The war in Iraq

[Tez3]

Actually, I think it very well may turn out to be a 1 to 1 comparison, but I'll get to that in a few lines.

When I apply my Minnesota Farmboy Ethics to this problem, I can totally understand wanting to fix the mess that we made before we leave. That's just the right thing to do. The problem with this kind of thinking is that "we" didn't cause it. Or more appropriately, YOU (because you actually served) are not totally responsible for this. I don't think our servicemen and women should be taken on a guilt trip to fix a mess that began long before your granddaddy was born. That's not fair according to my MFE system of looking at things.

At any rate, all of this may be moot. Since this thread started talking about Britain, please pay attention to this recent article.

THE UK HAS RUN OUT OF MONEY!

The US is in the same boat, but we have the world's reserve currency at the moment, so we can play around for a little while longer. The other half of the Anglo-American Empire isn't going to be playing around much longer because it's gotten to the point where all of this costs too god damned much to pay for. Which brings me back to the Soviet Union. All of these wars are going to end, whether we have "fixed the problems" or not. The US and the UK have broken the bank with guns and butter programs and unless we get serious soon about ending these wars and cutting useless spending, this misadventure is going to end...the hard way.

My fingers feel filthy having to type this argument, killing innocent people needlessly, and wasting productive men and women should be enough for anyone to stand up stop this craziness. Apparently, it needs also to be pointed out that the specter of hyperinflation and collapse of our economy is also the result of pursuing this asinine agenda even further. If dead Iraqi babies isn't enough to convince people, maybe the real possibility of not being able to feed their own children, will get the job done. If it gets to that point, well I have to say, Karma has had it's way with us. We deserve it...well maybe other people do because I've done my share to try and stop it, and I've prepared for the worst because no one listened. At any rate, I ain't sticking around to watch the show if it gets that far.

"It's easiest to learn the lessons from history because the pain is removed and wisdom is retained. It's harder to learn from others because their mistakes reverberate through your life. The hardest way to learn is through experience, because you own the results of your mishaps."

And we're supposed to have run out of money because we spend it on wars? No, don't think so, try the recession, the banks lending money to people who couldn't pay it back, the Euro crisis, the Labour government etc etc etc. We don't spend nearly as much as other countries on the military and we actually have a nice little number going on selling munitions ( no I don't approve), no where in that article does it suggest that military spending is the cause of the recession which is affecting countries not involved in Afghan or Iraq btw. You can't twist things around to fit your theories just because it sounds okay to you.

The 'dead babies' argument is tasteless and crass, it's what the First World War propaganda used to dwell on, 'the 'Germans kill babies'. Thought we'd have grown out of that one. You have done little to stop any wars, you just lecture us on here and we're not buying it, none of us here want wars, we are all for peace but we are also realists, we are in Afghanistan, just about out of Iraq and instead of beating our breasts and lamenting we have to do something positive to help sort the mess, which while we are partly responsible for but we must also lay blame on those on the other side who have committed crimes against humanity. I don't see you blaming them for that by the way, if you are against war it follows you should also be against ethinic cleansing, murder, torture, rape and all the other little ways Saddam and his family had. Josh is quite right about the Nazi connection, it runs through the Arab nations like thyphoid.

Service people aren't being taken on a guilt trip, I don't know how you work that one out, they are doing what you are not, something positive to help the Afghans. The Taliban had a stranglehold on them, now it's being loosened daily and people are discovering there's more to life than having acid thrown in their daughters faces and their sons killed for flying kites. We shouldn't have gone in but now we have it's made a surprising difference to amny peoples lives. Many areas are now being handed over to Afghan security forces, the police trained by my colleagues, the army trained by the Allies, There's women police officers now, a thing never heard of before, there's school for girls, women are working. It's not what we went in for but the troops you keep saying are ignorant and ill used are the ones making the difference, not the governments but the troops many of whom do things like build schools, medical centres etc off their own bat and with money raised at home.

