There’s no question that the insurgents that were in Fallujah were truly vile people. But our hands aren’t exactly clean either. And as Daniel has already pointed out, we unleashed these thugs on the world.
I can’t see how this argument removes blame from GWB and his administration for those deaths. They didn’t have to invade Iraq. but they did, and now roughly 100,000 people are dead who wouldn’t be dead otherwise.
Japan is to blame for pearl harbour and (indirectly) the Nuclear bombs dropped on them (so is America).
America[n administration] is to blame for the Iraq war and (indirectly) for making it possible for militants to killl civilians (so are the militants)
Blame can be shared.
I can’t see how this argument removes blame from GWB and his administration for those deaths. They didn’t have to invade Iraq. but they did, and now roughly 100,000 people are dead who wouldn’t be dead otherwise.
Japan is to blame for pearl harbour and (indirectly) the Nuclear bombs dropped on them (so is America).
America[n administration] is to blame for the Iraq war and (indirectly) for making it possible for militants to killl civilians (so are the militants)
Blame can be shared.
But surely the ultimate blame must lie where the proverbial buck stops. Bush had the ultimate power to cause this. The militants didn’t.
In short, I believe a person should take responsibility and blame for every single consequence of his/her actions.
I wasn’t aware of a statute of limitations for attrocities. Since Mr. Hussien committed the MAJORITY of his crimes fifteen years ago, they aren’t relevant. Understood.
That’s moronic. Bush never disemboweled a woman and left her in the streets. The militants had the “ultimate power” of deciding whether or not they were going to commit the act itself. This woman’s death wasn’t inevitable from the inception of the war. It is the worst kind of conditional morality to try to shift blame to someone you don’t like to make a political point.
Your position that somehow Bush should shoulder more of the blame than the monsters that actually commited the atrocity is addle-brained, disingenuous, and borderline inhuman.
I am not saying take the blame away from the monsters. I am saying bush is also to blame. Bush created a situation where these monsters could do this.
How is it inhumane to put the overall blame on the one guy who’s one decision ultimately led to these 100,000 deaths and the situation in which some brainwashed monsters could do that kind of thing that was done to that woman.
If There wasn’t a war this attrocity wouldn’t have been possible (or at least wouldn’t have happened) Bush created the war, therefore bush gets the blame.
And to be honest. I dislike bush (he’s a conservative religious fundamentalist and I am a liberal atheist) but I reserve my deepest negative feelings for the islamic fundamentalists who do these things. I am in internal conflict whether to hate them or not.
Ryan Liam is right and nobody is addressing it because you know he is right. There have been plenty of resistance movements where the “insurgents” didn’t go around mutilating or beheading people.
When you factor in a cutthroat culture favoring a show of force and power, and a religion based on said culture, that’s when you start seeing acts of savagery.
It’s true that throughout history there have been cutthroat cultures, and Medieval Christian Europe is no exception. What I’m getting at is that cutthroat cultures in the modern day aren’t as common, but the Arab world is a prime example of one.
There will always be fundementalist idiots with knives and guns who have the will to do horrible things. There always has been. And I will always consider them inhuman and a problem.
But how often does a President of the most powerful nation on earth attack a nation with virtually no military capability based on lies and some feeble truths, causing many thousands of innocent deaths, and a situation where said fundementalist idiots have a free reign to do what they do.
Presidents shouldn’t do things like this. We can’t avoid there being fundementalists with intent to cause harm. We can avoid electing them as President.
There are plenty of us here who respect them.
Damn right. The people who did this are monsters who deserve destruction. However, they are not everyone over there, any more than the few bad ones on our side represent everyone.
That much at least is true.
Roseworm’s posts are verbal equivalents of the anti-semitic/anti-Kraut/anti-Jap posters of the 1930s and '40s. I shudder at the sight of all of them. I wish that Worm’s posting access would be limited so that I no longer get that odd heaving sensation in my stomach I often feel when viewing such inhumanity.
Bush is also to blame???
Had he not…and don’t tell me congress said he could…that’s bullshit, sent our tropps in…none of this would have happened.
None…get that?
None.
Your reading this wormwood?
Reeder shouldn’t there be a ‘not’ in that first sentence? (judging by the rest of the post)
Car bombs and dismembering women are very different actions.
If a car bomb’s main target is a military one (or an official), then there’s no difference with, for instance, a missile launched against insurgents or against one of their leaders. In both cases there’s a “legitimate” target, and in both cases, there are “collateral damages”.
Are you under the belief that “low-tech” weapons like car bombs are somehow worst than high tech weapons like missiles?
So, what you should consider is the targets of these bombings, rather than thinking car bombs = criminals, tanks = heroes.
I’m not convinced. The root cause might be the invasion, but some actions are just barbaric, and don’t even seem to serve any purpose. Dismembering women doesn’t seem to me a logical consequence of an invasion, anymore than, say, murdering your much disliked neighbor, because you think you can get away with it given the general confusion and disorder.
Even if it was just the Germans mutilating French women in order to demoralize a population that outnumbered them the message is the same: Mess with us and you can expect more of this. But there were atrocities on both sides. While my father was escaping Switzerland he was helped through France by the Resistance. One day they set free some German soldiers they had captured then shot them as they ran away. This, they said, was in reprisal for the death of the sister of one of the fighters. She had been captured and raped with a broomstick studded with nails.
Jesus H. Christ, which of those two do you think is worse? Raping an INNOCENT woman with a broomstick, studded with nails, resulting in her death, or shooting soldiers in reprisal for said rape?
Don’t tell me the shooting of the soldiers was an “atrocity.” If anything, it was a mercy. They died thinking that they would escape. They should have suffered 100-fold for what they did.
Notice, he never said that the soldiers who were shot were the ones who did it.
Geneva convention… alas, I knew thee well.
Okay, okay, you’re all getting a bit out of hand.
The death (however unpleasant) of a woman, even a “western” one- interesting phrasing, Rosewood- is not justification for any other deaths, except perhaps those of individuals who can be proven to have caused it.
However, calling the troops baby-killers and so forth is a bit much. Yes, some of them are probably arseholes, but I seriously doubt that they appear in the same number in the US Army that they do among fanatics of any stripe.