"In two and a half years Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq."

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
That's probably the sole reason and I can't come up with anything else.

- Tapping an untapped sea of oil.
- Scaring off any rogue State that feels it can mess with the US
- Getting leverage against Saudi Arabia, by actually having another friendly provider of oil.
- Some kind of belief in Iraq's WMDs
- Some kind of belief in Neocon fantasies of domino effect.
- Trying a new military doctrine on a harmless foe.

All of these are possible rational reasons for the war. Some of them backfired (in particular the "scaring off the rogue states" part), but some still remain.

[Arrian]

Spiffor

That's the optimistic view. The rejoinder is that a fundy government can continue to blame the West for everything, and if it's done skillfully the public might just continue to buy it.

Only time will tell. I also hold out some hope for Lebanon. There's a place that has had some trouble with tribalism (or at the least, factions) in the past. They had an exterior "other" to band together against in Syria, of course...

Maybe "Yankee go home" will be enough for Iraqis.

-Arrian

[Sava]

Originally posted by Spiffor
I don't see how democracy and Muslim States are mutually exclusive.

I don't think they are mutually exclusive. It's just that integrating the two takes a lot of effort. Especially when you are transitioning from a brutal dictatorship like Saddam Hussein... add in the fact that this country has three factions that don't like each other very much, a neighbor to the east that wants an Islamic state (a puppet preferably), you have foreign fighters pouring in because you can't secure the borders after toppling the regime, and there just are not enough troops to do the job!


Also, factor in the lies and misinformation leading up to war (WMD's)... then the constant changing of the reasons of why we went to war... also, the fact that this is increasing hatred of America and also creating more terrorists.

I mean, there are just TONS AND TONS of reasons why not to try and do this... and no good reasons why it should have been done. Iraq was not a threat to America. Saddam was losing power. He was less of a threat than ten years earlier. It would have been less costly and more effective to just tighten the noose and wait him out. I just don't see why it was so urgent to rush to war.



it was just so STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Sava
it was just so STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID

What was the support for the war at its height, in the US? 80% or something?

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Spiffor

- Tapping an untapped sea of oil.
- Scaring off any rogue State that feels it can mess with the US
- Getting leverage against Saudi Arabia, by actually having another friendly provider of oil.
- Some kind of belief in Iraq's WMDs
- Some kind of belief in Neocon fantasies of domino effect.
- Trying a new military doctrine on a harmless foe.

All of these are possible rational reasons for the war. Some of them backfired (in particular the "scaring off the rogue states" part), but some still remain.

You missed my post on the previous page then.

Good list though.

[Patroklos]

It would have been less costly and more effective to just tighten the noose and wait him out.

That is a rational line to take, but if you follow this line you can't go off and say you care about ordinary Iraqis. Basically your stance is you don't mind starving a nation to death to meet a selfish end. Is that not what most here accuse conservatives of in various forms?

[Ted Striker]

It would have worked if the sanctions were adjusted and reformed.

The US sanctions on Vietnam 1975-1994 had devastating effects on the Vietnamese population. This is firsthand information from people who lived there under the sanctions and literally went days without food. The Russians were basically keeping them going for most of that time until they went under themselves.

Now the US is Vietnam's biggest trading partner and they are aligning themselves with us and not China.

Though that may change since we have a genius running our country.

[Patroklos]

So in other words you don't mind if the place is run by a tyrant who murders thousands a year, as long as they are good trading partner and "on our side."

Which again is a rational line of thought, butI wonder it that is consistant with your thougths in other threads? I guess you are in full support of our freindship with Pakistan? I assume you had no problem with Serbia in the 90's?

[Sava]

Originally posted by Patroklos


That is a rational line to take, but if you follow this line you can't go off and say you care about ordinary Iraqis. Basically your stance is you don't mind starving a nation to death to meet a selfish end. Is that not what most here accuse conservatives of in various forms?

Things are worse that what they would have been under Saddam. For both America and the Iraqi's.

And in the long run, it would have been better to get rid of Saddam the alternative way, rather than with Bush's war. Or even IF we go to war... at least go to war AND DO IT RIGHT!! i.e. the right amount of troops, properly equip them, etc... which probably meant waiting and not rushing to war. But instead, we have an incompetent administration who botched the post-war (won the war, "losing the peace").

And the problem is, we can't have a rational discussion about this because the Bush supporter morons always say, "blah blah, oh you are against the war, YOU LIKE SADDAM!!!"

