Posted on 01/07/2014 6:14:28 AM PST by shortstop
“When she left she was all idealistic about saving the women of Afghanistan. Now she says, “I was an idiot”.”
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history could have told her that. Just read the accounts of what happen to any British soldier in the 19th century that was unlucky enough to fall into the hand of an Afghan woman. And yes most people are idiots, but it sounds like she may be learning ... some.
That may be so...but I would ask; Would you, as a sitting President, regardless of family ties, permit a country’s government to attempt an assassination on a US citizen, let alone, a former US President?
The WMD issue...hmm, I seem to recall a few thousand Kurds being wiped out by the Hussein regime using WMD. So they did exist and had been used. There was evidence at the time that the WMD had simply been sent to Syria, with Russian assistance.
How much WMD is too much? One shell, one drum, one truckload, one trainload? Remember, MASS Destruction...it doesn’t take much of the chemical in a single artillery shell to unleash mass casualties. So were we to look for thousands upon thousands of drums, or a few dozen?
I forget, how many UN resolutions did Saddam fail to comply with as a result of having his A$$ kicked in GW1?
Oil for food scandal?
The persistent violations of the agreed upon No Fly Zones?
There were many reasons for Saddam to have been overthrown. Should we have done it? I’m still cogitating on that, but in retrospect, we did ourselves no favors.
And I do agree with the author’s position that we turned Iraq into a meat grinder for the terrorists...instead of on US soil.
You are wrong when you claim that Bush started the terror war, the terrorists did.
This is another time. If you judge the war a failure on the basis of long-term consequences, then consider this: if Germany had won WWII, we'd have seen the fall of the Soviet Union, a non-communist China, Germany dominating a Europe under a united government...sort of like now, right? But believe me, Germany did not win WWII unless you change the criteria of "win" and open your period of consideration up beyond the time of hostilities.
What we did accomplish in Iraq was to prove that militant Islam can be beaten in the field, that an army from a "soft" Western government can apply a 25:1 kill ratio to the jihadis, and that there is nothing inevitable about the victory of Islam. Was this worth 4500 lives? I'd offer Chou En Lai's answer when asked about the French Revolution: "It's too early to tell."
Strategically, though, there is a considerable change for which the Iraqi wars may have bought us time. The threat of a Saddam Hussein (or Iran, or whoever) taking over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia is no longer an existential threat against the world economy. When Saddam took Kuwait and turned his eyes south, it was. That's why we had the troops there. And why we're unlikely to have to do that again. And why the Saudis are suddenly interested in nuclear weapons, because the days of "blue-eyed slaves" are over.
“That may be so...but I would ask; Would you, as a sitting President, regardless of family ties, permit a country’s government to attempt an assassination on a US citizen, let alone, a former US President?”
You’re kidding right? This is normal stuff, there are always this kind of stuff going on and we do it our selves. So was it worth it? And who really cares what kind of weapons Saddam has, we didn’t lift a finger when 500,000 in Rwanda were slaughtered did we? You’re problem is that you think that the US should be the worlds policeman (only selectively on those that really deserve it). Are you willing to spend peoples lives for that and trillions of dollars that we don’t have? And for what so that we can leave and watch it all go to hell any way? And in fact is worse now than when Saddam was in power.
“You are wrong when you claim that Bush started the terror war, the terrorists did.”
No you are wrong, a bunch of terrorists (funded by and supported by the Saudi’s which are still our “friends” and that we almost went to war with Syria for and may still in the future) killed a few thousand people in an attack. We then went to war with ... who? Did we go after the Saudi’s? Did we go after the master mind (Osama) in Afghanistan (well eventually but it took then a while to get around to it)? No we declared war on “terror” and then set about building a case for attacking Iraq while building up the police state at home (Dept of Homeland Security any one?). Get your facts straight it didn’t happen all that long ago.
Rwandans aren’t US citizens...so the rest of your post or point is moot.
