The Iraq Invasion. Leaving aside the WMD issue, was it really worth it?

[Space_Ed]

nul comment lol

 

[danielk]

Well that soldier is an invader and the locals are going to want to shoot him and who gets caught in the crossfire eh?

I could use the same line of argument to show that your mother was wrong to give birth to you. After all, you risk all sorts of harm simply by being alive.

Yes, that was an unreasonable exaggeration. But if you want to argue the point that the US administration should have shown more consideration of the consequences of their actions, I think you should come up with something more reasoned than "who gets caught in the crossfire eh?".

 

[Darth Rotor]

We went in because Iraq violated 14 UN resolutions and the UN would do nothing.

We are part of the UNSC, as you well know. The original cease fire as a ninety day order, yet Bush 41 did not "let slip the dogs of war" when that deadline was not met. To blame to UN is to blame, in part, the US, whose role there is not nugatory.

They had violated our ceasefire with them from the Gulf War.

Yep.

We got rid of Hussein and a murderous regime.

Yep.

We gave a country a chance at freedom.

Yep. TO claim we set the conditions for an orderly transition to that state is not true, and I'll also point out that freedom and anarchy are cousins. My own observation is that there was plenty of anarchy in progress in 2004.

There is no price to high for freedom.

Too high? There's a bit of rhetoric.

Here's a thought: How can you be free if you are dead?

In one way, you are free from mundane and earthly concerns, depending upon your methaphysical framework, but in another way, worm food being free is a pointless benefit.

Under Hussein they were too. Better to die for a reason than none at all.

OK, what are you willing to die for?

What are you willing to kill for?

Those two questions are related.

Also, who gets to choose when you die for what you think is worthy of that price?

And you think freedom would have come there or in any dictatorship without bloodshed?

Nope. To break the cycle of the petty despot, blood was going to flow. See also Yugoslavia.

With Saddam, probably true. Now with a chance at freedom, maybe a chance at dignity too.

The sentiment in Iraq about dignity doubtless opens the door in some neighborhoods, read Shia and Kurd, but gets the dogs set upon you in others, read other Shia and Sunni.

The Chaldeans, on the other hand, are simply swept out the door, with last night's rubbish.

What breaking the country did was open up the chance for a civil war, which came. It didn't have to, though not having some form of civil unrest there post Saddam was unlikely.

"Doing it on the cheap" was one of the contributing factors to that outcome, and for that Bush and his team are squarely responsible. If you are going to do something, go big or go home.

(A paraphrasing of the old Powell Doctrine.)

DR

 

[Pardalis]

Space, do you understand you risk suspension if you keep posting those links?

 

[Space_Ed]

I could use the same line of argument to show that your mother was wrong to give birth to you. After all, you risk all sorts of harm simply by being alive.

Yes, that was an unreasonable exaggeration. But if you want to argue the point that the US administration should have shown more consideration of the consequences of their actions, I think you should come up with something more reasoned than "who gets caught in the crossfire eh?".

Im sure i could find you photos of children getting caught in the crossfire but I think we have seen enough already. What I was trying to do was add more scope to the discussion but without trying to make a massive and arguably incorrect statement. I attempted, through using those images, to see a peaceful Iraq and an Iraq torn apart by war. I think when answering a question such as 'is it worth it?' you should try to be open to all aspects of the situation and in order to comment fairly on a topic you shouldn't delude youself into thinking you understand when actually you have no idea what you are talking about. The purpose of the photos was to try to enlighten myself and any others looking at them about the reality of the situation in Iraq- not what you read in the papers.

 

[Space_Ed]

Space, do you understand you risk suspension if you keep posting those links?

I posted those links specifically for you Pardalis. I think you just like being difficult. Off they go lol.

 

[Praktik]

No, you are equating freedom to being allowed to murder, which is a completely irrational argument.

And very troublesome.

