War In Iraq

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
101

vroom, I started posting in the political forums about six months ago.

I have read a lot of anti-war, anti-administration things statements. Some have been insightful, most have been silly and wrong.

In all the many threads regarding the war on terror you have taken a constinenly negative stance. I do not recall a single instance where you have credited the administration or the military for any of the successes we have achieved.

You constantly call others cheerleaders because we believe that an international forum is not the best place to discuss problems and lay blame in the middle of a war. I acknowledge mistakes have been made in this war, like every other war in history, but I refuse to have sympathy for the enemy.

I do not want to make a personal attack against you. You are a positive contributor overall to the T-Nation.

I have no problem with your distaste for Bush. That is the nature of politics. Your posts often go beyond distaste for Bush and is a relentless mindless criticism of the total war effort and America and its allies.

If you do not wish to convey this message I suggest you think longer and harder about the message you do wish to convey before you press the submit button.

If you do want to show sympathy and support for the enemy go ahead with what you are doing.

102

sep,

Did we bring democracy to Germany and Japan? Did we occupy Germany and Japan? What do you think we have been doing over there?

The Kurds and Shiites do indeed hug Americans and Brits for saving the day.
Talk to some people that have been over there.

US and Britian are not the ones indiscriminatly bombing and killing civilians. The bad guys are.

Is your point that war is a a bad thing? Of course it is.

Is your point that the US and its allies are the bad guys because our casualties are lower tha civilian casualties? I hope not.

What should we do in Iraq?

Withdraw immediately?

Stick around while Iraq develops a constitution and and army strong enough to protect itself from the insurgents?

Steal all the oil and let the country go to hell?

103

Zap, I think you have me confused with others. My stance is that we went into Iraq under false pretenses. However, now that we are there we need to stay the course and try to get things to come out alright.

I don’t think you notice when I do cross the line and represent what is usually considered a conservative or republican stance either. Anyway, while it isn’t the war in Iraq, I did recently credit Bush for accepting responsibility in the wake of the Katrina disaster – perhaps you missed that?

Sympathy for the enemy? I don’t think you’ll find sympathy for the enemy from me. I however am not sure you understand who the enemy is. It isn’t the entire muslim world, nor is it the general populace of Iraq. Who exactly do you think I exhibit sympathy for?

Anyway, I don’t know how many decades we are all supposed to hold our tongues while the Bush administration fumbles around with its foreign policy. Our dicusssions here, really have very little to do with the reality of the world. This is a bodybuilding site, do you think anybody, here or there, really cares what we think?

This is a bullshit mischaracterization, and frankly, I’m sick of it. I have been mostly absent in this thread and I’m talking about the fact we need to do more than use force alone. That isn’t criticism of the war, but just points out that the issue is too complex for force alone to solve in the long run.

I question whether you really know what it is I am talking about.

By the way, where do you get this notion that I have a distaste for Bush? I don’t admire or respect the man, but that is a far cry from actively having a dislike for him. Again, you are just latching on to previous mischaracterizations in an attempt to discredit my words.

Howabout coming up with arguments that show me to be wrong about something. That would be a more appropriate way to try to debate something with me. These blatant attempts to brand me something I am not reflect poorly on those that use such tactics.

[quote]If you do not wish to convey this message I suggest you think longer and harder about the message you do wish to convey before you press the submit button.

If you do want to show sympathy and support for the enemy go ahead with what you are doing.[/quote]

Perhaps, somewhere in this thread, you could find an example of something I’ve said that would convey sympathy for the enemy?

If you can’t, you are simply using the old tactic of calling me a “traitor” because I’m not in agreement with the administration on all counts. Since I am not American, I am instead called anti-American.

Nice try. I am not anti-American and I am not sympathetic with terrorists in any capacity. Those are damned near fighting words – and you damned well know it.

If you want to actually discuss the war in Iraq, then please do so. If you don’t want to discuss the war in Iraq, then simply don’t. However, don’t bother to slap labels on me that don’t apply, because it is annoying, silly and transparent.

104

vroom, I call them as I see them.

I have no problem with anyone that says they do not believe the rationale for war. I do not mind debate on that subject.

We are now in the war, so lets win it.

I have seen you and many others on this board critcize, Bush, the administration and the actions of our troops and much of the criticsm is based on falsehoods, half truths and other politically motivated BS.

If you don’t want me to call you out perhaps you should be the one that stops posting on the subject or thinks things through a bit more before happily bashing the war effort.

BTW it is funny that your support of Bush is only extended to Bush taking blame for something.

105

In other words, you have lumped me in with a group of others and you have nothing specific you can actually point to, but it sounds powerful. I don’t argue points based on falsehoods, half truths or politically motivated bullshit.

If you can find an instance, please bring it out! I’ll admit that there are points of disagreement, but if someone can find a falsehood that I’ve promoted, I’d gladly recant my statements upon finding they were false.

Call me out? That’s a good one. You mean make shit up.

Yes, it is all about squelching the opinions of those you disagree with isn’t it? Point out to me, somewhere in this thread, if you can, me bashing the war effort. You aren’t arguing what we are discussing here but instead what you’ve already decided in your own mind.