 

[Jenna]

I do not take issue with taking out a Nazi piece of scum. I remember talking to refugees who had their entire family killed in front of them. I remember reading a story about a dancer who had to watch his wife and children lowered alive into a meat grinder.

No, I hadn't the slightest problem with taking out THAT kind of a leader.

If if only we hadn't helped get him into power in the first place.

I think the inhumanity of those stories are almost impossible to read of. I think though that this is one of many stories. Do you think perhaps that other stories from other points of view are not always so clearly represented or portrayed by our sources of information? Exactly as you say, not everyone realises the significant funding of the West toward the arming and deployment of Afghan mujahideen and others against the Soviet Union. Yet when these aspects become incongruent with national economic and military goals, they are not represented in mainstream media. Would you agree that true dispassionate objectivity is not easily come by.

My opinion is that there is a need to differentiate between actions which ARE justified and the realisation of goals through actions that WE justify.

No matter what I do, be it planning a subway atrocity or initiating aggression with another nation, I can always find ways to justify my action as can each of us. That is not the same as my, or the action of anyone else actually BEING justified.

I think it is not a simple matter to apply objectivity and tell the two apart when we ourselves are naturally prejudiced.

More disturbingly, war seems to me to be something that is almost flippantly justified now. I do not believe that every diplomatic avenue is always explored before war documents are signed. I think that is unforgivable. That is just my thoughts. Thank you.

 

[Tez3]

I don't think wars are 'flippantly' justified, I think the people who decide to go to war think long and hard about it however what I don't think they do is look at it from the right perspective. The powers that be will always ask 'what's in it for us' first and if there's enough they will go to war. A lot of effort goes into justifying any action, the 'it's to safeguard our country' is the favourite one, it's 'for national security' is another. If they can sell that to the populace they're they. I'm sure wars aren't done on a whim, there's always the bottom line as I said which is 'what's in it for us'. Iraq it's oil, in Afghanistan there's a vast amount of minerals, prhaps oil and a lot of othe stuff that would make it worthwhile going there. There's also big contracts to companies to 'rebuild', I know America also contracts out much of it's 'housekeeping' to companies things like catering etc. There's big money to be made when a country goes to war.

One can learn to be objective, one can learn to look at things from all sides, I support our troops but don't support the war in Afghanistan. I know the reason we went in, the supposed reason we went in and the history of Afghan including the fact we propped up regimes and supported the Taliban. Britain has a long history in Afghanistan, this is our fourth war there, the score so far is 1-1-1, the result of this one we are still waiting for.

Perhaps I'm unusual but I don't actually think so, in that I can look at these situations objectively, I can see the bad the good and the indifferent, I don't think assuming everyone is biased is correct, several posters here can see the situation for what it is without the clouds of nationalism or prejudice covering their eyes. I don't think anyone here has justified being in Afghan or Iraq, what people are saying is that now we are there we need to make a withdrawal that doesn't harm the people any more than necessay, that we need to leave the countries better than we found them. The facts are however that Saddam did commit horrendous crimes, killed hundreds of thousands and the Taliban are oppressors, you can't escape that and while people are castigating the Allies for being there they also need to castigate those who commit atrocities, it can't be one sided. The Allies don't lower people into meat grinders, don't gas entire populations, we try to keep to the moral and humanitarian side, if someone trangresses they are punished. We do try to see all sides, people here are allowed to demonstrate against the wars, they are allowed to express their opposition. The Allies do listen to those in Iraq and Afghanistan who have complaints agasinst them, they pay huge amounts of compensation out for buildings, livestock etc that the Afghans claim have been destroyed, we know the claims may well be inflated, (the farmers here do it as well when they claim the soldiers kill the sheep accidently when on exercise) but they are paid anyway for goodwills sake. Can you imagine the Taliban paying out claims? If soldirsstep out of line the Afghans can complain to the Allies, it is taken seriously, soldiers have been punished.


