[quote]Sloth wrote:
Honest question, here. Was there a threat that we, the US, would have been on Saddam’s “to be conquered,” list?[/quote]
Should George St. Pierre feel threatened when Ryan Seacrest puts him on his “to be conquered” list?
[quote]johnnybravo30 wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Honest question, here. Was there a threat that we, the US, would have been on Saddam’s “to be conquered,” list?
Should George St. Pierre feel threatened when Ryan Seacrest puts him on his “to be conquered” list?[/quote]
Hmm. An armed Seacrest, or unarmed Seacrest?
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
Ok, a new question that I can’t figure out for the life of me:
Saddam attacks Iraq with the aid of the US, Russia and many other countries. The US is singled out as the main contributor to this war (even though the US had one of our ships bombed by Iraq while escorting oil tankers through the Gulf). The US is condemned because “they armed” Iraq against Iran.[/quote]
…and France, West Germany (mustard gas), Britain, etc. The US did arm Iraq against Iran, and assisted a war of aggression, which, as established by the Nuremberg Tribunals, is the supreme international crime. That doesn’t just deserve condemnation, it deserves criminal charges being placed on those involved. That is, if we are not hypocrites. It is unlikely that West Germany, France, Britain, etc. would have armed Saddam if the US had been vehemently opposed to them doing so.
The attack on the USS Stark is a weird one, but I don’t see the relevance. Perhaps you could elaborate. I think the question is: why would the Reagan administration continue to support Iraq after this incident? Clearly, they were irrationally fixated on Iran.
I haven’t heard too much condemnation about liberating Kuwait per se. Perhaps you are hearing things. The criticism would be similar as in the Iran-Iraq War, that it was grossly negligent to help put Saddam in a position to invade anyone. He was a monster from day one, not the day he invaded Kuwait.
Who said it was OK for him to invade Kuwait? I think you’re getting stirred over arguments that haven’t been made.
[quote]
Should The US have let him keep Kuwait? And maybe move against SA or Iran once again?
Why is it wrong that the US freed the Kuwaitis and stopped Iraq from waging war against his own people and neighbors?
What should the US and the world have done?[/quote]
This is a good question. The most simple answer is to not support brutal dictators for short term gains in the first place. Look at all the instances where doing so has bitten the supporters in the ass. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Islamic extremists including Bin Laden. Until that time, the cycle of violence will continue, and all the little excursions into miserable countries won’t make the world safer.
If you want to discuss this as a, “well we’ve made a huge mistake but we can’t change the past so what do we do now,” type of scenario, then I haven’t got the patience. But I will say that punishing a people the way the sanctions punished Iraqis had nothing to do with de-clawing Saddam. They could have had the no fly zones and close monitoring of any troop movements without destroying all food storage and production infrastructure and refusing to allow water treatment chemicals or repair parts for bombed or broken down water infrastructure. It is well established that punishing a population entrenches the dictator. As was discovered by captured documents after Saddam’s overthrow, the sanctions were likely keeping him in power.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
johnnybravo30 wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Honest question, here. Was there a threat that we, the US, would have been on Saddam’s “to be conquered,” list?
Should George St. Pierre feel threatened when Ryan Seacrest puts him on his “to be conquered” list?
Hmm. An armed Seacrest, or unarmed Seacrest?[/quote]
Unarmed combat of course. If I had envisioned an armed Seacrest I would have said, “Should John Rambo feel threatened when a heavily armed Ryan Seacrest puts him on his “to be conquered” list?”
Of course not. He’s Rambo for fuck’s sake.
Now you’re going to ask, “Rambo with or without the HGH?”
ok,JB, you wanted to know about the Dutch, read this.
What I was saying about Iraq bombing our ship was that inspite of all our alleged aid, they still attacked us, so we were in no way allied with Saddam. We just would rather have had him crush the Iranians who we viewed as terrorist exporters.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
What I was saying about Iraq bombing our ship was that inspite of all our alleged aid,[/quote]
Do you even know what alleged means?
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
What I was saying about Iraq bombing our ship was that inspite of all our alleged aid, they still attacked us, so we were in no way allied with Saddam.
[/quote]
The “alleged” support for Saddam can only be called “alleged” because no one has brought up charges and achieved convictions against the parties involved. In the court of history however, world support for Saddam during the the Iran-Iraq War is well established.
