A policy of Zero Tolerance, eh?
You know, I can understand people who support the war. I disagree with them, but I can understand their point of view. Sometimes going to war is a grim necessity. But to celebrate it? To cheer? Oh, hurrah. People are going to die. U.S. citizens and Iraqi citizens are going to die. Iraqi civilians and, though I hope to God it doesn’t happen, possibly American civilians are most likely going to die. And you’re fucking cheering because the U.S. isn’t a “paper tiger”? You make me ashamed for my country.
Yeah, really. I’ll bet there are even some Dopers and Doper relatives who will have to go to Iraq and face death-and people are CHEERING?
That’s fucking sick.
War should always been seen as a failure of diplomacy. A necessary evil. Not a reason to cheer.
In other news, a jolly hilarious new form of pneumonia is killing people left and right, and a rather amusing suicide bombing took out another 20 people in Tel Aviv.
Muad’Dib, I thought better of you.
Burundi, Guin, and Coldfire…
It looks to me that Muad’Dib isn’t celebrating war, but rather celebrating the fact that it looks like the cheap talk will soon be over and something will finally be done.
Why would a swift end to the immediate war (which nearly everyone expects) be a cause for anyone to eat crow?
The only way that the opponents of unilateral war efforts are going to have to eat crow is if the rest of the world community retroactively supports the war after it has ended and we do not get a new rash of al Qaeda recruits.
(And, of course, it will help if the friends of the current administration do not increase their wealth, immensely, in receiving contracts for the rebuilding program and if the nation of Iraq does not fragment into a three-way civil war once the U.S. pulls out (if the U.S. can pull out in fewer than a dozen years), or if the U.S. does not take control of the Iraqi oil fields diverting the payment for that oil into U.S. businesses coffers.)
There have been a few people who opposed any action under any condition. There have been a great many more people who have felt that the specific policies pursued by Bush have been counterproductive to world peace or the War on Terror. Ending the war quickly will not change that opposition; demonstrating that the administration had an actual, viable plan for the post war period will quell the opposition.
Then why didn’t we do anything 10 years ago?
Look, there’s a difference between trying to help someone and pursuing a war for your own reasons. I don’t think the motive for this war is based upon our dislike for human rights violations; I’m sure it’s nothing that noble.
I am certain, however, that people will die; it’s quite possible that people I care about will die. I can’t be happy; I’m disgusted that you are.
War is a last resort, and a terrible thing. And I’m certain that even Bush is not going “Yippie kai yai yay!”
It’s a war, not a Bruce Willis movie.
Point of order: Although the OP appears happy about war, I for one am not. I believe it is the least unacceptable of the options. I think in the long run more people will die if we don’t go than if we do. We probably should have gone sooner. Hindsight is always 20/20. If we could go back in time to the first Gulf War, and convince those in charge to continue to Baghdad, perhaps it would have been better. But at the time it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. At what point when it became obvious that SH was not abiding by the explicit terms of the surrender was the right time to act? I don’t know. But I believe that reasonable non-violent responses have been exhausted.
Water, meet keyboard. Keyboard, meet water. Have a nice short circuit.
And what might that something be? Maybe it’s that “going to war!” thingie mentioned in the title of the thread?
War, huh? Civilians dead, eh? I think, maybe, if anything is going to be eating, it’ll be the crows.
Because a good chunk of the State Department believed that Hussein could be contained to only kill furrinners, while ousting him would create instability in the region, possibly inspiring additional hatred towards the US.
Twelve years later, the hatred that we were worried about generating happened anyways, and September 11th showed that our nation’s intelligence apparatus was not sufficient for heading off massive fatalities from a terrorist operation.
I wasn’t saying you were. My comments were directed towards the OP, Muad’Dib. My apologies if you took them to be directed at you.
Punoqllads, I was trying mostly to say that the US was not necessarily taking action in order to oh, say, stop genocide. If that was our goal–our only goal–we would’ve done it 10 years ago, once we had solid evidence that gas had been used against the Kurds. I am aware that there exist political/military justifications for the war, ones that I might not necessarily know or understand. Saying that we are going there to liberate Iraq, or to prevent human rights violations is, in my opinion, a misstatement of the facts.
This is worth celebrating, just as it was worth celebrating when fighting began in Afghanistan. Yes people are going to die, but I will bet that it will not be nearly as many as have died in the last ten years, or as many who would have died in the next ten if we leave Sadam in place. Go and ask the little girls who are going to school for the first time in their lives if the war was a good thing.
War can be a good, just and right action.
However, I will add that I was being a little sarcastic in the title.
I’ve been noticing a trend for you to read the absolute worst in someone’s post, Minty. You might want to ponder that.
Obviously, he was referring to war. I was just pointing out the possibility that while he wasn’t happy about the war itself, he was instead happy about an end to all the foot-dragging that’s been going on over the past six months.
War can be “right” in that it is the only remaining option, but it most certainly never is “GOOD”. :mad:
I’m not sure if I agree about the Good, but I think my good friends livejournal post sums it up best. I’ll post a link in a moment…
War can be a necessity, but you don’t have to let your exasperation of continuing non- compliance cloud your judgment. The saying, “that war is hell is,” came from people who lived through it. War is never a good action, just a means to an end. IMHO.
(I know this is the pit I never know where I really am)
I think war is both good and bad at the same time. Few people would argue that the Allies taking a stand against Germany, Italy and Japan in WWII was a bad thing, despite the fact that it was bad to be in the position of having to take that kind of a stand.
No one I know now would say it was a good thing that there had to be a WWII, nor would I. What would be said is that since the German government started the blitzkreig and began to conquer Europe and murder people en masse, it’s a very good thing that America, England, Canada and the other Allies joined in. Several years ago I wrote the biography of a WWII soldier, a sergant T-4 who wanted his account on paper before he died. This was a man who fought in Berlin, whose brother never returned to the US, and who summed it up by saying he wasn’t glad that anyone had died, but he saw them as inevitable against a regime bent on world domination and because of that, he saw it as the noble sacrifice of advancing a good cause.
It’s bad that war is sometimes necessary, and you’ll find few people who don’t wish war was never necessary. As they say, wish in one hand and shit in the other, then see which one fills up faster. Many of those who seem ‘excited’ about war aren’t glad that there is such a thing as war, only glad that when, for whatever reason it becomes imperative that some regime be fought before that regime can do more damage, that there are people willing to stand up and do it. I’d love to live in a world where war was never necessary, but no species in the animal kingdom of earth has that luxury. All of them fight, either other species or members of their own, and so long as this is the world I live in, I’ll be grateful for those who stand up to a Saddam Hussein and say ‘You will not put anyone in shredding machines. You will not gas the citizens of your country. You will not commit atrocities and continue to develop weapons you will use to terrify people. You will not do these things on my watch.’ I wish they didn’t have to say it, but I’m glad they will when they have no other choice.
That would be “Yippe kai yea, we are goin to end the foot-dragging!” Nope, I’m pretty sure I read the thread title and the OP correctly: Unabashed glee at the prospect of “end[ing] the silly games and actually get[ting] something done.” Let the killing begin!