Ya he kind of took it a bit far there.

but the prohibition of drugs is a valid point to raise when questioning the degree of freedom in a society that says: "we have a right to control your mind" - which is essentially what drug prohibition is - the state telling you how you should think.

And pot is perhaps the best example of an infringement of liberty in America.

So ignore the rest of his post and stick with the pot..

 

[Darth Rotor]

I posted those links specifically for you Pardalis. I think you just like being difficult. Off they go lol.

Your pictures, while tasteless, seem to undermine your assertion.

US soldiers don't have beards. Uniform regs don't permit beards. (The only exception I know of is covert ops Special Forces sorts.)

I saw beards on two of the perps in your pics.

DR

 

[Praktik]

You must've been watching a different war. The shock and awe campaign destroyed the Iraqi military and sent Saddam and his gang scurrying and gave us a victory in a matter of days.

And saved "american lives" at the expense of those who lost their lives when their apartment blocks were targetted or if they were unlucky enough to live next to something the Air War coordinators deemed a "military target".

What about the civilian casualties of "shock and awe"? Are American lives worth more than Iraqi lives?

 

[Praktik]

US soldiers don't have beards. Uniform regs don't permit beards. (The only exception I know of is covert ops Special Forces sorts.)

I saw beards on two of the perps in your pics.

DR

Contractors have beards. But debating the specifics of those photos are beside the point.

Space Ed was simply trying to give us a visual reminder of life under chaos and occupation for the average Iraqi. Do you think they really care all that much if the American pointing the gun in their face is a public or a private soldier?

 

[headscratcher4]

Ok...I probably shouldn't re-negage...as I am sure I will blow it...but here goes.

New Ager wrote


What is victory?

The opportunity for freedom and liberty for the Iraqi people.

My reply: possibly -- that would indeed be a victory of sorts. Indeed, it still may be possible...in spite of years of mismanagement and hundreds of years of history that suggest the possibility is slim.

However, that wasn't the reason we invaded. We didn't invade because we disliked Saddam (history proves we could and have very easilly lived with Saddam -- regardless of how murderous -- when he served our purposes such as in the Iraq Iran war). We invaded, so we were told, because Saddam had weapons of mass distruction in violation of the UN (not true) and would likely use those weapons agains us and our allies (or support AlQeda). Victory as defined at the time -- or at least as described by this administration -- was to go in, find the weapons, destroy the regime that made the weapons. The Iraqi people, happy to be rid of the regime, would welcome us with open arms, quickly embrace a secular, democratic ideal, put their governance int he hands of West-leaning democrats (Chalbi? Ha!), secure oil for the west and use the money to rebuild itself as a western style state in the heart of a anti-western middleeast. Oh well, on to plan B:The opportunity for freedom and liberty for the Iraqi people.

Now, certainly, what victory is changes as a conflict changes. But, I don't think that Americans were buying into invading Iraq to provide the Iraqi people the chance of liberty...I could be wrong, but I just don't think Americans cared enough about Saddam regardless of what a murderous bastard he was...we know there are murderous bastards all over the world...some of whom our good allies. So, my point about victory wasn't about victory for the Iraqi people, it was what is victory for Americans and for the American military.

For the American military and I argue the American people, it would be to finish the job and leave. Bravo the surge, its helped calm things down by putting more troops in (something the Administration has opposed for years), but everyone thinks today that if we reduce troops now, the violence will come back. And, oh yes, there's very little been accomplished to make the civil situtaion such that leaving or reducing troops is possible. In fact, the opposit is true: it looks like we will have to continue to add resources, personnel and money to the situation for a long time to come...and be there for a long time to come, to even come close to meeting our own goals...little less providing the Iraqi people with the opportunity for "Freedom" (all Iraqis, btw, or just the ones we like? What if free Iraqi's ask us to leave and by a majority install an Islamic state? Oh well, "freedom" is such an over-used and under-understood idea).


Quote:

I wrote: They want the fact that violence is down to consitute some sort I wof victory...

