The Iraq War in retrospect: Victory on almost all fronts

Great Debates
262

[QUOTE=Chouan]
So the liberals don’t have the stomach for a prolonged struggle against the forces of evil.
[/QUOTE]
Yep, it’s true.

Certainly no people have suggested that fighting in Afghanistan should take a higher priority. No-one has shown they may indeed have such a stomach by suggesting the need to put more troops there. It’s a good thing there aren’t, otherwise I might have to suggest that your post here is the result of either not reading the thread or merely a simple lie.

Unlike you, I will make no sweeping statement about conservatives that may be easily dismissed with, hooray, actual examples. Many conservatives have a good command of detail and argument. You yourself do not appear to be one of them.

263

[QUOTE=Chouan]
Hey, I’ve seen the pictures and the videos. But you have to remember the context. Iraq was fighting Iran. Iran in 1983 was definitely THE bad guy in the eyes of the US…it had only been four years since they overthrew the Shah. We weren’t happy that Saddam had used chemical weapons on the Iranians, and our concern was brought up during Rumsfeld’s visit to Iraq (although apparently the topic didn’t arise during the meeting with Saddam that you see in the photos…apparently it came up during a talk Rumsfeld had with Tariq Aziz, and Rumsfeld expressed both our willingness to work with the Iraqis but concerns about the chemical weapons reports).

So, yeah, Saddam was a bad guy for using mustard gas and other CW on the Iranian army…but he still represented the lesser of the two evils AT THE TIME. This was long before the genocides of Halabja and Al-Anfal, too.
[/quote]

I love the moral relativism of certain members of the right. “He was a son of a bitch, but he was our son of a bitch, which makes genocide and war crimes okay.” And don’t forget, Iran hated us because we overthrew their DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED president and replaced him with a brutal dictator, who terrorized the citizens of Iran for two decades until being overthrown by the revolution.

Don’t flatter yourself. There are plenty of conservatives on this board with whom I enjoy debating. But they often display a willingness to revise their views when confronted with contrary evidence. I don’t see that you are contributing a whole lot.

264

[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
How many are Iraqi Aq agents? Where do you get this information?
[/QUOTE]

I am not sure where you are getting your information. Other than the Bush administration’s false claim that Iraq possessed chemical/biological weapons and the inference that Saddam might be willing to share the weapons with militant groups, there was no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Invading a country because of what it might do, might be capable of doing, or could possibly do in the future is really lowering the bar for war.
Saddam was a secularist and a dictator. He didn’t want any opposition to his power, especially religious militant groups.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the free fall into guerrilla war, Bush arrogantly told the Middle East and anti-U.S. groups to, Bring em on. And sure enough, they did. The militants poured into Iraq - another WTG moment for the prez.

265

[QUOTE=Chouan]
And the Cedar Revolution–also just 3 years ago–has been delayed by the Hezbollah terrorists. And you guys are already giving up on freedom in Lebanon?

Nobody said that the reshaping of the New Middle East would be easy or swift. But right away, as soon as the Iraq war started, the left picked on every setback as proof that the mission was a failure. You guys were ready to leave the first time a carbomb went off.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, I stayed in Lebanon through several years of carbombings. It was when the US administration, desperate for any help it could get in Iraq, decided to give Lebanon back to Syria in exchange for Syrian cooperation on Iraq that I decided to leave.

I have followed Lebanese politics closely for years. The Cedar Revolution is dead. You don’t know what you are talking about if you say otherwise. We could have helped it, but we fucked up our standing too badly to be of any assistance.

Are you capable of admitting that you are wrong on even one point? It would convince us that you are at least capable of responding to arguments, instead of just repeating the same points and making ignorant generalizations about liberals.

266

Condi quietly opened the Oval Office door, and slipped silently into the room. He stood there, peering darkly out at the gathering gloom of impending night. Her pulse quickened abrubtly as he turned his limpid brown eyes upon her, eyes brimming over with feeling but sharp with intelligence, like a puppy with a Ph.D.

“Sir?” she whispered, using her pet name for him.

“Its the Iraqi people, Condi. They cry out to me, begging for my help, like stranded flood victims on rooftops. I must free them from that monster, Condi.”

Condi gasped silently, as his manly magnetism scorched through her veins. Her years of secret Sapphic devotion were as nothing in his presence, the psychic musk of his gravitas flared her desires.

“Even if I must shade the truth a bit…a nuance here, a fib there, and a bald faced lie ever which way…” Condi smiled inwardly, he often fell in to the dialect of his youth, from the hardscrabble Texas gated community of Midland.

“Even if I must sacrifice my very integrity, we must lead America to war with Saddam. Its a mission, a sacred mission, a mission from…” (Here he turned to face her, the full force of his charisma washed over her like a blast from a fireman’s hose) “…God!”

She flung her briefing book to the carpet, and ripped her blouse apart across her pert but commanding breasts.

“Take me, sir! Take me now!”

Please deposit twenty five cents for the next two hundred words…

267

[QUOTE=elucidator]
Please deposit twenty five cents for the next two hundred words…
[/QUOTE]

Do you accept PayPal?