For the OP who cited Wikileaks documents, here's the result of Wikileaks actions, hardly humanitarian.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/taliban+hunt+wikileaks+outed+afghan+informers/3727667.html

 

[Sukerkin]

I could not disagree with you more.
You think we should have left Hussein in power ... ?

Not really a fair way to phrase the question, Don.

If it were the case that action were taken, for purely moral reasons, in all cases where such regimes exist, then we would be in accord with no quibbles (other than where the balance lies between stopping horrors and not gainsaying a peoples right to self-determination).

I know that, for public consumption by the tax payer, the invasion of Iraq has to be dressed in fine clothes of virtue but we would not be being true to ourselves if we did not admit that we know that that is not how the Real Politik game is played.

Let me state once more, as I alluded to in an earlier post, the Great Game has rolled on for centuries and it rolls on still; if my country is going to play then I would rather it and it's allies made good decisions about which hands to bid on. Iraq and Afghanistan were not winning hands and never looked like being ones. Which makes you ponder the background ... but that way lies conspiracy knot-work :lol:.

 

[Tez3]

There's reasons for going to war in Afghan and Iraq and there's reasons against, none of these include 'soldiers shouldn't be there because they kill people' and 'the SAS should kill the leaders'. Hysterical outbursts accusing soldiers of killing thousands of civilians does nothing for anyone, neither does name calling.

 

[Makalakumu]

And we're supposed to have run out of money because we spend it on wars? No, don't think so, try the recession, the banks lending money to people who couldn't pay it back, the Euro crisis, the Labour government etc etc etc. We don't spend nearly as much as other countries on the military and we actually have a nice little number going on selling munitions ( no I don't approve), no where in that article does it suggest that military spending is the cause of the recession which is affecting countries not involved in Afghan or Iraq btw. You can't twist things around to fit your theories just because it sounds okay to you.

The 'dead babies' argument is tasteless and crass, it's what the First World War propaganda used to dwell on, 'the 'Germans kill babies'. Thought we'd have grown out of that one. You have done little to stop any wars, you just lecture us on here and we're not buying it, none of us here want wars, we are all for peace but we are also realists, we are in Afghanistan, just about out of Iraq and instead of beating our breasts and lamenting we have to do something positive to help sort the mess, which while we are partly responsible for but we must also lay blame on those on the other side who have committed crimes against humanity. I don't see you blaming them for that by the way, if you are against war it follows you should also be against ethinic cleansing, murder, torture, rape and all the other little ways Saddam and his family had. Josh is quite right about the Nazi connection, it runs through the Arab nations like thyphoid.

Service people aren't being taken on a guilt trip, I don't know how you work that one out, they are doing what you are not, something positive to help the Afghans. The Taliban had a stranglehold on them, now it's being loosened daily and people are discovering there's more to life than having acid thrown in their daughters faces and their sons killed for flying kites. We shouldn't have gone in but now we have it's made a surprising difference to amny peoples lives. Many areas are now being handed over to Afghan security forces, the police trained by my colleagues, the army trained by the Allies, There's women police officers now, a thing never heard of before, there's school for girls, women are working. It's not what we went in for but the troops you keep saying are ignorant and ill used are the ones making the difference, not the governments but the troops many of whom do things like build schools, medical centres etc off their own bat and with money raised at home.

Holy doublethink batman. Out of one side of your mouth, you say the war is unjustified and then out of the other, you justify it.

Let me straighten this out for you...

If the wars are unjustified, then the civilian deaths are are too, so are service member casualties and deaths and so is the cost to both societies.

You can't fix a problem by joining the same system that caused it. You fix it getting out and changing the system. It's that simple, but since your investment is so heavy, you can't see it.

Or as Upton Sinclair wrote, "you can't get a man to understand something if there paycheck depends on them not understanding it."

