Never said they were.
Perhaps I misunderstood you. You seemed to be using the example of Germany to show that our not invading Iraq in 1991 was a mistake – even though the result would have been the same situation we’ve got now, 13 years sooner. :dubious:
Let’s not play the analogy game. Iraq is not Germany or Japan or Vietnam or Korea. It’s not even Iraq in 1991.
Not every question has a simple answer. As I said, I “probably” would have supported the bombing campaign. But unless you can offer a way to send me back 60 years and erase all the knowledge I have of history, I can’t say for certain what I’d do in such a hypothetical situation.
The internment of Japanese-Americans (and Japanese-Canadians) was opposed by a great many people at the time, actually. The notion that people at the time were widely supportive of the more distasteful methods of conducting the war effort is a misconception; it was a going controversy.
Interestingly, today’s crowd of war protestors, who you (in typical Brutus fashion) call dismissive names, were around for another entire war, just recently. You might remember it. It took place in Afghanistan.
And yet, oddly, it wasn’t reacted to with the same level of protest and anger the Iraq war received. Why might that be? Could it be, just possibly, as an outside chance, that war protestors are not actually caricatures, but are intelligent, thoughtful, individual human beings, who react to each situation in a fashion that is particular to the actual details of that situation? And that many characteristics which are unique to the Iraq war are what are generating all the protest, not some automatic antipathy to any war, ever, for any reason?
Huh? Although politically the Invasion of Iraq was foolish and wrong; we kicked ass in a total victory there and in Afganistan in a manner of months.
In other words, if we had fought WW2 the way we fought the last two wars, we would have had F-14’s flying against Messerschimdts, and the war woudl have been over in a few months.
What the hell are you doing? Are you really trying to talk reason to the knee-jerk Iraq war hawks?
Don’t you know that if you’re not with us you’re against us? Who says so? Our gung-ho, eager-to-send-others President says so, that’s who.
Let’s not start stereotyping them just like Brutus stereotypes us.
I don’t think it was a sterotype. I read the posts.
Bolding mine. Notice how you have to couch the phrase, talking about ‘the same level’ and whatnot. But you don’t deny the obvious: Asshat protesters took to the streets in opposition to even that war. That they weren’t quite as big just means that the Left was slow; it took ANSWER (you know, the Workers World Party front) and company a while to get things organized.
Imagine my shock, my complete and total suprise, that the same protests aren’t going on regarding Sudan. Can you even begin to comprehend my bewilderment that the same protesters aren’t out there, protesting against the attacks on Christians in Iraq? How about the total silence when it comes to China threatening to attack Taiwan? No, the protesters only seem to find their voice when it comes to painting America as the villian. Amazing, no?
Abolutely zero chance of that.
Yes. The ‘fighting’ part of the wars went very well. For the record, I am not saying that we should get the P-47s out of mothballs, however cool that would be.
But you are overlooking the end of WW2. We did not form some dumbass ‘interim govt’ to rule our sectors of Germany and Japan; We laid down the law, and that was that. Dissent from their populace was simply not tolerated. If we needed locals in positions of authority, we appointed them. They need a constitution? Great! Here you go, one grade-A constitution, written by us. Elections? Talk to us again in a few years. I know that some people today poop their pants thinking about such measures, but it worked. What’s the point of claiming to be ‘humane’ and whatnot if the effort ultimately fails?
And don’t get me wrong here, I certainly hold the Bush administration responsible for its part in pandering to the ‘peace at any price’ crowd. But that has been going on since the end of WW2. We couldn’t bomb Chinese airfields (for fear of retaliation), even though it was obvious they were being used to fly missions against us. The Chinese attacked anyways. Or Vietnam, where we hamstrung our forces with bans on attacking aircraft on the ground (!!!) or hitting certain parts of the NV infrastructure. Of course, NV attacked south anyways.
I certainly take Bush to task for the way we are handling the whole Al-Sadr situation? Rather than just kill the fucker and his followers (at least arrest the followers!), he was allowed a measure of legitimacy, which will just make ultimately taking care of him so much more difficult. No ‘pretender to the throne’ would have been tolerated in any way, shape, or form during WW2. Just another sign of that grand indecisiveness that seems to effect our every foreign action of the post-WW2 era.
