Americans bring enlightenment and progress to Iraq

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
Invasions are just altogether too foul.

Violence is foul.


I am reminded of a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who said that violence, not war should be contrasted with peace, since millions of his fellows were murdered while the Soviet Union was at peace. Political violence in Iraq didnt start in March 2003. It was going full blast, with all its foulness, through the entire Baathist era. Hopefully the events in Fallujah will bring it to an end. If it turns out, as GePap and others predict, that the coalition will fail, and that Iraq will end up with another brutal dictatorship or with ethnic civil war, then the US will certainly see this as a mistake. But FOR NOW our effort MUST be focused on avoiding that result, and until then we cannot judge if it was a mistake or not.

In any case there are no other states on our list for regime change by force, apart from a more blatant casus belli. Iraq is and always was sui generis.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
If those you resist outgun you - as they inevitably will -

I'd still resist the urge to bomb civilians. Maybe that's just me though.

Like I said earlier, it's the method not the act of fighting the coalition itself that draws my ire.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
If your country is ever invaded DinoDoc, and you have the courage to resist, you will have my respect. If those you resist outgun you - as they inevitably will - and you try to resist as these men are by attempting to go toe to toe with the invader, you will also get my sympathy.

So do you not respect the great majority of Iraqis, who want the Coalition troops to stay longer, and who hate and fear the insurgents?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


The campaign must have been unsuccesful, because I sincerely never heard of anything like thousands of deaths at Jenin.

the only number i could find was a claim of 500, not thousands. Sorry.

"The PLO's WAFA press service took advantage of Israel's refusal to allow the media in to Jenin, declaring that the number of killed Palestinians was 500; they said that bodies were piling up in the streets and spread the word that Israel was refusing to bury them.

Organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International took the PLO at its word and joined the chorus of groups that alleged that Israel had conducted some kind of mass execution - without verifying facts from any objective source. The allegation of "massacre" was reported as FACT by the foreign media.

For two weeks, media outlets throughout the world devoted huge amounts of ink to unverified tales of conspiracies, rapes, executions, mass murders, and mutilations."


Ok, so they only exaggerated the civilian death toll by tenfold. And they only attributed it to mass executions, and other atrocities instead of the consequence of guerillas firing from civilian occupied buildings.


I will assume the same thing is going on wrt to Fallujah, till proven otherwise.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
If your country is ever invaded DinoDoc, and you have the courage to resist, you will have my respect. If those you resist outgun you - as they inevitably will - and you try to resist as these men are by attempting to go toe to toe with the invader, you will also get my sympathy.

I my country is ever ruled by someone like Saddam Hussein, and he organizes groups of thugs like the Fedayeen Saddam, and some outside country invades and overthrows the regime, and tries to restore democracy, and a bunch of SOBs fights that effort, whether in the name of the old regime or in the name of some religious dictatorship, I will do my utmost to oppose said SOB's, and if YOU should choose to "respect" the thugs, I will spit in your face.

[Fake Boris]

You're still evading the point, which was that Americans are doing bad things in Fallujah. Spiffor admitted that the reports might be exaggerated - but in the same time we must acknowledge that the likelyness of truth behind some reports is high. We all know how trigger-happy the Yanks are.

Discussing the scale of the disaster won't change the fact that it's a disaster, as was Jenin, regardless of the death toll or number of razed houses.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
I my country is ever ruled by someone like Saddam Hussein, and he organizes groups of thugs like the Fedayeen Saddam, and some outside country invades and overthrows the regime, and tries to restore democracy, and a bunch of SOBs fights that effort, whether in the name of the old regime or in the name of some religious dictatorship, I will do my utmost to oppose said SOB's, and if YOU should choose to "respect" the thugs, I will spit in your face.

Again you miss the point. If you were born in Iraq, chances are you would't care much about democracy. Religious people born in Texas become Christians, and if the same person was born in Tibet he would just become buddhist.

The issue is one of colonialism and clash of ideologies, not one based on the intrinsic value of the morale of one side and the other.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
We all know how trigger-happy the Yanks are.

Are we suppossed to take you seriously now especially in light of EST's post on the actions of "Trigger happy Yanks" like Sgt Major Leigh ?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


Again you miss the point. If you were born in Iraq, chances are you would't care much about democracy.