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[granfire]

Relatively stable. I know this of this dancer on Iraq who watched his family get ground up into meat. While still alive. Care to tell that to them? Dude, it was an oppressive Nazi regime.

You want to tell the Kurds who were bombed with mustard gas that? Oh wait. They're dead. How about the families who had to clean up the after math?

We agree that pulling out too quick is a bad idea... But for different reasons entirely.

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Aight, I try to collect my thoughts for a bit.

As hindsight is always 20/20, naturally what I have to say is not exactly news.

However the west has a sad history of supporting the wrong, not cause, but person.
Pretty much started with Germany springing Lenin in 1917, look how that turned out, supporting Stalin wasn't much better, but hey, pick the 'lesser' evil, right.

Hussein had the west's fullest support, although everybody knew what he was, just because he kept the US arch enemy Iran busy. Just like the West supported the Mujahedin because they kicked Soviet butt. See a theme here?

Sad but true, the Hussein regime was in many aspects pretty progressive, too. Women having a nearly normal life by western standards.

So, they should have not supported him in the 80s, should have definitely pulled the plug on him in 91....

Now, gosh, it's already 20 years since....
we are dealing with the enormous power vacuum left.

The situation is similar in many aspects to Yugoslavia: As much as one condemned Tito for being a dictator, by suppressing everybody equally he managed to keep a lid on ethnic animosities that had been going on for over 400 years. After he was gone the oppression ended, all hell broke lose in a terrifying civil war.

Much of that is happening in Iraq now, too. Plus of course the added interests of outside influence, the terrorists, the behind the scenes hatred that the so called 'allies' can't say openly.

All things considered, as coldhearted as it sound, and probably is, Hussein was the lesser of all evils, in his cruelty and insanity he was a stabilizing factor in the region.

Now all the ethnic groups that nobody bothered before hand to learn about are jockeying for power.
The reactionary forces are trying to turn the clock back a few hundred years.

Like in Afghanistan...western involvement was to support the opponents of Soviet Russia, for no other reason than that communism is bad.
How bad was it? I mean, when you look at the Soviet model vs the Taliban.
Women got to go to school, become professionals. With Western support, mind you, the champions of freedom, they were robbed of it. Good, eh!

So, we are talking a span of over 30 years here, and still we can't find it to look before we leap. the days of riding a charge into battle have been gone, I think as far back as the Korea conflict. Vietnam I should imagine has proven that you can't win against the unseen enemy, not without intelligence.


so, the long explanation to my short answer:
You just can't pack up your toys and go home.
It's like a contractor coming in to renovate your house, taking his own sweet time to demo the basement, rip out the kitchen and bathroom, taking off the roof, all in time to disappear for monsoon season....or pulling out the keystone from an arch, expecting it to hold up and not crumble.
After all, precedence has been set in Vietnam as to what can and does happen to the people who put their trust in the West after the heroes pull out and go home.

 

[Makalakumu]

You just can't pack up your toys and go home...

Yes we can pack up our toys and go home. Your post sets the context for doing just that. This problem started when the West drew lines in the desert and grouped people together who never wanted to be grouped. Then, the West supported dictator after petty dictator to keep the lid on the mess. Now, when that strategy failed, we're going to go in and fix the problem ourselves.

It's not going to happen. Dictators who were willing to feed women and children into meat grinders couldn't do it.

The West needs to change it's policy in a big way and let the chips fall where they may. Like I said above, it's going to happen anyway, especially as we break the bank trying to pursue the failed colonial policies of the past.

In the US, we have a candidate for president who is advocating that we do just what we have suggested above. Ron Paul has promised to end the wars, pull out our troops and close bases around the world in order to save us over 1 trillion dollars a year in debt spending. We need to do this because of the people that are being hurt by these policies and because of the dismal future these policies deliver to our own children.