The USS Stark attack was an isolated incident that a) should be viewed as a screwup in a very narrow and tactically tricky section of the gulf, or b)an indication of what kind of person Saddam was. It doesn’t really matter because policy towards the conflict didn’t change much.
[quote]
We just would rather have had him crush the Iranians who we viewed as terrorist exporters.[/quote]
This is the mindset, and it is incredibly shortsighted. For one, supporting characters like Saddam, or the Shah, or Bin Laden, any one of a lengthy list always causes catastrophic problems down the road.
Secondly, the human cost on the innocent people on the other side of the conflict is immense. Who gets to decide that the thousands of Iranians gassed by Iraq are an acceptable price to pay for our own security? We never bare the loss of innocent life burden.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
ok,JB, you wanted to know about the Dutch, read this.[/quote]
This entire period is a testament to ineptitude. Commence bombing that escalates the atrocities and then abandon the innocents. I’ve read personal accounts of mosques that were to be protected were later found blown to pieces. Nothing went right.
[quote]johnnybravo30 wrote:
This is the mindset, and it is incredibly shortsighted. For one, supporting characters like Saddam, or the Shah, or Bin Laden, any one of a lengthy list always causes catastrophic problems down the road.
[/quote]
I agree with you on this part. You can not trust islamists or dictators. They will more than likely stab you in the back.
Also, about the backing or not backing Saddam. What should we have done? You are against US aiding him in his attack on Iran, against sanctions, against the Iraqi war which deposed him. What do you think the correct course of action over a span of, what? 30 years?, should have been?
Do you think we should have attacked Iran when they held our people hostage? When Hezbollah killed our Marines in Lebanon during a UN peacekeeping mission?
What should we as a nation do about threats from Al-Qaeda? Ignore them? That did us a lot of good.
By “we” I mean our nation, the USA.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
What I was saying about Iraq bombing our ship was that inspite of all our alleged aid,
Do you even know what alleged means?[/quote]
Yep.
Like when you say Hezbollah allegedly blew up the Marine Barracks in Lebanon. And it was allegedly backed by Iran.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
johnnybravo30 wrote:
This is the mindset, and it is incredibly shortsighted. For one, supporting characters like Saddam, or the Shah, or Bin Laden, any one of a lengthy list always causes catastrophic problems down the road.
I agree with you on this part. You can not trust islamists or dictators. They will more than likely stab you in the back.
Also, about the backing or not backing Saddam. What should we have done? You are against US aiding him in his attack on Iran, against sanctions, against the Iraqi war which deposed him. What do you think the correct course of action over a span of, what? 30 years?, should have been?
[/quote]
Well on the topic of military aid to Saddam, I think the correct policy is a no-brainer. He used the weapons he recieved to start two aggressive wars and commit atrocities against Iran and his own people. He never should have gotten that aid.
As far as removing Saddam from power, I think the best policy was the one the the Iraqi reformers were calling for: let the Iraqi people remove him. They were vehemently opposed to the sanctions because the entire country was forced to rely on him for a meager subsistence. As I’ve mentioned before, analysis of his regime after it’s fall showed that the sanctions were keeping him in power.
And it stands the test of loose historical parallels to let a people decide their own fate. How many forced revolutions have been successful? Great and successful revolutions like the American, French, and Indian occurred because the people were ready and able to make the needed changes and sacrifices. How successful would the American revolution have been is the French had somehow kick-started it decades earlier?
This is a bit off topic and I’m not really sure which incident you are referring to. Problems with Hezbollah will cease when there is a viable, two state solution between Israel and Palestine. Hezbollah uses illegitimate means to advance its agenda, but it’s agenda is far more reasonable than the lunatics in al-Qaeda. They are ready to let Israel exist, but a stumbling block is that Israel and the US insist on all parties agreeing that Israel has the “right” to exist within its current borders. This is entirely different from recognizing a state’s legitimacy, and is something that is not asked of any other state or group on the planet. For example, no one insists that Mexico recognize the right of the US to exist within its current borders, despite Mexicans still being pissed about California.
[quote]
What should we as a nation do about threats from Al-Qaeda? Ignore them? That did us a lot of good.
By “we” I mean our nation, the USA.[/quote]
Well, no one ever talks about preventing the growth of radical ideologies and those that propagate them. There are policy changes that could prevent such occurances. I’ve already mentioned the CIA support group groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It would seem wise to cut that out.