NewAger wrote: Liberals used the violence as to why were losing. Why can't we use the decrease as victory? I guess when we win that's bad news to liberals.

I disagree, liberals, moderates and conservatives have used the violence to point to the fact that for years whatever the strategy was (stay the course, I believe) wasn't working. Americans were dying by the thousands, Iraqis by the hundreds if not millions, the country was a mess, millions were fleeing the country and AlQeda -- WHICH HAD NOT BEEN IN IRAQ BEFORE THE WAR -- was suddenly a factor in Iraq (better there than here the president told us...but it begs the question why better there than where AlQeda was -- Pakistan and Afghanastan -- oh, yeah, Packistan is an ally and has the bomb. Oh well, start a war somewhere else and mayby AlQeda will come to us, I guess).

Anyway, what the violence showed is that the U.S. Political leadership...i.e. Bush//Cheeny/Rumsfeld...had very little grip not only on the battle they got us into, but how to bring it to some kind of successful conclusion.

Arguing that "when we win will be bad news for liberals" is facil. It begs the question of what is a win, how we get there, how much it will cost...have we won if we end up with trillions of dollars in debt that will haunt our economy for years to come while producing, at best, a moderately less unstable Iraq as likely to be dominiated by Iran (because it is bigger, next door, shares a religious bent with the majority of Iraqis and has a natural and understandable and historical interst in what happens in Iraq?). Is that what we are fighting for? Is that the "win" you speak of.

BTW, whow me one "liberal" who isn't happy that the violence is down and that U.S. troops are being more effective. Indeed, no one I know of ever doubted the ability to bring the violence down given more troops, time, good leadership (something missing for the first five years of the conflict). But now what? Bringing the violence down was aslways only a starting poing...create the space the Iraqis need for reconcillation...something that even the military is very concerned isn't occuring or certainly not occuring fast enough.

Thank god the violence is down. Now what. We can't stay as we are, we can't draw down. We can't seem to get the parties to talk. We, apparently, are winning in your terms by being prisoners of the Iraqis. Good job Bushie.


I wrote: Quote:

but it doesn't allow us to leave, nor does it seem to have motivated a real, sustainabile political solution among the various Iraqi parties.

New Ager wrote: Arguing a point no one has made.

Seemed ok to me. The question was whether it was worth it. At best it is hard to tell when see what the end is. More to the point, we have no clear statement of what the end is, so it is difficult to get there. However, if the object was to give the Iraqi's the opportuity for freedom, they aren't making very good use of it IMO. That, also IMO, is their perogative, I just don't want Americans to continue dying for their intrancience.


I wrote Quote:

Worse still...we've sold our soul (as it were), we've found a way to justify torture and redefine it down. We've lost the trust of much of the world. We've allowed our government to make horrible choices in our name with little accountability and oversight. We've become sanguine about the distruction of a country we know little about and we've become facile in our approach to complex global problems.

New Ager: The usual liberal playbook nonsense.



Possibly the usual liberal playbook. Hardly nonscence. We invaded a country on false grounds -- whether deliberate or not is perhaps debateable. In the past we had pretty good reasons for going to war...like we were attacked. We sacrificed that here.


I wrote Quote:

We've bled a lot of our national treasure. Our children will be paying for this for a long time. Considering what can happen in Pakistan and what is happening in Afghanastan (you remember Afghanastan, the country THAT WAS GIVING SHELTER TO THE PEOPLE WHO ATTACKED US ON 9/!!?), we've put our resources to the wrong cause.

New Age wrote: getting rid of a dictatorship and giving a country a chance of freedom is such a waste of our time.

Maybe we could spend our time doing something worthwhile like getting rid of global warming.

Getting rid of an evil dictor may not be a waste of time -- though our consistency as a nation in getting rid of evil dictators leaves something to be desired. That aside, however, there is a bigger problem. That wasn't why we went to war. It may have been premised as one result of our going to war, but we went to war to stop Saddam from producing WMDs and because he violated the UN's sanctions and dictates. That is at least what we told the UN, that is what Bush told the American people. So, after the fact you cook up the idea that we're doing it to end a evil dictatorship (and suggest it is the real reason all along), not sure that is the best way to proceed.