One thing about the nut cases, they will post a stupid remark as bait, and when we correct it, then they set off on their rants that they really wanted to get into.
Go start your own thread and don’t hijack this one.
“Saddam had nothing to do with 911”
Sadaam had nothing to do with ordering 911, and a great deal to do with it happening.
As for Iraq not having WMDS, your comments are not simply wrong, but dumbassery writ large (and I do not use such terms lightly). Iraq had them; iraq declared them (and was repeatedly found to have done so incompletely); we - and representatives from a multitude of other countries - inventoried them, sampled them, and destroyed a *portion* of them. The only question and realistic debate is over what happened to the portion that was not yet destroyed when Hussein kicked inspectors and destruction personnel out of the country.
As for it being just “Bush’s panties in a wad” over a hit being put out on his dad, that is another layer of dumbassery. It became the official policy of the U.S. to remove Hussein from power all the way back in 1998.
We were being hit every year in a major way by Al Queda, who included in their inspiration that despite Husseins clear violation of pretty much every part of his 1990 cease-fire agreement, that we lacked the will to deal with him...and likewise even if we did respond to Al Quedas attacks we wouldn’t have the will to see it through.
Reasonable people may differ on how to deal with the issues, especially with hindsight...but to deny the Iraq possession of WMDs, or your retroactive “panties in a wad” explanation are totally ignorant.
“Rwandans aren’t US citizens...so the rest of your post or point is moot.”
And so please pray tell, what did Saddam do to the US that any of it should be a concern to us that we needed to invade them? Otherwise your post was pretty much pointless as well.
“Was this worth 4500 lives?”
On the other hand, 4500 lives doing what, and compared to what? Every individual death is a tragedy, including the thousands dead from the Pentagon and WTC attacks, the embassy bombings with hundreds dead and thousands maimed, the USS Cole, the deaths of those manning the borders, and those who die from living in towns where teenagers drive.
Re-electing Dinkins for another term as NYC mayor would have cost more lives. At its worst, the mortality rate of soldiers in Iraq was like being 38 in NJ. In absolute terms, the number is small. The question is, what was the trade off?
I think, at least until we abandoned the gains, it was worth it. Probably the strongest argument here that it wasn’t worth it was that we should have known we’d elect “progressives”, and thus shouldn’t have bothered...but if that’s the case, we’re done. Reagan was just wasting his breath, because he should have known there’d be a Clinton, an Obama, and he should be condemned for fighting the fight. I’m not there yet.
“Sadaam had nothing to do with ordering 911, and a great deal to do with it happening.”
http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911-coverup/
Funny I never thought Saddam was in Saudi Arabia and oh ya:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html
So should the US be open for attack because we are one of the major holders of weapons of mass destruction? Look at any nation and I can guarantee that they have a few chemical/biological/and in a few cases nuclear weapons. Why have we not gone after N. Korea then? And who set “official U.S. policy” for getting rid of Saddam. The layer of dumbassery in your circular reasoning is simply amazing and lacks any basis of fact for why we went after him and his country. Even on of the American UN inspectors said he didn’t have any left and that all we were doing was harassing him in those final few years before the war.
“One thing about the nut cases, they will post a stupid remark as bait, and when we correct it, then they set off on their rants that they really wanted to get into.
Go start your own thread and don’t hijack this one.”
You know it’s amazing that people like you just don’t want to be bothered with the facts and would prefer to live in your own little echo chamber but it just is not going to happen. It may make you feel better to think that the US is some force for goodness in the world and that everything that we do is beyond question but the facts don’t back that up. If you don’t like it then go somewhere else otherwise try and deal with the fact that there are other points of view (backed up by facts) on what’s been going on in this “war on terror” and what an abject failure it has been.
Yes, I will judge them on their faith for a multitude of legitimate reasons.