No, Brutus, American protestors take to the streets only to protest some action or inaction by the United States government (or some international body of which we’re a member, like the WTO). Why would anyone in America take to the streets to protest what’s going in in Sudan, when the U.S. is not at present involved in any way? Who would such a protest be intended to influence? You think the Sudanese give a shit about street demonstrations in America? (There’s “protesting” of the situation going on, all right, but it takes the form of blogs and magazine articles and letters to the editor, not street demonstration.) Or should protestors be taking to the streets to demand American military intervention in Sudan? That might be plausible, but only if enough elected officials were making an issue of it to raise that as a serious possibility – which it might have been, during the Clinton years, but not now when we’ve got all our troop strength committed elsewhere.
The peace protestors are no less loyal to America than you are, Brutus. Even the ones who burn American flags are no less loyal to America than you are; they are protesting against what they think their country has come to stand for, not because they hate their country. There’s a real and important distinction there.
Frankly, this suggestion that the proper course of action in any military conflict is to go for the “killing blow” makes for extremely counterproductive policy. War is not about defeating the enemy. It’s about achieving political goals. “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.” A man with far greater military acumen than either of us said it, and he was exactly right. The manner in which one ought to conduct a war depends entirely upon what political goals one is trying to achieve. If you’re trying to defend your nation from an all-out attack by another nation, then by all means, go for the no-holds-barred killer blow. But if you’re trying to achieve a more nuanced goal, such as, say, defending the Korean peninsula without sparking a nuclear war, one might well adopt more nuanced military strategies as well. And in the case of defeating insurgencies, I should think it obvious to the most casual student of history that they’re only defeated by brute force when the level of force is ridiculously high - such as, in my example, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Diaspora. If you’re willing to wipe cities off the map, as many military powers in the past have been, then sure, you can beat insurgencies by force. But you must be willing to embrace that sort of genocidal strategy to make it work. You think Napoleon’s forces in Spain were namby-pamby don’t-hurt-the-Spaniard’s-feelings types? Hell no. They brutalized the civilian population. But since they didn’t get to the genocidal level, that brutalized civilian population was never beaten; the partisans never gave up their “little war”. “My Spanish ulcer”, Bonaparte called it, because it bled armies white. Now, if you would be so kind as to name an insurgency that has been beaten by brute force that stopped substantially short of genocide, I should be quite happy to discuss it. But I don’t know of any such cases.
Therefore, if we aren’t willing to engage in genocide in Iraq, then we should attempt to use far more nuanced strategies in Iraq than we’re using. Use of air power against urban targets is a surefire way to create more enemies than you kill. It might win an engagement, but it creates three more future engagements. You can’t kill the Hydra by cutting off its heads. You have to find a way to stop them from growing back. This isn’t a “surrender-monkey attitude”, it’s a straightforward analysis of cause and effect. You can blind yourself to the sociological truths in war if you like, but don’t come bitching to me when those truths bite you in the ass a year down the road.
Brutus makes a valid point. It is painfully obvious that the only ways to keep any semblance of peace in Iraq involve consistent brutality or placing a Kurdish puppet in charge (which would lead to more brutality in the long run.)
This leads me to a different conclusion, though - if we are unwilling to fight forcefully and decisively, we have no business being there in the first place.
Oh no, you see I am able to tell the difference between different terrorist agendas, your attempt to portray me as some George DUBYA! Bush supporting dumbass has failed.
And btw, Islamism is a threat.
Neatly summarizing my position, sort of.
I, of course, think we should change our current strategy so that we are fighting ‘forcefully and decisively’, but the sentiment is the same: Do it right or not at all.
Okay, I don’t remember any protests against our invasion of Afghanistan. I’d dig it if you could provide a cite for that, but no big deal, I can easily imagine that some goobers would protest if the US mobilizied to fight the undead Adolf Hitler and his armies of hell. But your conclusion about the protests is simply partisan hackery, as Jon Stewart would say. Why were there huge protests for Iraq and not for Afghanistan? You say because “the Left was slow”.