The word was responsibility. I find it necessary that leaders accept responsibility.

I think it is funny that when someone you generally disagree with takes a step in your direction that you think it appropriate to criticise them for taking that step.

You are welcome to your opinion Zap, and I’ll thank you to allow me to express mine, instead of making up some falsehoods and half truths to micharacterize it.

106

[quote]hedo wrote:
“My question, what would you do differently that would be better. The question is really one of strategy not of outcome. Many would say do it better or differently but have no idea how”.[/quote]

Things I would’ve done differently:

Afghanistan: Finish the job right. The goal was to topple the Talibans and go after OBL and Al Qaeda. The Talibans were removed, but remain as an active presence in Afghanistan and capturing terrorists eventually became unimportant, for whatever reason.

The government that was put in place does not have popular support, and their current elections are a mess (5600 candidates?! What the…?)

Basically, treat the Afghans with respect and stay with them until the job’s done right. There was a fair amount of international support for that war effort, I wouldn’t have pissed it away.

I’d also like to see a “standard” foreign policy applied to all non-democratic country, and not just to those who currently are not “allies”. Tell Saudi Arabia to stop financing extremist wahabi schools, or we’ll impose economic sanctions. Tell the House of Saud that the Axis of Evil is actually the Elliptic Curve of Evil and that after Saddam and Kim Jong Il, we’ll put their House in order if they don’t get to it themselves.

I would’ve made the case for Iraq compelling enough to get U.N. support and a real coalition. It might have meant waiting a bit longer, but it’s not like Saddam was rolling out the nuclear tipped ICBMs anyway. He’d been contained for over 10 years, he could wait a few more months or years.

Better intelligence. It appears that U.S. intelligence in the region is about as reliable as a blind guy choosing paint colors. If you want to be able to negotiate in any way or use diplomacy for some crisis, you’ve got to know what’s going on in those countries. After 9/11, I remember reading that we had nearly no agents who spoke Arabic. That’s completely unacceptable. Better intelligence allows you to make better decisions, no matter what course of action, war or diplomacy, you decide to pursue.

Iraq war: I would’ve given the generals the troops they wanted. If I couldn’t have made the numbers, I would’ve waited or built a larger coalition. I also would’ve planned the post-war rebuilding effort in excruciating details. If we’re going to do some nation building, we might as well get it right. There’s no way to plan for everything, but there’s no way I’d want to get in a war where at every turn there seems to be something we didn’t expect.

Post-war: They can ratify their own constitution, but they are a few basic premises that are not open for discussion. Separation of Church and State being the most important one. There is no stable, democratic country that doesn’t have this one. We don’t want another Iran, we want a stable middle east country where Arabs want to go and live. We want other countries to emulate them because their standard of living gets to be higher than anywhere in the region. We want the country to become economically powerful so that we can trade with them.

Homeland Security: Stop appointing good friends who have no qualifications to important posts. Giving the run of FEMA to the former head of an Arab Horse Association is completely retarded. You need that agency and Homeland Security to be ready for emergencies. You need to get imaginative people to build as many nightmare scenarios as they can, and plan as best you can for those. You need for everyone to know how it goes during emergencies. You don’t want to have “Katrina moments” when you spend a week trying to find your ass while people are dying in large numbers. When Reagan was in office, they had a “Star Wars” (SDI) panel composed of science fiction writers, such as Pournelle and Niven. Why? Because those guys think different, they think big and they come up with an incredibly wide array of possibilities. Dismiss the most outlandish of those, but do plan for as many as possible of the plausible ones.

Missile defense: It has cost billions already with zero results. Sink that White Elephant and put the money to better use.

Super-colliding Super Conductor (SSC): Resurrect that project and finish it. The U.S. used to be the place where bleeding edge science was done. We’re losing it to Europe, Japan and Asia. We don’t want that.

Ok, I’m digressing, so I’ll stop now.

107

Good post pookie, I agree with everything you said, except the part about digressing. :slight_smile:

In answer to the question Zapf and Hedo want to know, I think there isn’t really a choice for the Coalition at this point, they’ve just got to stay and sort things out until the country is at least somewhat stable. Until then, leaving it would just catalyze a civil war.

[quote]pookie wrote:
Missile defense: It has cost billions already with zero results. Sink that White Elephant and put the money to better use.
[/quote]

Like education. Republican or Democrat, I think most are in agreement that education should be thoroughly funded. Invest in the future!

And that about the Super Conductor is also important: Like pookie said, the U.S. used to be the tech centre of the world, but it’s quickly losing its footing! More funding into technological research, especially, in my opinion, in energy technologies and NASA. Nothing much has happened since the Moon Landing! Time to go to mars!

Digressing? Whoops! I suppose this is still all big picture stuff, and not directly concerning the next step in Iraq, thus not really relevant to this thread.

Take Care,
-Sep

108

[quote]Sepukku wrote:
And that about the Super Conductor is also important: Like pookie said, the U.S. used to be the tech centre of the world, but it’s quickly losing its footing! More funding into technological research, especially, in my opinion, in energy technologies and NASA. Nothing much has happened since the Moon Landing! Time to go to mars![/quote]

The SSC was a great loss. Europe is getting it’s LHC (Large Hadron Collider) online in 2007. France is getting the International Fusion Reactor and it’s 12 billion investment. It seems all the cool science projects are now getting done abroad.

