Ignoring the evils OUR government has done (including giving Saddam lots of toys to play with), how about, i don’t know, finding OSAMA??? You know him, the guy RESPONSIBLE for the attacks?
Did you read the full Jeff Jacoby article, Tars Tarkas?
yes, but i am against involving us in several half-baked wars when we should be focusing fire and eliminating problems one by one. If we were so concerned about Saddam, we should have did something during the Gulf war. Suddenly making him public enemy number one because our Osama search is stalled makes us look like a bunch or warmongers that cannot stand not fighting with someone. We need to just tell Pakistan that we are sending in troops to the northern tribal regions to search, and they can just deal with it. Give them money or something to shut them up for a while and go bag our man.
BTW, you are aware we used to support this guy? Doesn’t that make us accomplises? and we’ve stood around and did nothing for 15 years. Stop trying to play the moral high ground here. The US should have kicked this guy to the curb back in the 80s. The blood of the Kurds is on our hands as well for doing nothing. I’m all for getting this guy, but the timing is wrong, since we are busy doing something else (or at least we should be.)
This is the strangest of all the reasons given by the war mongers for going to war. It is strange because of the fact that everybody who uses it obviously couldn’t care less about the population of Iraq. I mean, if you care about the people of Iraq, it would be crazy to support the very people who have been killing and torturing the people of Iraq for over a decade, in charge of an invasion of the country. Recall that the U.S. demolished the infrastructure in 1991, targetting water treatment facilities and other vital resources. After the war, the U.S. ensured that these facilities would not be rebuilt. The destruction the U.S. brought onto the people of Iraq in 1991 has only been partially rebuilt, oftentimes simply to be bombed again.
If there is anything that is blindingly obvious about this situation it is that the Bushites don’t care one whit about the people of Iraq. Indeed, I find the idea that anybody who supports a U.S. invasion cares at all about the people of Iraq.
There are really two questions here: (1) Should Saddam be overthrown? and (2) Should the U.S. invade? These are separate questions, and answering yes to (1) does not imply a yes to (2). I do think Saddam should be overthrown, but by the people of Iraq. We do not have any right to bomb a country because it has a bad leader. Why should we make Saddam’s victims suffer even more?
The other aspect of this is what will happen after Saddam is gone. If history is any guide, Saddam’s replacement will be worse for the people of Iraq. (Just look at the Philippines, Cuba, South Vietnam, Iran, Congo, Chile, Guatemala, etc.) In fact, this is a virtual certainty. The U.S. puppet who will be installed in Baghdad will have the primary purpose of making sure that the resources of the country will be in the hands of western multi-national corporations. One thing about Saddam is he did invest the riches of the country into social programs, like health care and education that greatly benefitted the people of Iraq. Recall that Iraq was by far the most advanced Arab country before the U.S. war. This will not occur with a U.S. puppet. Most likely Iraq will become like one of our other puppet regimes in the region, like Saudi Arabia or Jordan, where the people are kept in poverty while the vast riches flow to the rest, with a kick-back to the “Arab facade” in charge.
Well, its damn sure going to go badly for somebody.
I have seen several rosy scenarios posted. But any careful reading of history shows that war is, by its very nature, chaotic and unpredictable. Sure, its possible that the Iraqi military will fold like a house of cards and hand over Saddam bin Ladens head on a platter. But history also shows that when a people are invaded, the will to resist multiplies exponentially. Just look at the Volksturm phenomenon in Germany: old men and boys without the least shred of military training,marching off to fight an utterly hopeless battle against a hardened military machine. Surely they suffered mightily from the stupidity and cruelty of the Nazi regime. But they weren’t defending Nazism, they were defending thier homeland. Have we any reason to expect anything different from Iraqis?
This time, not going to Baghdad is not an option. That’s a given. If the rosy scenario doesn’t pan out, our troops will be facing house to house combat through the streets. Indeed, new reports show that our troops are already training for it. And the world will be watching. No amount of propaganda will avail us here. We can call it “pre-emptive”, but it will be seen as aggressive. The slaughter will be horrendous. There is no such thing as “carnage lite”.
We will be handing our enemies the best possible recruiting tool. Almost certainly, military victory will be ours. But we cannot rationally estimate the cost of such victory. The cost of defeat, however distant that possibility may be, is beyond imagination, much less rational estimation.
Will it go badly? Of course, all wars go badly. How badly? God only knows. But the best we can hope for is eliminating a potential threat at the cost of multiplying real ones.
Vote Democratic and solve both problems.
[ul]War is hell.[/ul] 
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it" –Robert E. Lee
My guess is that Bush will have to start thinking about alternative energy sources…
I just posted this same thought elsewhere: I have to hope it goes swimmingly. I have to hope that Little Ceasar can march down Wall Street in a ticker tape parade with Saddam’s head on a stick. Failing that, I have to hope all the casualties are theirs. That all the horror and carnage falls on them, and not on me and mine. That it is thier soldiers who suffer and die, thier children made orphans.
What a vile thing to have to hope for.
I think an good title for a thread would be **When the war goes badly. **
“Little Ceasar”. Interesting that Bush said “If you want peace you have to be ready for war” and the 9mm parabellum round is named after Caesar “Parra pax, parra bellum”.
Well this is the first time I am on the fence. I usually prefer a solution other than war, but I’m not sure what else can be done. I believe what Khidhir Hamza says about Saddam still considering himself to be at war with the US. I don’t believe the war ever ended for Saddam. I know he suffered heavy losses, but when we backed off we allowed Saddam to kill off a lot of the very people who were most likely to bring about regime change. Or is this wrong?
I do not believe that Bush is making up the threat of WMDs or that it is nothing to worry about. When I read things like, “In 1998, many believe that Iraq’s nuclear program has been dismantled and most if not all of the materials and equipment that were used in that program have been found and destroyed. But in a seven-year-plus effort, U.N. inspectors from the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Action Team have had to work through so many layers of deception, and have received so many different ‘full, final, and complete declarations’ from the Iraqis, that they have no doubt Iraq is still hiding important information. Inspectors believe they may never know the full story,” I worry.
I also think that there is some credibility to the reports of terrorist training camps (Salman Pak) in Iraq containing airplanes and railway cars, etc. I do think it likely this is still going on and it is a legitimate threat. I don’t think it likely Saddam has WMDs right now, but I am guessing he might be closer than some people think. I can’t say I want to bomb the hell out of Iraq because of this, but I do worry that it might come to a point where we’ve done nothing and have a lot less choice.
I feel I should add that most of my information comes from PBS and a lot of that from its Frontline shows. Particularly Spying On Saddam and Gunning For Saddam.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/unscom/readings/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/analyses/
I added this bit not because I have an investment in PBS (I don’t), but I wonder how many people are aware of the information available there and how credible it is.
The best arguments pro and against war are the following…
Pro- Unfortunately, the United States seems to be the only entity willing and able to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime. If one believes that Saddam Hussein must be overthrown soon, it seems to follow that it should be the US doing the overthrowing. “If not us, than who?”
Con- Striking pre-emptively against a sovereign state without direct provocation gives a “license” for other countries, perhaps less humane or accountable as the US, to follow suit. India could nuke Pakistan. Iran could crack down on the Kurds. Russia could stomp the Chechen rebels. China could stamp out the Falun Gong. All withoutn provocation.
As of right now, I’m on the fence.