No WMD!

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Do you really believe that was ever intended as real justification? Just a little panic-mongering, frenzy-whooping up, etc.

But tell me, Pocket-rocket man, what the **** would you have done about Hussein in Iraq, continued sanctions, Iran and Syria?

It's not like the area was the****ing flower garden or the world and our dogs dug it up and shat in it. It was and still is a major geopolitical nightmare for the west.

So what would you have done instead?

Any choice he made or doing nothing at all would have been way better than this disaster.

[MichaeltheGreat]

There are a lot worse options.

[Ted Striker]

The only two offhand I could think of:

1) Rumsfeld's 50,000 man run to Baghdad plan

2) Nuking Baghdad


These are the "worse" options MTG was speaking of.

[Arrian]

The answer, I think, is to have done nothing w/regard to Iraq, whilst concentrating a LOT of attention on Afganistan and Pakistan.

Saddam was contained. The containment system sucked, sure (sanctions/oil for food), but he was nonetheless not a "clear & present danger" to us. As such, there were more pressing things to deal with.

-Arrian

[DinoDoc]

The containment system was suffering from waning support from the security council before the war. Once Bush had managed to reinstate the will to maintain it, the best option would have been to back away from war.

[Ted Striker]

Adjusting the sanctions would have been a smart thing to do as those were the sticking points for pretty much most of the undesirables associated with the containment.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
The containment system was suffering from waning support from the security council before the war. Once Bush had managed to reinstate the will to maintain it, the best option would have been to back away from war.

Bingo. That same process also confirmed that there was no will in the SC or NATO to join us in the war - other than the Brits, who pretty much always help us out.

Ted,

Reworking the sanctions and/or the oil for food program might have helped a bit, but the fact is there was going to be continuing misery on the part of ordinary Iraqis and that it WAS going to continue to be blamed on us, regardless of whether or not it was true.

-Arrian

[Patroklos]

Lets not pretend sanctions consisted of everyone holding hands dancing around the rainbow. There would be more Iraqis dead right now without the war due to those sanctions.

Sure, none of them were white people so many are okay with that, but considering the alignments of many of the wars detractors, you would think the death of so many brown people would bother them a little bit.

[DinoDoc]

I don't particularly care about Iraq or the welfare of her people beyond the extent they effect the interests of the United States. Why should I care about people dieing from Saddam's mismanagement so long as the threat possed by his regime was contained?

[Patroklos]

I am not saying you have too, and in your case I don't think you do.

But I look at the posts of so many polytubbies in other threads concerning helping people, international poverty, civil liberties, racism, etc. and then all of a sudden when it comes to Iraq they don't mind signing off tens of thousands of Iraqis to death because they don't want to a) get their hands dirty or b) can't be arsed to help.

It is inconsistant. Especially when half the attacks on the war consist of how much suffering they Iraqis have had to suck up since the conflict started. Kind of a hypocritical critisism when they were prepared to let them starve to death or be slaughtered by Saddam in greater numbers not 3 years ago.

[DinoDoc]

Anyway, I don't think that the sanctions were a valid anti-american grievance to begin with.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Arrian

Ted,

Reworking the sanctions and/or the oil for food program might have helped a bit, but the fact is there was going to be continuing misery on the part of ordinary Iraqis and that it WAS going to continue to be blamed on us, regardless of whether or not it was true.

I don't disagree and have argued this point several times and have never varied from it as long as I have been on this board. (since 1998)


Regardless of the outcome of those sanctions, engaging in a less hardass approach would have been seen as at the very least an effort to help the Iraqi people and could have been coordinated with relief efforts instead of the, "Saddam sucks he's a bad guy!" approach.

But nice try Dinodoc, though you totally missed the point you've once again shown your cold heartedness. Or at least the attempt to front the appearance of one. Ohhh, tough guy.

As far as you go Patroklos, you're "getting dirty" thing is a joke when you're not the one getting dirty and the average Iraqi person's life has gotten worse since we "got dirty," so really what has been accomplished? NOTHING.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Anyway, I don't think that the sanctions were a valid anti-american grievance to begin with.

Agreed. The sanctions regime was not all our doing, nor was the suffering of Iraqis primarily our fault - that's on Saddam.

That doesn't mean, however, that the sanctions regime wasn't a PR problem for us. It needed to be addressed somehow. Blowing it up (literally!) wasn't the best option, IMO.

-Arrian

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Anyway, I don't think that the sanctions were a valid anti-american grievance to begin with.

I always used to mentioned Kurdistan as being a place where life was getting better (cept when the Turks rolled in whenever they felt like it) because of the protection of the no fly zones sanctuary.

You're not really posting anything the rest of us haven't pointed out countless times already.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
But nice try Dinodoc, though you totally missed the point you've once again shown your cold heartedness.

Point of what? Or are you going to be the one that explains why I should have cared about the welfare of Iraqis before the war when the threat possed by Saddam was contained?