Why? Because to successfully conduct a war over either the short or long period, you need the support of the American people. I may be wrong (usually am) but from what I can see is that the vast majority of Americans do not believe the President anymore, especially when it comes to this war...and much of that is due to the sense that a switcharoo has been played on him...His got WMDs, oh wait, we'll liberate the Iraqi people.

There was no national outcry to liberate the Iraqi people. There was national support to protect the US and its allies from the use of WMDs. Let's face it, had it been premised, let's invade Iraq to end an evil dcitator and give the Iraqi people an opportunity for freedom....most Americans (outside of the nutbag Neocons) would have said "nice idea" let someone else do it.


I wrote Quote:

..but between the failure of vision, scope, cost in personell and materials and money...it has been a huge waste and one that can and is crippling the capacity of this country to adequately defend itslef againg real, identifiable enemies and challenges.


New Ager replied:That's actually a good description of liberalism.

Cute. Facile. I guess that makes George Bush the ultimate liberal.

 

[Praktik]

New Ager replied:That's actually a good description of liberalism.

Cute. Facile. I guess that makes George Bush the ultimate liberal.

Well - there's not all that much difference between Woodrow Wilson's (an Ultimate Liberal if there ever was one) Messianic Democratic Idealism and Bush's Messianic Democratic Idealism...

The Neoconservatives grew from the fertile ground of hard-core liberalism - and just substituted the word "unilateral" for "multilateral".

 

[danielk]

Space Ed was simply trying to give us a visual reminder of life under chaos and occupation for the average Iraqi. Do you think they really care all that much if the American pointing the gun in their face is a public or a private soldier?

But the rifle isn't pointing at the face! Look again.

 

[Darth Rotor]

But the rifle isn't pointing at the face! Look again.

But the soldier's gun is.

"This is my rifle
This is my gun
The first is for fighting
The other for fun"

DR

 

[danielk]

Heh.

 

[Praktik]

But the rifle isn't pointing at the face! Look again.

You can't see the smile on someone's face when they're typing, unless they put in a smilie - but Im not sure if you were joking (missing my point on purpose about how the pictures "miss the point") or not...

In any event, I didn't even click the picture - because the pictures are really irrelevant if you already have a grasp of the nightmare Iraqis have been living for over 5 years - which was what the poster was trying to get at.

And arguing whether the soldier has a beard, or where his gun is pointing does not change the fact that Iraqis have died by the score at the barrels of American guns and due to American shrapnel - to say nothing of those that died by the score in a civil war, or due to deprivation and starvation.

I truly believe that all human life is created equal - and if we just look at the numbers, whether Iraqi dead due to the conflict is 100 000 or 700 000 - it just wasn't worth it.

Now, if paradise were to come to Iraq and Eden recreated on the banks of the Tigris for future generations of Iraqis, maybe that would change the calculation. Maybe a few hundred thousand would be worth that. But only the most naive Democratic Idealists believed that, and most of them stopped believing that once reality stopped meeting their impractical dreams a few short months into the war.

 

[Upchurch]

All I know is that it would be wise for the next US president to follow Colin Powell's advice: If you break it, you own it.

It's a shame he didn't finish the advice with: ...and the US should not be in the business of owning Middle East countries.

He probably assumed he didn't need to say it. Another mistake.

 

[Darth Rotor]

I truly believe that all human life is created equal - and if we just look at the numbers, whether Iraqi dead due to the conflict is 100 000 or 700 000 - it just wasn't worth it.

All human life being created equal and your butcher's bill are a bit of a non sequitur. Perhaps just the odd juxtaposition.

Equal on what basis? (Yes, that is a can of worms, no need to go there. )

I will refer back to my first response. Do you then judge the half a million Americans who died in 1861-1865, which helped end Slavery(as an institution in the US) as "weren't worth it?"

