Election Disaster Strikes U.S.A. - A, No!

I don't think we should have gone in, personally. To me 1,200 young American lives are not worth an entire nation of democratic Iraqis. But my prediction is that we will be there in large numbers for at least eight to twelve more years and many more of us will die. There is no way W will ever pull out, so that's four more years. Then, even if the new President (due to term limits on W) is a Democrat it will take him four years to withdraw them as Kerry himself said. In eight years the chances are very good that Iraq will have either a stable unified government or will be split up into three nations a la Yugoslavia.

The Shiites hate the Sunnis for what they have done to them and they are 60% of the population, and the Kurds hate them both but have been willing to play along so far. The 2 million Kurds in the north, by the way, love Americans for the most part. They recognize they have no chance without us, and they have a thriving feldgling economy now.

At some point the secular Sunni leadership is going to say "this insurgency has to stop, we are only killing ourselves". The insurgents are outnumbered by their own people but nobody wants to get killed so they stay quiet. Nicaragua was in very dire straits too at one point. The leftist government there was heavily funded by the Soviet Union. The USA was funding the insurgents in that case but also dangling financial carrots in front of the common people and eventually we won out and they got a democracy. The same thing could happen in Iraq and they have a lot more money (oil) than the Nicaraguans will ever have. It sucks for Americans but it's great for them. That's the price we have to pay for being the world's policeman.

 

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When the american and allied solders toll starts to rise about 2,000 I think you'll start to see a lot of unrest in the U.S. I don't think the american people like to see so many american and allied solders getting killed for something they themselves feel isn't worth it, especially fighting for a democracy that ultimately won't appreciate the sacrafice the american people made for their so-called liberation! Bush has completely tornup and litterally destroyed their country and killed many innocent Iraq people (men, women & children). As a result of Bush's war, the Muslim world will hate americans for years & years to come and as long as Ben Laden is still around, Muslims will continue to fight.........That's a 'No-Brainer' and the same can be said for Bush!

Atta Boy

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You make pre-war Iraq sound like the South of France. The Americans did not destroy the Iraqi infrastructure (what little there was), we destroyed their military capability. Most of the civilians were killed because the Iraqi soldiers and insurgents were using them for cover. So much for protecting your own people. SH destroyed it when he raped the oil for food program and built himself 100 personal palaces. Don't you remember finding the $1 billion in cash he stashed away. There is no telling how much that regime had stolen sum total, not to mention how many were murdered, with all of the mass burial graves we have found with tens of thousands of bodies. Also, the insurgent/terrorists have been blowing up oil terminals, power stations, etc., for months now.

All you are doing is slandering the USA when you make these false accusations to further your partisan political opinions. Give the nation some credit when it is due. Every single time I heard a Democrat zealot talk like that during the campaign it would provoke an instant reaction of disgust in most people. That attitude drove an awful lot of people to the Bush side and probably cost JK the election. Iraq turned out to be only the fourth most important issue but it sure pissed everyone off who doesn't like to see America slandered. There are fifteen million free Afghans now, no thanks to those who opposed all war. Some wars are just. The war in Iraq was justifiable but stupid IMO, even without WMDs. SH and friends were a WMD.

 

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You sound like a Repubilcan zealot left over from the Vietnam years.......Who are you trying to fool, yourself???? The Iraq war is Bush's war and he used so-called WMD to start it! Using a false pretense to start a war is the biggest deception of all! Get a life dude and get your Hiliary Clinton poster out. You got four more years of Bush to deal with and all you have to do is look back on the last four to figure out what you can expect for next four! the Bush equation is: four + four = War

Atta Boy

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I'm not even a Republican so how can I be a Republican zealot? I am a moderate independent. I just happen to know that the USA is a great and honorable nation and that the world is much, much better off with us in the leadership role than anyone else because we are constructed of people from all over the world. I didn't vote for W because he simply wasn't the best candidate and didn't deserve to be re-elected. I did vote for a Republican Senator who was the best choice because he is a moderate. As for Vietnam, Iraq isn't even close to being like that war. We're in the desert where we have a huge advantage, not the jungle, and we're fighting a small insurgency using terrorist tactics not the North Vietnam Red Army supplied by China and the Soviet Union.

Most of the leaders want us there anyway now until their government becomes stable which could take years. They haven't even had a chance to vote yet. Yes, W screwed up in a big way IMO, but so did Great Britain and Russia. So ask yourself, if the coalition is successful, the elections are completed, voters by the millions turn out for the choice of an Iraqi leader, and the national assembly backs him 100%, what are you going to be saying then? Are you going to be grateful for yet another example that democracy works and is a natural desire of the human race everywhere, or are you going to be hoping it all collapses into a disaster. I hope it's the former.

