arabs give a damn, they can do what they should have done in Gulf War I: band together to drive him out of Kuwait and whatever other country he decides to invade.
Our only interest there is oil. We should buy it from whatever willing seller there is. That’s as far as our interests go, and as far as they should go.

117

20 years is such a long period of time that one could speculate to exactly the same effect about every second nation on the planet. What you’re doing here is the equivalent of locking up every baby in the poorer part of town, because in 20 years they’ll probably be a delinquent.

118

The *realpolitik * basis for GW1 was preserving our (the West’s) interest in having an oligopoly there. If Iraq controlled the Saudi and Kuwaiti oilfields as well as its own, they’d be able to set the world price at a level we might not be willing to accept. The ability to play suppliers off against each other has kept oil prices fairly low since. Poppy’s initial reaction to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, influenced by Powell, was to learn to live with it - then Thatcher scolded him into doing otherwise.

Oh yeah, we also preserved the noble Kuwaiti people’s right to have democracy and civil rights. I hear the ruling family even lets women show their faces in public, and even drive now. Pity nobody ever found those babies taken from the incubators, though.

119

I had a similar reaction. Hearing about Kuwait being invaded was like trying to care if East L.A. invaded Bevery Hills. They fucking rent thier working class! And the brave way rich young Kuwaitis dashed to the nearest recruiting discotek, which happened to be in Egypt. We gotta have a war for this bunch of overprivileged schmucks!?

But I dont want to hijack. I just heard those classic words “mischaracterize and misrepresent”, that usually means the shit is about to commence. Pay attention, Big Svin, you’ll learn how a real meltdown is conducted.

120

It’s gettin kinda predictable, ain’t it? A page or two of “I never said that, you asshole”, two or three pages of “grandpa’s big dawg”, a page or two of “liberal conspiracy”, then silence for a week or so.