NO! Nobody likes Saddam... I just think there were better ways to deal with him.

Because it's been proven that every argument that the adminstration made for going to war was WRONG! They misled and in some cases, completely lied about things. And if we had any kind of sense of accountability in this country, the people responsible for these mistakes would be thrown out of office, and in some cases THROWN IN JAIL!

What the hell is wrong with our society? Not so long ago, the American people would not have tolerated such skullduggery from our leaders.

I'm disappointed in America.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Patroklos
So in other words you don't mind if the place is run by a tyrant who murders thousands a year, as long as they are good trading partner and "on our side."

http://www.saudinf.com/

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Patroklos

That is a rational line to take, but if you follow this line you can't go off and say you care about ordinary Iraqis. Basically your stance is you don't mind starving a nation to death to meet a selfish end. Is that not what most here accuse conservatives of in various forms?

The war's supporters certainly have no claim to caring for the "ordinary Iraqis," because if those "ordinary Iraqis" lived in some other nation that had no strategic/economic value, there would've been no war.

As for me, I care - a little bit - for Iraqis, but I certainly care about me & mine a lot more. Further, it is unclear to me that we've really improved the lot of the "ordinary Iraqi" thus far. I hold out some hope that the down-the-road result will be a net positive.

-Arrian

[Gatekeeper]

Bush's method of getting rid of Saddam Hussein would have worked better if he and his cronies had genuinely listened to the military and gone in not only with close to 300,000 troops, but a plan for the aftermath as well.

Not only didn't he do that, he has the balls to blame "faulty intelligence" for just about everything that's gone wrong with his would-be utopia. That plus whip up a frenzy about non-existent WMD (and if I were Colin Powell, I'd have publicly disavowed Bush by now ... hell, probably not long after the U.N. debacle Powell was a part of ... but Powell's too much of a statesman to do that).

*sigh* I hope things turn out for the best in Iraq. I hope our men and women over there can make do with what they've got because, Lord knows, our head honchos (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.) haven't really done a lot to help them along.

Gatekeeper

P.S. It still ticks me off to hear reports of soldiers' families having to buy them body armor. My God. Just how unprepared can the government be?! I don't give a damn if the families eventually receive reimbursement for what they spend — the point is, they shouldn't have had to buy body armor in the first place!

[Arrian]

The lack of a decent post-war plan was appalling, yeah. That was one of my main concerns about the war, in fact. Leaving aside the casus belli and all, I had no faith in the US government to get it right.

-Arrian

[Patroklos]

Because it's been proven that every argument that the adminstration made for going to war was WRONG!

Pretty sure they were just wrong about the WMDs, and though you like beating that broken drum, there is not a rational person out there that thinks France, Russia, England, Germany, and the US lied about all of them thinking Iraq had WMDs.

Being wrong does not equal lying.

Things are worse that what they would have been under Saddam. For both America and the Iraqis.

Patently false, only an American who has never been to that side of the world would think that, because it is common knowledge the Iraqis don't think that.

How many Iraqis died in Saddam's last three years in power?

And the problem is, we can't have a rational discussion about this because the Bush supporter morons always say, "blah blah, oh you are against the war, YOU LIKE SADDAM!!!"

Did anyone say that? What happened is that I pointed out to you that your criticisms are inconsistent. If you think we should have strangled Iraq for another ten years do get what we want, fine. If you think the lives of Iraqis are important and care what happens to them, fine.

However, you can't say both without being a raving hypocrite, because nobody can say they have the ordinary Iraqis concerns at heart while supporting sanctions of a level that would make a difference to Saddam. And if you do care about the rank and file, you would not need WMDs to justify Iraq (like me), they just reinforce an already decided case.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Patroklos
So in other words you don't mind if the place is run by a tyrant who murders thousands a year, as long as they are good trading partner and "on our side."

Which again is a rational line of thought, butI wonder it that is consistant with your thougths in other threads? I guess you are in full support of our freindship with Pakistan? I assume you had no problem with Serbia in the 90's?

That's your own rational line of thought, not mine. You're taking several unrelated comments about Vietnam and trying to attribute an opinion I made from them. I'm just giving background not forming an opinion about it.

But that's pretty much the norm for you so I don't even care anymore you got so many strawment built you should be a farmer.

Another good try though.

Maybe you should check out that Saudi link.