War in Iraq - 3 Years

i know!! it's like, not only am i rude and obnoxious, but i'm also a retard!! oh, my pappa would be so proud if he could see me now....

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http://www.last.fm/user/diezelpower/

ok, actually, i'm sure you're not a hateful person, but your post was accusing opponents to the war to be hateful, or at least me, so i just threw the grenade back (there's a war goin' on. after all...).

now, if bad things happened to you to cause that response, i'm honestly sorry. i'd just say, if you don't agree with all the statements made or the conclusion drawn, it doesn't mean you cannot recognize some of these statements are true, or at least have a point. and then you can contradict them, but with argumentation. and i do think even pro-war people cannot deny the couple of truths i listed there from the previous post, and which you so vehemently attacked.

and by the way, i'm a big fan of the red pill too

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We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.

Im currently studying abroad here in New Zealand. Im finding it absolutley amazing how the war is treated in this country. I mean no offense to any New Zealanders, but it's dissapointing how 'flat' everything is. As of yet i have been unable to have one single intellegent conversation about the war. Every point i make is countered with, "All the Americans want is Oil. Oil,Oil,Oil."
"Really? Couldnt it be this? Or maybe its even that!'
"NOPE. All the American's want is oil."

Regardless of what i personally believe, and regardless of what is true, its disheartening to see such a blindness. And then i read the local newspapers, whose only Global news from America deals with A.) Hollywood B.) How many innocents died on account of U.S. troops. Whose fault is that? Their global media is derived from our own national media, which, i believe, is only derived from the American public.

But i realize the folly of making such judgements on such a large scale. I speak mostly with students, who usually know both too much and too little for their own good. Im positive there are a great deal of idealists and think-for-yourself-ers here. My intention is not to smack-talk a country, (I love NZ!) but to bring up a few ideas about how everything is comprehended globally. Im not even sure that those ideas are. Does anyone think that we are directly responsible for how the world is viewing our actions? Like, is it my fault in some way that my 'support our troops' t-shirt is mocked and insulted?

But wow- what a respect i have for an intelligent debate, one point countered by another logical and supported point. I appreciate that particular aspect of MoFos. As long as somebody has the least bit of support, their opinion has a place here, regardless of how hair-brained it may be. Way to go, folks.

America is always alleged freedom of speech. America is always claimed raging war was only done to free the world. America’s media always claimed showing the truth.
You know what?!
You’ve always been deceived, and you will remain deceived until you learn what the other side’s views are.
We cannot bring you everything to your door steps, you have to step up to the plate and look for the truth.
However, we can tell you that the Mujahedeen have opened the door for you to learn what the American and British governments are trying to hide away from you.


Follow this link and you’ll know what we’re talking about:


www.press-release.blogspot.com


Don’t be scared, the page is not going to blow up on you. You can either think with your right mind, or keep Bush and Blair thinking for you, it’s your choice.

well, hows about you sharing your views on the war. enlighten us please.

Even if oil, oil, oil isn't the only factor playing part in why America decided to attack Iraq, I am sure it played an important role.

What are the "this" and "that", according to you? And what do you see in the future of Iraq and what part does America play in that future?

As you're pointing out yourself; the world's view of America is largely being sold to us - by America. Since the national media in non-American countries, and more and more even the public in those countries, are mostly aware of this, the consequence is that the media of "the rest of the world" is often critical and dismissive of American media. Here people tend to view CNN and Fox News a little bit like the Democrats and the Republicans: the one isn't very good but at least it's better than the other. Not saying that it's a fair description, but still.

It is interesting to see an American being on the other side of the fence. What you are experiencing in New Zeeland is probably what every foreigner going to America or speaking to Americans is experiencing. What are the odds that Fox News is covering the appointment of a new Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs? Pretty high*. Then again, why should they be covering it?

For a news medium to cover news from another country it has to be either extraordinary or relevant even for us and our country. Global news value, if you will.

*Even if the fact that Jan Eliasson is also the General Assembly President of UN might bring the odds down slightly.

Well... He he... It depends on how you see it. You put it on yourself, right?

Even if I wouldn't mock or insult you or support those who do I am not surprised that it happens. You would probably be insulted here as well, possibly beaten up if finding yourself in the wrong crowd. "Support our troops" is read as "Support the war" by many and they probably get offended by your t-shirt. This works both ways. People being against the war are being accused of not supporting "the boys", I'm sure. At the same time you get accused for supporting the killings of thousands of civilians.

Slogans like that can be very efficient in one situation but since it's nothing but a simplistic phrase it will get you in trouble just as often...

Hair-brained?? I'm brain-haired, thank you very much!!

Way to go, right back at ya!!

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Let's see if I got this right... Allah is... great??

very good points in your post, ja, det er sant, venen min! :

and that with the T-shirt is especially flagrant, i guess it is even more dangerous than my own collection of T-shirts i wear on purpose depending on the country i live in or am visiting: "Free Vèneto", "Free the Corsican political prisoners", "French go home" (written in Breton), "British go home" (written in Scottish Gaelic - i did get arrested at the airport for that one), "Free Savoie", "France is over" (written in Savoyard) and 5 or 6 "Independence" with different flags (for now, i've got the Asturian, Catalan, Basque versions), or even my "Wash your feminine side clean off" (from Fight Club official website)... no, there are limits of danger i wouldn't cross...