Have you actually asked any Iraqis?

All evidence is that they do want democracy, and are impatient with the US for not giving to them soon enough.

[lord of the mark]

from Iraq the Model, an Iraqi blogger

Today I was reading Al-Sabah newspaper and one title caught my attention “a local armed group confronts Al-Sadr militia” I must admit that I felt relieved at first. At last, some Iraqi civilians took it upon themselves to fight the terrorists. But after a minute of thinking, this question came to my mind; is this what we want to see, Iraqi civilians carry arms to fight the thugs?
The armed group in question distributed a leaflet in which they threaten all those outlaws and terrorists who bring instability and disturb the safety of the city, saying that they will be eliminated.
And on the ground, there were some clashes between this group and Al-Sadr militia in which some men from "Mahdi army" were killed and some others wounded. This clarifies some important points which are-as written in the leaflet-“enough is enough, we should stand up for the challenge”.
Let us first try to take a closer look at what these news mean. When local people (definitely Sheát) rise against what was considered to be a powerful, somewhat holly and a 'largely' supported extremist, this proves that all the crap said about a revolution being in the air has no base at all. it means that either the people of Najaf are not fascinated with the idea of revolting against the coalition and are ready to cooperate with them, or that the people of Najaf saw that what Sadr militia was doing is not a true revolt against the Americans, but rather it was terrorizing Iraqis, looting and releasing their brother criminals from prisons to help them gain control over the huge amounts of money that comes to the wholly mosque (we are talking about REAL money here), all with the Iranian clerics acting behind the scene. That's why the people of Najaf couldn't stand their atrocities anymore and decided to face them with all the risk such a decision carries.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
You're still evading the point, which was that Americans are doing bad things in Fallujah. Spiffor admitted that the reports might be exaggerated - but in the same time we must acknowledge that the likelyness of truth behind some reports is high. We all know how trigger-happy the Yanks are.

Discussing the scale of the disaster won't change the fact that it's a disaster, as was Jenin, regardless of the death toll or number of razed houses.

Americans are doing good things in Fallujah. They are fighting against the people who would destroy the new Iraq, which I beleive the majority of Iraqis want. In the course of this civilians are being killed which is a tragedy. But its a result of the good things the Americans are doing.

[lord of the mark]

the New York Times

"Some Marine commanders grumble that the stop-and-start negotiations are giving insurgents more time to restock and refortify their defenses, putting marines' lives at risk and postponing what they say is an inevitable American attack."

[GhengisFarb™]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Those are refugees

(ARAB)

.... answering a French journalist.

(PROPOGANDA)


There's the "Arab propaganda" right there.

[GePap]

LoTM: so I assume you believe posting the opinion of one Iraqi proves your point?

Why not post the invariable other side, and compare?

Or is that too bothersome to do?

[East Street Trader]

Originally posted by lord of the mark



So do you not respect the great majority of Iraqis, who want the Coalition troops to stay longer, and who hate and fear the insurgents?

I do not know why you say that, LotM. I have had the great good fortune never to be visited by war and I have sympathy for every Iraqi on that score - they have hardly been free of it for two decades.

Your belief that any Iraqi hates and fears the insurgents is based on imagination or wishful thinking, none of them have said as much.

They hate and fear the turmoil in their country which is a different thing.

I would agree, however, with the proposition that if the US/UK just pull out there will be a power vaccuum and that will lead to a protracted period of disorder while a power struggle takes place.

If the open resistance spreads to all the other cities then that may start seeming like the lesser evil. But for now I would regard it as leaving the Iraqis of whom you speak in the lurch so I would not support it. And I agree that there is some small measure of comfort from knowing that attempts simply to keep the peace - if the occupying forces can somehow limit their actions to that object - are valued by Iraqis.

The proposition that removing Saddam Hussein for the benefit of the Iraqi people would be a good idea was never advanced before all this started. Raising it now is, I am afraid, just a lame excuse. It is a collateral benefit that happens to have flowed from events. As the main benefit which was sought has turned out to be no benefit at all it is the only good thing which has inured.

The cost is busy demonstrating that the opinion previously universally held that, by itself, it is not something which should be done is absolutely correct.