Is that where you are going with this?

They did not summon in Paradise, not hardly, but what did happen was that a change in a positive direction was made. Those deaths also enabled the passage of the 14th Amendment, not a trivial step forward if your aim is a more egalitarian society. Note I did not say "perfectly egalitarian" but "more egalitarian."

Were the tens of thousands who died in the Napoleonic Wars "not worth it?" That 15 year period shook the ancien regime to the core, throughout Europe, and laid the groundwork for profound change in the next two generations, to include the Third Republic, etc. Spreading the Revolution, or elements of it, was one of Napoleon's more lasting impacts on Europe, and for that matter, the world.

Not worth it, eh?

This "price tag thinking" has some severe shortcomings.

DR

 

[Praktik]

All human life being created equal and your butcher's bill are a bit of a non sequitur. Perhaps just the odd juxtaposition.

Equal on what basis? (Yes, that is a can of worms, no need to go there. )

I will refer back to my first response. Do you then judge the half a million Americans who died in 1861-1865, which helped end Slavery(as an institution in the US) as "weren't worth it?"

Is that where you are going with this?

They did not summon in Paradise, not hardly, but what did happen was that a change in a positive direction was made. Those deaths also enabled the passage of the 14th Amendment, not a trivial step forward if your aim is a more egalitarian society. Note I did not say "perfectly egalitarian" but "more egalitarian."

Were the tens of thousands who died in the Napoleonic Wars "not worth it?" That 15 year period shook the ancien regime to the core, throughout Europe, and laid the groundwork for profound change in the next two generations, to include the Third Republic, etc. Spreading the Revolution, or elements of it, was one of Napoleon's more lasting impacts on Europe, and for that matter, the world.

Not worth it, eh?

This "price tag thinking" has some severe shortcomings.

DR

Well I just don't see a historical equivalency between the ending of slavery in america, the Napoleonic wars, and the American Project in Iraq - so your comparisons aren't really helping me "see the light" here.

I still stand by my statement that the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, and that the regional instability caused by the invasion (which threatens many more deaths to come) aren't worth the meagre gains we think *may* occur in Iraq, if things were to get better.

A better question to ask - was there a cleaner way to get past Saddam without killing hundreds of thousands of people? Would a few more years of Saddam been worthwhile if hundreds more thousands and their progeny would be alive to see a similar "redemption" post-Saddam (after say, a domestic revolution)?

 

[Darth Rotor]

Well I just don't see a historical equivalency between the ending of slavery in america, the Napoleonic wars, and the American Project in Iraq - so your comparisons aren't really helping me "see the light" here.

Not playing an equivalency game, pointing out that butcher's bills attend a lot of political change. Equivalency not required. In a similar vein, it took a few dozen necklacings for people to realize that Aristide was hardly the people's savior. Should the UN have tossed out Cedras?

I still stand by my statement that the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, and that the regional instability caused by the invasion (which threatens many more deaths to come) aren't worth the meagre gains we think *may* occur in Iraq, if things were to get better.

I understand. Water under the bridge, or perhaps blood under the butcher's knife.

A better question to ask - was there a cleaner way to get past Saddam without killing hundreds of thousands of people?

Would a few more years of Saddam been worthwhile if hundreds more thousands and their progeny would be alive to see a similar "redemption" post-Saddam (after say, a domestic revolution)?

That is a good question, and one that runs into the failings of the UN as a collective security organization. For a point of reference, see Castro in Cuba and Mugabe in Zimbabwe, for how often despots step down from their positions of power.

A few more years?

Try "a couple more decades of Saddam" if you want to frame the question in a realistic temporal scale. The question of "can he be contained" was "sorta" by the various UN sanctions regimes. Trouble is, the containment was eroding, starting in the mid 1990's, with itching and grumbling among numerous parties who had approved sanctions. Containment is not so much of a solution as an "all we can manage."

Does that meet your "good enough" standard?

DR