The left doesn’t want us to succeed in stopping Islam and terror, it is an ally in their larger plans for the West and the U.S.
http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911-coverup/
Interesting article...that has a few interesting tidbits, but is mostly about implications of information that the author doesn’t have access to. Also irrelevant to my comments on Iraq, as it implies broader, not narrower, issues.
“So should the US be open for attack because we are one of the major holders of weapons of mass destruction?”
Moving the bars a bit? Completely different argument as to whether they had them, and had shown the will to use them.
“Look at any nation and I can guarantee that they have a few chemical/biological/and in a few cases nuclear weapons. Why have we not gone after N. Korea then?”
You may notice that we are still engaged with N.Korea. ..and it is an entirely different nut. That said, Iraq lost a war, and as part of its ceasefire agreement, was required to declare amounts and locations of all of certain categories of materials ( for some we found new post-GWI production), and present them for destruction. Every few months he was documentably shown to have violated these terms by hiding various very large amounts of his weapons and weapons programs.
“And who set “official U.S. policy” for getting rid of Saddam.”
Congress, signed by the PRE-GWBUSH President. Really, you need too much basic history for this conversation.
“Even on of the American UN inspectors said he didn’t have any left and that all we were doing was harassing him in those final few years before the war.”
The singular one who made an about-face at the time that it came out that Iraq had pictures of an inspector caught in pedophilia, and was blackmailing him? And who never would reconcile completely contradictory statements, or when directly asked denounce or retract his previous statements that Iraq was continuing to hide WMDs, or even offer an explanation for the quantitative discrepancy between what he’d previously documented was there - along with multinational groups of witnesses - and what had been destroyed?
Let’s face it the only reason Bush Sr. stopped during the first gulf war was because he thought his CIA guys could do what they did in Chile and overthrow Saddam in a few weeks or months. All the rest was just window dressing and an excuse to keep up the pressure. There were more UN inspectors than Ritter that were saying the same thing and the fact that once we did go in and none were found kind of proves him right no matter what he may have done afterwards.
WMD’s are just an easy excuse that we use to invade or attack another country but not the only one. We wanted Iraq because Bush Jr wanted to get him, it’s that simple, just a grudge match between the two.
And at the end of it what has happened? Well some have claimed that we use Iraq as a magnet to draw in all the jihadi’s and “grind them up” making Amerika safe. To which I reply, BS! None of those guys had any way of actually getting to the US in the first place and still don’t, they were local yokels that were too stupid to realize they were being used by the power players in the region. That theory was floated after it was realized just how much we screwed up as a way of justifying our continued involvement. It was in no way even a thought when we went in there.
Bottom line we killed a lot of people, they killed a few of ours and maimed even more and we are now leaving Iraq in even worse shape than it was under Saddam. It is more unstable has more jihadi terrorists and is more radicalized than ever. So how is that making the US a safe place? Especially when you consider that every country we invade we ultimately end up importing tons of “refugees” from those countries and already we are having issues now with home grown terrorist of Somali. If that’s not the definition of a waste I seriously don’t know what is. We achieved nothing over there and look weak leaving like we are, have built up a huge amount of hatred from the families of those that we killed and will eventually pay the piper for that.
You can put lipstick on a pig all you want but it won’t make the pig any more attractive.
There is moderate Islam. But it is basically apostate Islam if you read the book. Moderate Islam is practiced in some Asian countries such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Brunei. The U.A.E. and Bahrain also practice reasonably tolerant versions. As did Lebanon before their civil war and Jordan before the native Hashemite population was overwhelmed by Palestinians.
Please consider re-reading my original post to you...consider the numerous UN resolutions that the USA had a part in as a standing member of the UN Security Council...I have no love for the UN or our involvement in it either, but it can be used.
Also reconsider the question regarding the Iraqi government planning and attempting to carry out an assassination on a former US President as “payback” for their loss in Desert Storm.
You were attempting to build a strawman argument with the Rwandans...I don’t disagree that the world “community” was negligent in allowing that genocide to occur...but that’s another discussion.
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