Here is an interesting story, and I hope every will read it. I mentioned earlier that the two most important Islamist philosophers are Sayed Qutb and Ayman al-Zawahiri (he usually sits beside Bin Laden), both Egyptians. Sayed Qutb began his “activist” life by wanting to oust the corrupt, western backed governments of the middle east by nonviolent, political means. Somewhere along the line his philosophy changed to one of violent revolution sparked by an extreme bloodbath. Now, Muslims aren’t supposed to kill other Muslims, but the rational was that these government figures were so corrupt that they were no longer Muslims and could therefore be killed. This was Sayed Qutb’s major contribution to Islamist philosophy, and it led to the assassination of Sadat.
The second major philosophical contribution came from Zawahiri. He also came to a major realization as Qubt did, but he took the ideology even further. Since there was no uprising of the Muslim world sparked by the Sadat murder, he concluded that any Muslim that did not follow his righteous agenda was, by twisted logic, so corrupted that he/she was no longer a Muslim, and could be killed. This is why al-Qeada has complete disregard for even Muslim life, let alone westerners.
So what’s the point of this story. Both the philosophical shifts I described occurred inside Egyptian torture chambers, where Qutb and Zawarihi were tormented. Zawahiri is the man who turned an anti-Soviet jihadist Osama Bin Laden into a radical international terrorist. Egypt is, of course, frequently used as a rendition country, as torture chambers are in abundant use. Ironically, with all the irrational cries for the torture option to be left on the table in case some fanciful Jack Bauer situation arises, it seems that torture was instrumental in helping modern Islamist ideology develop.
Figures like Zawarihi and Bin Laden are now beyond reasoning with and must be brought to justice, but it must be taken care of in a very surgical manner. There’s not much point in capturing or killing them if, in the process, you have to kill thousands of innocent people whose enraged friends and relatives will only swell the ranks of terrorist groups in response.
[quote]lixy wrote:
A bunch of crap, full of hate and biased ignorance.[/quote]
i now know an intelligent discussion is lost on you. The whole idea of us being responsible for everything Iraq did in the 1980’s is actually America’s fault because we attacked them in 2003?
Then the whole rape little girls comment, that shows me you completely lost it.
I did believe you were debating simply because you were against the invasion. But now I do not believe that. If any other country would have, you wouldn’t have batted an eye.
The only reason you are discussing this at all is from a deep-seated hate of America.
I have never blindly accepted this war, I have thought seriously about it both before and after. And I am still convinced that the world is a better place because of this.
Yet the argument I am hearing from you is not, “I am against this action because…” Instead what I am hearing from you is, “America is evil, and I hate it and all Americans because…”
Would I have preferred a non-military action? Sure, I am no fan of war. But war is like surgery. Sometimes a cancer needs to be cut out for a patient to survive. And I saw Saddam as a cancer, already breeding into his 2 cancerous sons.
Sometimes chemotherapy needs to be used. It is terrible on the whole body, but again it is never as bad as the cancer is.
I could still be convinced, if there is a good, and real argument that is actually about the war. I will never be convinced by faulty logic, politically biased websites, (even those that purport to be unbiased, but have obvious signs they are not,) or the most common, gossip.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Honest question, here. Was there a threat that we, the US, would have been on Saddam’s “to be conquered,” list?[/quote]
Actually yes, he has repeatedly stated publicly that he has declared war against America. Also do not forget they attempted an assassination of Bush sr.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Honest question, here. Was there a threat that we, the US, would have been on Saddam’s “to be conquered,” list?
Actually yes, he has repeatedly stated publicly that he has declared war against America. Also do not forget they attempted an assassination of Bush sr.[/quote]
This is why I brought up my George St. Pierre vs. Ryan Seacrest analogy.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
Would I have preferred a non-military action? Sure, I am no fan of war. But war is like surgery. Sometimes a cancer needs to be cut out for a patient to survive. And I saw Saddam as a cancer, already breeding into his 2 cancerous sons.
Sometimes chemotherapy needs to be used. It is terrible on the whole body, but again it is never as bad as the cancer is.
[/quote]
One could argue that treating multiple tumors with a chainsaw is a more appropriate analogy.
But to continue with the analogy, a patient is supposed to have some say in the treatment that he or she receives. While the doctor may knick his finger with the surgical implement, it is ultimately the patient that must face the agony and possibility of death associated with a risky procedure. As this is the case, any doctor that performed a risky procedure without a patient’s permission would be locked up. The fact the doctor and patient might be better off in the end would be nearly irrelevant to the court proceedings.