This is not a fringe political belief. Ron Paul is gaining more and more support every day and he could very well be the Republican nominee for president. In fact, out of all the presidential candidates, Ron Paul gets more donations from service men and women then any other candidate in the field. This tells me that most of the people who serve know what the right thing to do is. This tells me that most of our servicemen and women are tired of the excuses and petty justifications that trap them and endanger them...and they just want to come home and do the job they really signed up to do.

Even if you don't agree with Ron Paul on everything, this is the biggest social/moral/economic issue of our times. We really can end it. We really can walk away. And the people over there will be okay. They will be okay because we're not ****ing with them anymore and they can finally decide how to run their own society. In some places, it might take a long time to get over the mess of colonialism, but god dammit that's the real price we have to pay. Our freedom is worth it and their freedom will be worth it...in the end.

 

[granfire]

I am sorry, but that is not what I said.

Reread the last paragraph if you will. The west went in there, pulling the stabilizing factors out of the region an now they are packing up.
That's like playing with matches in the ammo storage shed, or the fireworks booth. the BOOM is a matter of when, not if.

 

[Makalakumu]

I am sorry, but that is not what I said.

Reread the last paragraph if you will. The west went in there, pulling the stabilizing factors out of the region an now they are packing up.
That's like playing with matches in the ammo storage shed, or the fireworks booth. the BOOM is a matter of when, not if.

And my point is that we already ****ed it up too bad to fix it. That's why we need to get out now.

Recently, an Army whistleblower blew the led off of the official propaganda and dared tell the truth.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/2/15/army_whistleblower_lt_col_daniel_davis

"Senior ranking U.S. military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the U.S. Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable." That’s the assessment of a damning new report by Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, who returned in October from his second year-long deployment in Afghanistan and says military officials have misled the American public about how poorly the decade-long war is going. He argues that local Afghan governments are unable to provide the basic needs of the people and that insurgents control virtually all parts of Afghanistan beyond eyeshot of a U.S. base. We speak with Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone, who obtained a copy of the full report and published it last week. "Lieutenant Colonel Davis is on the right side of history, and the fact [is] that he believes in this and is willing to risk [his career]," Hastings says. [includes rush transcript]"

We're not making it better. We're not helping at all. We don't control jack ****. It's time to leave...

 

[john2054]

Hi people. Thanks for contributing to this thread. I know the arguments both for and against the occupations goes a long way. Tez can I ask you to provide a reference for the fact as you say, that Saddam killed hundreds of thousands. Are you sure that you didn't just make that little gem up, to suit your argument, as indeed the first casualty of war, typically is, the truth.

 

[Tez3]

Holy doublethink batman. Out of one side of your mouth, you say the war is unjustified and then out of the other, you justify it.

Let me straighten this out for you...

If the wars are unjustified, then the civilian deaths are are too, so are service member casualties and deaths and so is the cost to both societies.

You can't fix a problem by joining the same system that caused it. You fix it getting out and changing the system. It's that simple, but since your investment is so heavy, you can't see it.

Or as Upton Sinclair wrote, "you can't get a man to understand something if there paycheck depends on them not understanding it."

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Excuse me? Only in your mind does it read that I'm afraid. You've missed the point, I'm not justifying the war at all, what I'm saying, as I've said before is that sometimes out of bad thngs good things can happen because some peoples will to do good overtakes others will to do evil.

When someone disagrees with you, you always tell them 'you can't see it because....' and you are the only one who sees the truth. Please don't patronise me by saying what you think I mean, I wrote what I meant, that the war isn't justified, but it's happened, we are in there and surprisingly or not, those who are there, the service people are trying to make a difference to the lives of the Afghans in good ways rather than killing them. That doesn't justify war, it means there people who are trying to help there. How you managed to mangle that into some thing else I don't know but please don't do it. If you don't understand me, ask, I will explain but don't assume I mean one thing when I say something else.

 

[granfire]

Hi people. Thanks for contributing to this thread. I know the arguments both for and against the occupations goes a long way. Tez can I ask you to provide a reference for the fact as you say, that Saddam killed hundreds of thousands. Are you sure that you didn't just make that little gem up, to suit your argument, as indeed the first casualty of war, typically is, the truth.