Apart from being completely uninsightful and totally unsubstantive, is this striking anyone else as being vaguely spam-ish?

I have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about.

I can't tell whether or not you're being sarcastic, but if not, I was wondering if "@bush@" signed up only to post their little logo and link, and has no real interest in engaging anyone in discussion.

it did strike me.
bah. spam is everywhere nowadays. not that it's pleasant.

Christ, man! Don't you know me better?? I was being a little bit sarcastic, yes.

100% Grade F Unapproved SPAM

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I support the troops. I support them being alive and with all their limbs and use of their faculties. The best way to support the troops is "don't send them into unnecessary battles." And don't lie to them about why they're being sent to battle. The second way to support them is "Get them the hell out of the unnecessary battle as soon as possible."

I've seen a couple of documentaries recently, one with candid conversations with troops in Iraq, the other with wounded Purple Heart recipients. One sentiment that was in both films was "I hate those people." The Iraqis. Not just the insurgents, but the Iraqi people. This from troops who had been wounded or seen their buddies blown to bits. So in a way, it's understandable. And how many of the Iraqis hate us for similar reasons? Those who've been wounded or seen friends or family members blown to bits? What kind of "relationship" are we building here? One of mutual hate? And if we stay, with continued killing and maiming on both sides, will the hate become any less?

So what is the goal here? To build a democracy of people who hate us and who we hate in return? That doesn't quite seem worth it.

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My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.

that's an exellent point. all this war has acomplished is to further antagonize the muslim world and create yet another breeding ground for terrorists ( you can say what ever you want about Iraq, but that's not what it was under Saddam's regime ).

Really? You sure?..... and even if this were so does that mean it is worse for the everyday citizen now? Certainly my thoughts about the war differ from most, but I can tell you for a fact that overall it is largely improved even in the midst of a war, that my friend shows you how bad it was under the former regime.

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

and how exactly would you know that?? you lived there before the war? how can you even say that? yes, right before the war the economic situation was far from good ( caused by the sanctions imposed by the UN mind you, things would have been better if they hadn't decided to make the Iraqi people suffer for the mistakes their dictator made ), but at least they didn't have to fear being killed or blown up on the way to the store.

and don't give me that " oh, we brought freedom to Iraq, that's all we wanted to do, and isn't the world a better place now that Saddam is gone?" bull....benevolance does not govern world politics.

Every conversation I have with someone who is adamantly opposed to the war tends to go exactly like this one. They say they oppose the invasion, are asked why (in some form), and then proceed to detail a list of complaints do not actually describe an opposition to the war at all. They describe an opposition to the Bush administration's PR strategy.

In fact, I'd say the overwhelming majority of the complaints you've listed (in this post and others) are all contingent on you accurately guessing the mindset and motives of the administration. In other words, there's an awful lot of speculation involved, none of which can be independently verified. This is, in my experience, incredibly common among critics of the war, presumably because there's far less to criticize if you stick to established facts and the actual ramifications of the invasion.

Put another way: it sounds like you're trying to convince me not to vote for him. But of course, that's moot now. Even if Bush was entirely disingenuous about the reasons for invading (which you say as if you had some sort of cold hard evidence to support it), that would not effect the wisdom of the invasion. It was either a sound decision in the interest of America and/or the rest of the world, or it wasn't, and it isn't made one or the other based on how speech writers and press secretaries decide to frame it.


The White House disputes the comment.

The idea that Bush knew they didn't have WMDs just doesn't hold water, for several reasons. First, many politicians on both sides of the aisle in both this administration and the last thought he did (that'd be one hell of a conspiracy). Second, several foreign intelligence agencies thought so, too (the conspiracy grows larger). And third, if they knew it all along, you'd have to believe the administration and all its advisors were inept enough to knowingly hype a threat that they knew wouldn't materialize. Sure doesn't sound like the cold, politically calculating group you've described. And no matter how incompetent you might think they are, they're not stupid enough to play up something that they know doesn't exist. Your average 9th-grader has enough political savvy to avoid that.


1) We were given many reasons to go to war. You can continue to insist that it was all about the thread of WMDs, but the evidence definitively says otherwise. Repeating it doesn't change that.

2) You say the administration used disingenuous reasons to sell the war, but what evidence do you have of this other than conjecture? What special insight into the pysches of administration officials do you have that allows you to conclude this? You can believe it, even if you have nothing more than a gut feeling, but you can't use that feeling as an argument.