 

Poor Player

They're still our bullets killing civilians.

You're right, the punishment for a bad leader should be invasion and death. The punishment for your government stealing money should be invasion and death. Not.

Oh, you mean like the tens of thousands we've killed? But I guess you have to kill some people to save them. At least Saddam had the decency to bury the bodies

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The only person who can take the real blame for the Iraq war is Bush! There were other options to control Sadam than going in and blasting Iraq apart other than killing not only a couple thousand of american and allied soldiers, but thousands more of innocent Iraqs who didn't even ask for this! Do you think Bush is personally attending the funerals of the solders killed in Iraq??? Of course not! He would spend every moment of his day trying to do so and he doesn't want to in the first place! So what's the cost going to be in american and allied solder lives??? Your guess is as good as mine! How many thousands more of innocent Iraqs are going to get killed??? Nobody is slamin the U.S......Only Bush needs to be slammed for the tradegy he's causing in Iraq! Had he let the U.N. inspectors do their job and finish their work looking for the so-called WMD, the inspectors would have told him they didn't find any there! Because Bush was in such a hurry to drop his big bombs and invade Iraq and capture Sadam, he didn't want to wait for the final report from the U.N. inspectors and now the rest is history! Right? Right! So now what are You going to do about it??? Just sit back, smoke a cigar, drink a beer and count the bodies coming back??? Vote Democrat the next time around!!! Hey Michael, we're looking forward to your next sequel!

Atta Boy

 

Norman,
Perhaps you should simmer down. Not every phrase requires an exclamation point after it; because none of what you said was either exciting nor shocking. I think everyone on these forums have heard these views expressed before.

I noticed that any sentence that didn't end in an exclamation point ended in a question mark. Do you need to make every other statement a rhetorical question? Do you not see how trite it becomes?

I also noticed that you used multiple question marks at the end of sentences. You may not have been aware of this, but only one question mark is necessary at then end of a sentence to connotate a question!

Periods may be used at the end of sentences, not just in elipses and abbreviations. It's your friend at the end, and lets us know when to breathe.

Atta Boy, Norman.

 

It's not a question of question marks, exclamation points or rhetorical questions followed by abbreviations. It's a series of facts that one needs to be reminded of when statements are made in forum posts (political or otherwise) that require intelligent or somewhat intelligent answers that bare some reality of truth. Lets hope all of us are capable enough to recognize that (that includes myself).

Atta Boy

 

I wasn't disagreeing with you; I just want the guys on my side to not look too inarticulate. You know, nine out of ten people agree that ethos is everything

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Obviously any post whether it's mine or any one else's is really posted for mind provoking material & food for thought. I don't think any of these posts GWB reads personally. We could only hope if he did. Just maybe, some of his Republican cronies read them and hopefully pass them on to his stooges to digest or indigest. It would be great if some of these articulate posts made a difference. Even if they didn't it wouldn 't matter much, just so long as it pleased the writer and raised the intelligence level just a bit of those who read them. If you feel more intelligent reading this one, raise your hand!

Atta Boy

 

You obviously know abolutely nothing about war or international law for that matter. SH was a serial mass murderer. He killed massive numbers of civilians in cold blood outside the realm of battle in a declared war. Any democratic court on earth would have convicted him and his sons of such crimes if they could have gotten their hands on him. As for using innocent civilians for cover when you are being fired upon, it is considered murder as well, by those they were forced to shield. So you compare a serial mass murderer and true war criminals who are getting their own people killed to what the US military as a whole has done? Individual acts of brutality by young and inexperienced American volunteers do not equate to the massive civilian murder machine that SH built out of his Sunni tribe. There is no comparison.

This proves to anyone who knows anything about the subject that you have never been anywhere near a war zone. The thousands of soldiers we killed were also compliant in every one of SH's crimes because they were his enforcers. They supported him fully in his efforts to brutally enslave 15 million Shiites and 5 million Kurds and commit atrocities at will. They got exactly what they deserved. All they had to do was surrender and they would have lived. You would compare them to an American soldier who twelve months ago was working on a GM assembly line and got called up for his National Guard duty? You don't have the foggiest idea what it is all about. I suppose you think Osama is a hero as well?

 

Had not Bush invaded and bombed Iraq against the better judgement and advice from more intelligent people in the U.N., the same solder in the National Guard who worked on the GM assembly line would be still working on the same GM assembly line today and the U.S. wouldn't have lost 1,200 good solders and Iraq wouldn't haven't been torn apart at all. So what's your point? Or better yet, try again!