Actually the first casualty of war is innocence.

 

[Tez3]

Hi people. Thanks for contributing to this thread. I know the arguments both for and against the occupations goes a long way. Tez can I ask you to provide a reference for the fact as you say, that Saddam killed hundreds of thousands. Are you sure that you didn't just make that little gem up, to suit your argument, as indeed the first casualty of war, typically is, the truth.

You really don't watch the news do you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...qi-Kurds-remember-day-Saddam-gassed-them.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein's_Iraq

"Iraq under Saddam Hussein had high levels of torture and mass murder.
Secret police, torture, murders, rape, abductions, deportations, forced disappearances, assassinations, chemical weapons, and the destruction of wetlands (more specifically, the destruction of the food sources of rival groups) were some of the methods Saddam Hussein used to maintain control.[SUP][original research?][/SUP] The total number of deaths related to torture and murder during this period are unknown, as are the reports of human rights violations. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture."


http://www.gendercide.org/case_anfal.html

http://www.int-review.org/terr33a.html
http://www.princeton.edu/~slaughtr/Commentary/IntlPanel.pdf


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jul/23/iraq.suzannegoldenberg

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/internationalhumanrights/p/saddam_hussein.htm

"Hussein openly idolized the former Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, a man notable as much for his paranoia-induced execution sprees as anything else. In July 1978, he had his government issue a memorandum decreeing that anyone whose ideas came into conflict with those of the Baath Party leadership would be subject to summary execution. Most, but certainly not all, of Hussein's targets were ethnic Kurds and Shiite Muslims"

[h=3]Ethnic Cleansing:[/h]The two dominant ethnicities of Iraq have traditionally been Arabs in south and central Iraq, and Kurds in the north and northeast, particularly along the Iranian border. Hussein long viewed ethnic Kurds as a long-term threat to Iraq's survival, and the oppression and extermination of the Kurds was one of his administration's highest priorities.
[h=3]Religious Persecution:[/h]The Baath Party was dominated by Sunni Muslims, who made up only about one-third of Iraq's general population; the other two-thirds was made up of Shiite Muslims, Shiism also happening to be the official religion of Iran. Throughout Hussein's tenure, and especially during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), he saw the marginalization and eventual elimination of Shiism as a necessary goal in the Arabization process, by which Iraq would purge itself of all perceived Iranian influence.

[h=3]The Dujail Massacre of 1982:[/h]In July of 1982, several Shiite militants attempted to assassinate Saddam Hussein while he was riding through the city. Hussein responded by ordering the slaughter of some 148 residents, including dozens of children. This is the only war crime on which Hussein has been charged, and he will almost certainly be executed before any other charges go to trial.
[h=3]The Barzani Clan Abductions of 1983:[/h]Masoud Barzani led the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), an ethnic Kurdish revolutionary group fighting Baathist oppression. After Barzani cast his lot with the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War, Hussein had some 8,000 members of Barzani's clan, including hundreds of women and children, abducted. It is assumed that most were slaughtered; thousands have been discovered in mass graves in southern Iraq.

[h=3]The al-Anfal Campaign:[/h]The worst human rights abuses of Hussein's tenure took place during the genocidal al-Anfal Campaign (1986-1989), in which Hussein's administration called for the extermination of every living thing--human or animal--in certain regions of the Kurdish north. All told, some 182,000 people--men, women, and children--were slaughtered, many through use of chemical weapons. The Halabja poison gas massacre of 1988 alone killed over 5,000 people. Hussein later blamed the attacks on the Iranians, and the Reagan administration, which supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War, helped promote this cover story.