I disagree though with going back to the moon and manned missions to Mars. The exploration of the solar system can be done a lot cheaper by robot probes. If you lose one, you’ve lost some cash but can send another; they can operate for years as they “eat” sunlight. Sending men will cost billions and won’t teach us much more. We’ll learn more about human nature, having them in a small capsules for 6 months each way.

And what’s with this 2018 deadline for going back to the moon? When Kennedy announced it in 1961 it took just 8 years to get there from scratch. Now, 40 years later, with the knowledge and technology we have, we need 13 years? WTF? How soon until we can’t cross the Atlantic?

109

Any day now. I’m hoping to be the first person to rediscover the North Pole one of these days… but I’m going to wait until it’s no longer cold up there anymore.

110

[quote]pookie wrote:
We’ll learn more about human nature, having them in a small capsules for 6 months each way.
[/quote]

LMAO

True enough mate!

I guess what I generally mean is that, like you said, so much ground was made in the sixties in terms of space travel and technology, and after that it was all but forgotten. I think we should keep reaching for the stars and all that jazz. :slight_smile:

-Sep

111

[quote]pookie wrote:
Sepukku wrote:
And that about the Super Conductor is also important: Like pookie said, the U.S. used to be the tech centre of the world, but it’s quickly losing its footing! More funding into technological research, especially, in my opinion, in energy technologies and NASA. Nothing much has happened since the Moon Landing! Time to go to mars!

The SSC was a great loss. Europe is getting it’s LHC (Large Hadron Collider) online in 2007. France is getting the International Fusion Reactor and it’s 12 billion investment. It seems all the cool science projects are now getting done abroad.

I disagree though with going back to the moon and manned missions to Mars. The exploration of the solar system can be done a lot cheaper by robot probes. If you lose one, you’ve lost some cash but can send another; they can operate for years as they “eat” sunlight. Sending men will cost billions and won’t teach us much more. We’ll learn more about human nature, having them in a small capsules for 6 months each way.

And what’s with this 2018 deadline for going back to the moon? When Kennedy announced it in 1961 it took just 8 years to get there from scratch. Now, 40 years later, with the knowledge and technology we have, we need 13 years? WTF? How soon until we can’t cross the Atlantic?
[/quote]

Pookie, why do you feel canceling the super collider was a mistake? As far as I can tell it is just pork on a large scale.

I know you are a physics buff, try to ignore the coolness of it and look at it from a cost vs. benefit standpoint.

I think going to the moon again is a waste. Maybe we should rebuild NO and try to not run up the deficit too high instead.

112

[quote]vroom wrote:
How soon until we can’t cross the Atlantic?

Any day now. I’m hoping to be the first person to rediscover the North Pole one of these days… but I’m going to wait until it’s no longer cold up there anymore.[/quote]

Shouldn’t be long. I heard Santa’s trading in his sleigh and reindeers for a catamaran pulled by 8 dolphins.

113

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Pookie, why do you feel canceling the super collider was a mistake? As far as I can tell it is just pork on a large scale.[/quote]

I’m not familiar with the details of how the project was being run. Maybe there was pork involved. That there wasn’t any would be surprising, given the size of the project.

One thing I do know it that currently, a large portion of the best minds in physics are working on String Theory. ST is currently undergoing a difficult period; many problems have emerged in recent years which might indicate that ST could end up being a dead end.

Empirical results from experiments the SSC could have provided and that will now wait for the European LHC could revitalize theoretical physics. Confirmation of some of ST’s assumptions, such a super symmetry – which is predicted, but has not been observed yet AFAIK – could at least give us indication that where on the right path.

In the same sense as space exploration, there is not direct, immediate tangible benefit; but a better understanding of physics might lead to discoveries that might pay off the whole project many times over. Fusion reactors for example.

Short term costs are enormous and provide no immediate benefits; but in the long term, the project might pay for itself many times over.

Quantum Mechanics and Relativity paved the way for most of our modern technology. It was impossible to predict at the turn of the century what those discoveries would bring. Similarly, new breakthrough in physics might change tomorrow’s world in ways that we can’t envision.

Going back to the moon just to walk on it again is a waste. Setting up a permanent base, from which to launch futures missions might be a more interesting idea.

Sending humans to Mars or any other planets serves no purpose whatsoever, except maybe as political ploys.

Robots can explore the planets for a lot less money and they’re much more expendable. If you get an Apollo 13 situation on the way back from Mars, there is not local “Houston” to help you with your problem…

Rebuilding NO is a worthwhile goal. But keep in mind that you can argue similar points for just about any spending.

Would defense spendings be better invested in medical research? Would the cost of the Iraq war be better spent helping Africa with food, clean water and AIDS? Would a working National Health Care system be better than spending 1 billion per Shuttle Launch?

With the flight of Spaceship One, it’s been shown that the private sector exploration of space is just around the corner, so to speak. Maybe that’ll prove a better, less expensive way to do it.