Except that it’s simply not true. It wasn’t a shelter for terrorists until we took over. The war in Iraq never had anything to do with stopping terrorism, and has in fact been a great boon to Al Qaeda and similar folk.
According to you. And me. I’m just saying that’s the other sides view, dude.
It’s their lie, not their “view”.
Let me tell you how I really feel. 
I was trying to be diplomatic. I always consider the war cry in 03, and the extreme conservative pundits who labeled non war supporters unpatriotic, traitors who hated the troops. It was a heated social climate fuelled by fear and bogus information that was further perpetuated by the extremely conservative and useless mass media.
For the record, I never supported the war and never bought into the bully tactics used by the extreme right to vilify and guilt anyone against the war. It was a reactionary, violent mentality and an embarrassment to American journalism.
Almost five years later, I don’t understand how anyone can support the war. People who still support this war probably should pull away from those ultraconservative blog sites and read one of the well researched books on the Iraq War and the grossly incompetent G.W Bush administration.
I do think the OP was genuine in his efforts to understand the level of anger so many people feel about this war. Those ridiculous, reactionary, ultraconservative pundits still running a muck are a source of disdain.
People were duped. It is unfortunate how many people never questioned the invasion of an unarmed, heavily sanctioned country or any of the evidence presented to congress. Even congress voted for war, but I certainly hold them responsible too.
Best. Unintentional. Pun. Ever.
And it’s your “lie” in their view.
The point is off thread. I think we’ve hijacked it enough, I won’t respond to that anymore.
Good topic. Great topic, even. But I can’t get past wondering about this:
What the Hell does that mean? At what point in history has any country ever been presented with such a choice? And what, if anything, does it have to do with Iraq?
Well, I would imagine it might have something to do with the very rational desire to not have oneself killed or maimed while fighting a battle one only has a tangential understanding of.
It doesn’t sound like you serve in a combat unit. Did you ever served in a war zone where people are firing on you?
IMHO, it’s one thing to be a soldier and put on the uniform and train and all that. It’s quite another to be in a foxhole with mortars and bullets raining down around you. The abstract desire to go be a hero and serve your country and all that often gives way to the very real possibility that you actually aren’t coming back.
Even when people favor war, they don’t really. People don’t want to actually fight a war. They want a quick victory where they go in and kick someones ass in a week and come home to a big parade. History has shown this rarely happens though.
Except for, say, the drug warlords in northern Burma. Or the Khmer Rouge. Or certain mercenaries. They’re up for it just about anytime.
Absolutely. We have long epic poems written by guys who hung out with big hairy burly guys who really like killing people and being injured. I so totally do NOT share that mindset, but it’s there, and it’s existed throughout history.
But yeah, I’ve been naive enough to think we’ve somehow evolved past that as we’ve gotten other amusements like indoor plumbing and XBOX. We haven’t, of course. People suck.
I think it’s a result of preemption thinking, which is a technical policy change.
I think, and I’m not reflecting my own opinion on the result, that what it has to do with Iraq is the idea that without our war, other wars would have developed after an imploded Iraq with other regional powers. Is that what the OP author meant?
The war in Iraq gets all the press but there is still a war in Afghanistan. Almost no one has been against the war in Afghanistan especially when it started. The goal was to overthrow the Taliban even it meant killing every single one of them. It has gone fairly well. I think that would mean that most people in the U.S. are not pacifists.
Let me try to respond to this to clarify my point. I believe that people support the war in Afghanistan because we believe that avoiding the problem now would lead to more killing and suffering later on.
Pretty much, I might word it a bit differently, but yeah, I agree. Without this war there would be hell to pay. My only (tiny) disagreement is that I don’t know if I’d limit it to regional powers.
Cool, then we’re understanding each other. I disagree, but that’s besides the point.
Facts are facts. It’s not a matter of “view”.
No, it’s bureaucratese for “wars of conquest”. Since everyone might be a threat, “premption” is an open ended excuse to attack anyone, anywhere. Premption could be used to justify an attack on, say, Canada, because they might be building nukes to use on us, and they might be secretly planning to hand them over to terrorists. Of course we have no evidence of that, but obviously that just shows how sneaky they are being, and they wouldn’t be sneaky if they weren’t planning something nefarious, right ? We need regime change in Canada, before there’s a mushroom cloud over New York !
No, because they harbored people who attacked us. Thet’s why almost no one opposes it. And Americans like killing. We just don’t like being killed ourselves.
WITH this war there’s hell to pay. BECAUSE of this war. What good result could come from this ? And no, there’s essentially zero chance of a friendly, democratic Iraq; quite the opposite. We’ve set back the democratic movement immensely in the region; convinced the population in general that “democracy” means anarchy, destruction and mass death; “all we see are bodies, bodies, bodies”. And we’ve pretty much guaranteed that the Iraqis will murderously hate us for decades, at the least.
Oddly, on today of all days, and for the very first time in my 18-year hitch in the Canadian Forces Reserve, a member of the public called me a “criminal” when he spotted me in my combat uniform unlocking my front door, having just returned from my unit’s Remembrance Day parade.
I didn’t take it personally - he was either already drunk or, judging from the bottle in his hand, had plans to get there presently. He seemed quite concerned about Afghanistan, though his specific comments were unclear to me.
Just sayin’.
Maybe I wasn’t clear. They don’t want a fight. They want to go in and kill a bunch of people who don’t agree with them. Warlords and Khmer Rouge don’t generally worry about people fighting back. Mercenaries don’t generally sign up for wars they think they can’t win.
I think few wars start with the expectation that they will end up as long drawn-out conflicts with high casualties. Look at the start of WWI, the American Civil War and Vietnam.
I don’t think that is true. Feminists and historical preservationists bitched about the Taliban for years They forced extreme oppression for women and they destroyed many cultural artifacts in Afghanistan like giant Buddhist sculptures to take over the area as a fundamentalist Islamic regime. After 9/11, Afghanistan was the first military target of the U.S. There was the threat of continued violence coming from the area but many people just wanted the Taliban out dead or alive based upon their crimes against humanity. That was one of the only times you could see the Bush administration skipping arm and arm with liberals including radical feminists. I don’t see how wishing instant death upon your enemy and then delivering it could ever be construed as pacifism.
As I believe I said before, it may not be. There are many threads on SDMB where we can debate this. I respect that you are against the war because you want less killing. Not because you are some kind of commie Islamist terrorist traitor.