Atta Boy

 

Poor_Player:
This is a simple case of whether or not the ends justify the means. You say that killing people for a good cause is alright; they just happened to be in the way. I'm disagreeing; killing is always bad.

Soldiers can kill soldiers, I'm alright with that. I'm not sympathizing with the insurgents. However, there's a lot of illogic in condeming all that the insurgents do when it's actually fairly similar to what soldiers everywhere do.

Yes, you are correct in assessing that I've never been anywhere near a warzone. I'm assuming that you have. Why would you ever want to inflict that on anyone? For their own good?

Diplomatically, Iraq was a mistake. We haven't made any new friends by invading Iraq. We've squandered the world's goodwill, in a time when we need it most. Terrorism is not about religion; it's about inequality. Ignoring the humanistic reasons for th Iraq war (kind of paradoxical), it was a huge mistake. The message we sent to the terrorists was not "Fear us, we are mighty," they already knew that. We've made more enemies than friends through the Iraqi invadion. Do you think the kid who's parents were shot by American soldiers is more likely or less likely to grow up to be a terrorist? Do you think he'll thank the Americans? Pragmatically, the war was a mistake

On the issue of invasion for compassion's sake:
I don't understand how moderates/republicans/conservatives or whatever you call yourselves can be against helping Americans through social programs, while supporting killing people to save people.
The families who lose relatives to American guns are far more likely to hate Americans than thank Americans. How are we helping them when they don't want help, won't understand help, and will reject help?

 

ROMAN, the ends very often justify the means within limits. It's just a fact of life. I am a moderate independent and I believe strongly in good social programs, but I also believe in the necessity of war. If you were an Amrerican colonialist how much longer would you have wanted to remain a British subject back in 1775? Fifty more years? A hundred? How hard would you have fought to keep the USA one nation as opposed to have it split into two, one with slavery, one without back in 1861. Would you have rather just sat back and watched Hitler bomb Britain into rubble than go to war to help save Europe in 1941? People who minimize our role in all these wars are either incredibly ignorant or have no interest in the truth.

This is what I mean when I say you just don't understand war. You don't want to understand it, you just want it all to stop. Noble of you but very naive. It will never happen, it will be with us for a long time. We are a nation born of war, divided and almost destroyed by war, and thrust into a global leadership role by war. We also defeated the Soviet Union by making war on their political, economic, and military influence worldwide. It was the right thing to do. Eastern Europe was freed due directly to the USA and its democratic allies like the UK winning the cold war. This war with Iraq was a stupid mistake; for the USA, but not for the Iraqis. It is their only hope for peace and any form of prosperity. I'm still not sure what we will get out it.

SH raped his own country and built a war machine and used it to attack Iran in the eighties. Over one MILLION young people were killed in that war, Arabs and Persians. Not ten to twenty thousand as in our current situation. Over a MILLION. So about 100 times as many. SH not only got those civilians and soldiers killed in the Iran/Iraq War, he killed hundreds of thousand of his own citizens in the years following the war, but we will never know how many. Taking him out, his leadership staff, and killing his two psycho sons was completely justifiable. It was the best thing for the Iraqis and the entire Middle East. Do you have any idea what his son would have done had he taken over for his father? He would have been even worse, imagine that! The UN was completely ineffective in handling SH. They were paralyzed.

Terrorism is not about inequality, it is about complete ignorance. So is the insurgency. The terrorist actually believes he will be rewarded by God for his/her efforts for killing innocent people. The stain upon the pan-Arab world that this small minority of overly zealous lunatics has caused will take two or three generations to erase. Do you know what the average adult (over 15) literacy rate in Iraq is? It is about 40%. That's right, 60% of Iraqi adults cannot read or write. So when you see them dancing in the street next time over some petty insurgent victory, remember, they can't even read, so how could they know the truth about who is really doing them the most damage.

You cannot justify ANYTHING the terrorists or the insurgents do. They are ignorant puppets who dance to the tune of mass murder and suicide thinking all the while what heroes they will become....the very definition of ignorance. Or has it been lost upon you that the two groups have merged in Iraq? Soldiers die in battle and seek to spare civilians as much as possible even though it isn't always. Terrorists/Insurgents seek to kill as many civilians as possible. There is a huge difference. One is war the other murder. When US soldiers use civilians as shields they go to prison. Yes, the 1,500 insurgents just slaughtered in Fallujah is a sad thing, they never had a prayer, but it is necessary for the mass murders to stop and elections to take place giving the next Iraqi government the legitimacy it needs to survive. All they had to do was surrender. It was their choice. Ignorance kills!