Gimme a frickin’ break.
I didn’t oppose Afghanistan. I did oppose Iraq. Why? Because the people who attacked us, the people who are a threat to us, were in Afghanistan and not Iraq. This is a big damn difference, and this is the reason only a few numbskulls protested Afghanistan (again, I don’t remember reading anything about this, but I think it’s safe to assume that there were a few who did this), while millions protested Iraq. It’s fantasy to think otherwise.
Your WWII analogies are similarly poor:
Yeah, it did work. It still doesn’t make your point. The Germany and Japan of WWII had many, many, many differences from modern Iraq. The two most important:
-
They had culturally homogenous populations. When they decided to give up, they gave up together.
-
Their countries, before the war, were highly advanced and industrialized. They weren’t a bunch of dirt poor people who had nothing to lose by continuing the fighting, like the Iraqis. They had lost their standard of living, and they were willing and able to regain it quickly.
Our justifications for war were also very different. Germany and Japan declared war on us. You’re damn straight that it was a good idea to move in and tell them how things were going to work after the war.
But the war against Iraq was supposedly a “liberation”. When you ignore the misinformation about the WMDs (which I am not ordinarily inclined to do), our purported purpose for the attack wasn’t to tell the Iraqis what to do, it was to let them govern themselves after removing their tyrant dictator. Forcing them to do what we want instead of what Hussein wanted would just replace one dictator with another. Sure, we’d be a more benevolent dictator (hell, in comparison to Hussein, we’re a bunch of saints), but that’s not the reason we gave for our invasion and occupation.
And yet another huge difference between the wars is the willingness of WWII leaders to pay for war, in stark contrast to our current leaders’ practice of sending the bill to our children and grandchildren. Maybe if we had raised tax rates to their WWII levels, instead of lowering taxes during what is ostensibly wartime (!), we would’ve been able to fund an adequate reconstruction of the country.
A discussion of the significance of the differences between the wars could go on forever. Let’s forget the comparisons between the wars, okay? They just don’t fit.
That’s cute, but it bears absolutely no resemblance to the way any of the “embedded reporters” covered the combat operations in Iraq.
It does bear some resemblance to the way the media are covering the postwar debacle. But that depends on whether you’re watching CNN or Fox.
If by “Islamism” you mean the world-view shared (despite sectarian differences) by al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Iranian mullahs, the Saudi Wahhabbists, etc., then yes, it is a threat.
But Islam – the Islamic religion as such – is not a threat. And we must always keep that distinction in mind. Because Islam looks certain to be with us for centuries to come.
Stricker Van Gogh has already responded to this, but I’m so baffled by your remarks that I feel a need to respond anyhow.
So you’re claiming that the vastly larger protests agains the Iraq war, and the vastly greater anti-Iraq-war sentiment now, are not due to any of the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, ie:
-Afghanistan actually was where the enemy who attacked us on 9/11 was
-We gave the Taliban a clear ultimatum, “hand over Bin Laden or we will crush you”. They didn’t. Se we crushed them.
-The Afghan war involved much greater support from the international community
-The Afghan war didn’t involve all the “lying” (or whatever you want to call it, it’s certainly a SNAFU) about WMDs
-The Afghan war killed far fewer Americans
-The Afghan war didn’t “end” with Bush in a flight suit under a “mission accomplished” sign despite the mission not being accomplished
-The Taliban was a less established nationally sovereign government, and also a far more systematic violator of human rights (Saddam may have been randomly cruel, but women in Iraq had FAR more rights than women in Afghanistan)
Rather, you’re claiming, all of those differences are just irrelevant smokescreens, and the leftists, every single last one of whom is a reflexivly idiotic war-is-NEVER-the-answer knee-jerking bleeding heart, only protested Iraq more because it took them that long to get ORGANIZED?
I mean, seriously? Is that what you’re actually claiming?
Can any responsible and intelligent conservative please disavow Brutus’s hateful ignorance and restore at least a shred of my faith in this country’s political discourse?