268

[QUOTE=Chouan]

And now we’re finally seeing some positive signs emerging from Iraq, and you’re refusing to recognize them for what they are.
[/quote]

I do recognize that the “success” looks like the one in El Salvador. (As it was reported before, the administration is applying an “El Salvador” solution to Iraq.) El Salvador got relatively peaceful after the death squads made sure anyone that would protest was killed, on exile or disappeared (the end of the war took place thanks to the UN and the fact that the US finally advised the rulers to negotiate with the revels)

The reality is, there is a big desert out there, and a river to dispose of the evidence. And when you have the same bastards like Eliot Abrahams and Negroponte looking the other way while they happily outsourse torture and do not check on death squad activities, then the “success” that is going on does not make me see that as a positive sign.


[QUOTE=Chouan]
So the liberals don’t have the stomach for a prolonged struggle against the forces of evil.

What else is new!
[/QUOTE]

What is not new is seeing the extreme right always avoiding inconvenient evidence, no wonder Fox News is a big hit with them.

269

[QUOTE=elucidator]
Please deposit twenty five cents for the next two hundred words…
[/QUOTE]

When does Cheney get to say, “Yew shore got a purty face”?

Daniel

270

Hey, I don’t do necro, all right? I got standards…

271

[QUOTE=Chouan]
So the liberals don’t have the stomach for a prolonged struggle against the forces of evil.
[/QUOTE]
No, I just think that WE are the forces of evil.

272

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
No, I just think that WE are the forces of evil.
[/QUOTE]

Hey, don’t forget how the liberals pussed out in the fight for civil rights in this country. I tell you, if conservatives hadn’t stepped up to the plate, blacks still wouldn’t have the vote.

ETA–Oh, wait, I forgot–evil is something that happens in *other * countries.

273

Speaking of which, you might not have heard but there is an election coming up this year. I watch with interest to see which of the GOP candidates outdoes the other in stating his support for the Iraq war, its author GWB and the unending occupation by the US military. Such a suite of victories on all fronts is election gold.

So far it is Mr McCain in the lead. Go John, the man Chouan is backing, no doubt.

274

[QUOTE=elucidator]
Co

“Its the Iraqi people, Condi. They cry out to me, begging for my help, like stranded flood victims on rooftops. I must free them from that monster, Condi.”
“Even if I must shade the truth a bit…a nuance here, a fib there, and a bald faced lie ever which way…”

“Even if I must sacrifice my very integrity, we must lead America to war with Saddam. Its a mission, a sacred mission, a mission from…” (Here he turned to face her, the full force of his charisma washed over her like a blast from a fireman’s hose) “…God!”

[/QUOTE]

HAHA! I can hear the great communicator’s voice in my head now. :stuck_out_tongue:

275

[QUOTE=unconventional]
HAHA! I can hear the great communicator’s voice in my head now. :stuck_out_tongue:
[/QUOTE]

No, no…Reagan was the Great Communicator. Bush II is the Great Prevaricator.

276

[QUOTE=jayjay]
No, no…Reagan was the Great Communicator. Bush II is the Great Prevaricator.
[/QUOTE]

:confused:

I thought he was The Decider (no Greats need apply).

277

[QUOTE=Chouan]
You know, it’s a good thing that the Continental Congress wasn’t run by the Straight Dope. Did you realize that 15 years elapsed between the first CC’s meeting (1774) and the US Constitution went into effect in 1789? 15 years!

It’s only been almost 5 years since the Iraq war began. Iraq experienced its first free elections in 2005. So, an Iraqi democratic government has only been in existence for 3 years, and you guys are already declaring it a “failed state”??
[/QUOTE]

Why not?, you are already declaring it a “Victory on almost all fronts”. Double standards and hypocrecy, the double whammy of apologism.

[QUOTE=Elucidator]
Please deposit twenty five cents for the next two hundred words…
[/QUOTE]

I’ll give you 25 bucks and a fruit basket for burning the next 250 words.
Ewww man!

278

[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
Well you are the one who mentioned the cost of the war in terms of your wallet…
[/QUOTE]
That’s like saying Lincoln mentioned conception in the Gettysburg address. I won’t bother explaining my post to you a third time; bystanders can see how idiotic your responses are.

279

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
When does Cheney get to say, “Yew shore got a purty face”?
[/QUOTE]
Mouth. It’s “purty mouth”.

280

I don’t know if I’ve ever been more impressed with my fellow Dopers. Five pages of dealing with insane bullshit and aggressively, pig-headedly willful, fact-resistant ignorance, and it’s still in GD and not the Pit.

I don’t really have anything to say about the OP that hasn’t been said better already. Just this: in a few years, the most self-blinded idealogues, like our OP and ManiacMan, may have to admit that things went badly. But if they do, they will either shift blame entirely, or claim that “back then” (including right now) nobody could have foreseen that their brilliant, world-girdling vision would somehow fail to come to pass. Remember in one of the 2004 debates, when Bush was stumped to think of any mistakes he’d made, other than appointing people who let him down? It’ll be like that.

281

Nope. They’ll fall back on the classics, the good ol’ “Well, we would have won, but the dirty fucking hippies backstabbed us!”