You are a reasonable man.
I suggest you investigate the state of Saddam’s regime in its latter days. A common theme in my posts is how close it was to collapse, and that it likely would have sooner had it not been for the entrenching effects of the genocidal sanctions. I’m sure nothing would convince you better than reading the material yourself.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
i now know an intelligent discussion is lost on you. The whole idea of us being responsible for everything Iraq did in the 1980’s is actually America’s fault because we attacked them in 2003? [/quote]
If you can’t be bothered to point out to the part of my post that you interpreted that way, how do you expect a dialog?
I’ll restate my position in case you missed it:
- Saddam attacks Iran.
- The US (among others) openly support Saddam.
- A short-memory person brings up Saddam war on Iran to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
See the problem?
During the Iraq War, a war crime took place in Mahmudiyah in March of 2006 in which five soldiers of the 502d Infantry Regiment, including Steven D. Green, are accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza, and then murdering her, her father, her mother Fakhriya Taha Muhasen and her seven-year-old sister. More than one of the soldiers admitted to the crime.
I guess we’ll have to wait for some “other country” to go halfway across the world, bombing and killing to see how much of a ruckus I’ll make.
Somehow I don’t think that’ll happen in my lifetime.
You can’t be serious!
The freakin’ CIA itself says that the war was the cause for the boost in global terrorism. Tension is mounting between the US and Iran, and your heavy military presence on their borders is not helping. Oil prices are through the roof. People are getting blown to pieces on a daily basis. And to top it all off, the invasion triggered an arms race to ensure your country doesn’t attack them.
Again, until you point out to the questionable bit in my post, I can’t help much.
[quote]Would I have preferred a non-military action? Sure, I am no fan of war. But war is like surgery. Sometimes a cancer needs to be cut out for a patient to survive. And I saw Saddam as a cancer, already breeding into his 2 cancerous sons.
Sometimes chemotherapy needs to be used. It is terrible on the whole body, but again it is never as bad as the cancer is.
I could still be convinced, if there is a good, and real argument that is actually about the war. I will never be convinced by faulty logic, politically biased websites, (even those that purport to be unbiased, but have obvious signs they are not,) or the most common, gossip.[/quote]
I am not trying to convince you. You can’t undo the carnage of the past 5 years.
Surely, “faulty logic” must be easy to debunk. Why don’t you give it a crack instead of rambling. As for these “biased websites”, you may want to show me the part you deem problematic so we can see whether I used anything other than facts.
Lixy you still haven’t come up with those statistics you were touting. I am starting to think you were just talking trash.
Rainjack may have gone overbord with some of his comments, however there is one point I do agree with him on. You do come across as a young idealistic college kid. You come across like you think the world is one giant Stockholm, where everything is real nice and orderly. Where a handful of cops can easily keep things under control because everyone is law abiding. You have an unrealistic world view. You think that people should only be reactive instead of proactive. Despite history showing that had we done some proactive things in the past we could have saved the world a lot of misery.
No other country in the world has Americas ability to project it’s power around the world. So your point about other countries doing what America has done is highly retorical.
Do you honestly think the Chinese or the Russians would do things better if they had the ability?
I am supposed to expect a rational discussion with you now?
Really?
Ok, I will go after your little rape comment.
Since you blame all of America for the act of a few, which is not only against our laws, but against military code of justice laws, and they do not take things like this lightly.
If true, they were, or will be punished, I have no doubt. If false, (I have heard so many unsubstantiated claims, and proven false stories before,) then he was acquitted.
(I should point out that your wiki link is very biased. It is supposed to be about a city, yet the only thing listed is this crime.)
But now what do you do? Blame every American for the actions of a few, who are actually being court martialed.
Should we blame all Muslims for the actions of Bin-Laden? Are you all extremist nuts? No, I have gone out of my way to point that out, and to point out that the majority are not connected to extremism, nor support it.
Do you do the same? No.
If you cannot have a rational discussion, then there is no purpose in attempting.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
If you cannot have a rational discussion, then there is no purpose in attempting.[/quote]
Why do you think I treat lixy the way I do? He is a coward, and he is about as rational as a spoiled three year old. His desire to have sex with young girls, and then have them punished for it was the last straw.
Anyone that treats him with anything but disdain is just placating an intellectually dishonest child molesting fool.