3) Even if the administration emphasized one of the justifications more than another, that's hardly cause for condemnation. The concept of public relations was not invented by this President. Had they sold it as the only reason, you'd have a point, but they clearly and demonstrably did not. What are you expecting, exactly? An equal number of words in each speech devoted to the multiple justifications that exist for the invasion?


al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization, but it does not represent all terrorism. War was declared on all terrorist organizations (I'm sure you recall that), and Iraq qualified under any reasonable definition of the word. Iraq harbored one of the bombers of the original WTC bombing in 1993, offered cash to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, and plotted to assassinate a former U.S. President. There are all publicly verifiable and universally accepted facts, and they are all terrorist acts (and some are arguably acts of war in and of themselves).

Moreover, these actions were undertaken by a dictator who, though relatively impotent, postured strength to the point at which some of his own generals (and a good portion of the world) believed he had WMDs.

So how have you concluded that invading Iraq is not "confronting the radicals"? The acts above, and others like them, demonstate that the Iraqi government was being run by "radicals" with a heavily anti-American slant and a history of aggression.


And I'm guessing that when that same invasion supplants a dicator who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people, and invests a great deal of time and money in helping to rebuild that infrastructure, that most real "moderates" would find their alienation tempered.

I'm also guessing that any confrontation of extremists is, by the very nature of the enemy, going to involve damaging infratructure and harming civilians, to the point at which there is no alternative other than inaction.

These things you speak of that alienate moderates -- killing people and the destruction of infrastructure -- are exactly what suicide bombers specialize in. I don't know what you consider to be a "moderate," but the things that you believe are alienating them are the things that the insurgents do intentionally with startling frequency.


Good question. From what Bush has said, we leave when we're confident that the Iraqis can fend for themselves. There is, unfortunately, no way of knowing for sure when this is.

My opinion: Bush has no intention of leaving. Iraq might collapse into full blown civil war and that would be failure. Bush can't even admit a simple mistake, let alone a massive failure like Iraq. He intends to pass the mess along to the next President. He'll be Johnson to that President's Nixon.[/quote]
I don't want to ever vote for someone who shys away from doing something simply because it might take more than 8 years. It's either the right thing to do, or not. The best decision does not always fit into a 4-year window.


I don't expect the insurgency to simply stop; I expect it to lose. And I expect it to become the problem of the Iraqi people at some point. Again, you've got lots of good questions, but -- and this sounds more confrontational than it's meant to -- no answers. And for the decision to have been a mistake, it needs to be demonstrated that there was a better, plausible, alternative.


What could "liberty" and "freedom" mean other than some sort of democracy? Did you think "liberty" was code for "anarchy"? I don't see any meaningful distinction.

Also, there's still the "Iraq's liberation would be the beginning, not the end, of our commitment to its people" quote to contend with. And keep in mind these are just a handful of quotes dug up randomly. They're an example of what you can find with just a cursory overview. I'm quite confident that a more thorough look would yield hundreds more.


And what would you think of someone who aligned with that dictator, supplied him with weapons, did nothing while he used them, and never became outraged?

Basically, you're complaining about the problem, but complaining more when the country responsible for it decides to actually do something meaningful about it. So which is it?

Moreover, the U.S. is not a singular entity. Most of the people involved in invading Iraq were not involved (or not as involved) in aligning with Hussein to begin with. We have different elected officials and even different voters, so who exactly is the hypocrite? Also, isn't the action either wise and unwise, or justified or unjustified, regardless of whether or not it's hypocritical for a specific person? It doesn't become a foolish decision -- or a wise one -- based on who's making it.


Pardon my bluntness, but I don't think you answered the question. What would you have done, if handed the same situation? Would you have left Hussein in power to continue to terrorize? Would you left sanctions in place, effectively starving the Iraqi people? Would you have lifted the sanctions and given Hussein the opportunity to rebuild his weapons program? Asking tough questions isn't a counter-argument, because they exist for all of the options the administration faced. If you say our course of action is wrong, that means you must believe there was a better one. What was it? Criticism like this is hollow if it doesn't come with an alternative.


What wouldn't have happened; the invasion, or the insurgency?


Why is it that Civil War in Iraq is considered a sign of absolute failure? If we all wrack our brains, maybe we can come up with a country that devolved into a bloody, crippling Civil War, but somehow emerged stable and prosperous. Is anyone here a history major?


Ok, great. For the sake of argument, I'll accept this. So what? How does this translate into opposition for the invasion? The topic of discussion, I'd thought, was whether or not the war was justified, not whether or not America was behaving altruistically. Though even if that were the topic, you're not offering much to support your claims about their motives other than wild conjecture.

of all the things you said, i still don't see a valid reason for the intervention into internal matters of another country. the Iraqis are themselves responsible for who governs their country and noone had the right to make that choice for them. what was the immediate threat to american security? really, i don't know. if it's Iraq's supposed sponsorship of terrorists, you think saudi arabia or other muslim countries don't do that ( even if much more covertly )? also, don't you think that Iraq is now a much better breeding ground for terrorists than it was before?

even if you ignore the completely bogus reasons for the invasion, the result was not the increase of american security, it was just the opposite, even more muslims are now convinced america is the devil state and should be brought down by all means possible.

i still don't understand how and why the majority of american citizens think it was justified to invade another country half way across the world.