[h=3]The Campaign Against the Marsh Arabs:[/h]Hussein did not limit his genocide to identifiably Kurdish groups; he also targeted the predominantly Shiite Marsh Arabs of southeastern Iraq, the direct descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians. By destroying more than 95% of the region's marshes, he effectively depleted its food supply and destroyed the entire millennia-old culture, reducing the number of Marsh Arabs from 250,000 to approximately 30,000. It is unknown how much of this population drop can be attributed to direct starvation and how much to migration, but the human cost was unquestionably high.
[h=3]The Post-Uprising Massacres of 1991:[/h]In the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, the United States encouraged Kurds and Shiites to rebel against Hussein's regime--then withdrew and refused to support them, leaving an unknown number to be slaughtered. At one point, Hussein's regime killed as many as 2,000 suspected Kurdish rebels every day. Some two million Kurds hazarded the dangerous trek through the mountains to Iran and Turkey, hundreds of thousands dying in the process. "

 

[Tez3]

Yes we can pack up our toys and go home. Your post sets the context for doing just that. This problem started when the West drew lines in the desert and grouped people together who never wanted to be grouped. Then, the West supported dictator after petty dictator to keep the lid on the mess. Now, when that strategy failed, we're going to go in and fix the problem ourselves.

It's not going to happen. Dictators who were willing to feed women and children into meat grinders couldn't do it.

The West needs to change it's policy in a big way and let the chips fall where they may. Like I said above, it's going to happen anyway, especially as we break the bank trying to pursue the failed colonial policies of the past.

In the US, we have a candidate for president who is advocating that we do just what we have suggested above. Ron Paul has promised to end the wars, pull out our troops and close bases around the world in order to save us over 1 trillion dollars a year in debt spending. We need to do this because of the people that are being hurt by these policies and because of the dismal future these policies deliver to our own children.

This is not a fringe political belief. Ron Paul is gaining more and more support every day and he could very well be the Republican nominee for president. In fact, out of all the presidential candidates, Ron Paul gets more donations from service men and women then any other candidate in the field. This tells me that most of the people who serve know what the right thing to do is. This tells me that most of our servicemen and women are tired of the excuses and petty justifications that trap them and endanger them...and they just want to come home and do the job they really signed up to do.

Even if you don't agree with Ron Paul on everything, this is the biggest social/moral/economic issue of our times. We really can end it. We really can walk away. And the people over there will be okay. They will be okay because we're not ****ing with them anymore and they can finally decide how to run their own society. In some places, it might take a long time to get over the mess of colonialism, but god dammit that's the real price we have to pay. Our freedom is worth it and their freedom will be worth it...in the end.

And the pigs are fed, watered and ready to fly.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Hi people. Thanks for contributing to this thread. I know the arguments both for and against the occupations goes a long way. Tez can I ask you to provide a reference for the fact as you say, that Saddam killed hundreds of thousands. Are you sure that you didn't just make that little gem up, to suit your argument, as indeed the first casualty of war, typically is, the truth.

Honestly, john, that is a matter that was well documented BEFORE the war and led to a number of UN sanctions. Look into the history of the Iraq Ba'ath party, the invasion of Kuwait, the attacks on Kurdistan, and you'll have a better concept.

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[Makalakumu]

And the pigs are fed, watered and ready to fly.

Rarely is the opportunity to riposte so eloquently presented so easily. Do you mean these pigs?

In the end, I see this issue as a crisis of character. By standing on the side of the people who perpetrate this, we are telling the children over there that it's okay if we kill you...and we're going to steal from our own children to do that. No good is going to come of this, we've got Iran, Syria, and Libya waiting in the wings, it's time to wake up and see the train wreck for what it is. It's a homicidal armed robbery where the spoils go straight up to your masters.

 

[Tez3]

However there's several issues here. In the UK it was the Labour government that took us to war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we have a Conservative/Lib Dem coalition now, they didn't start these wars but are left to 'finish' them one way or another. Getting out of conflicts is a lot harder than it is to start them. To see things simply is a mistake, the cause of the last world war can be traced back to medieval wars, through the Franco-Prussian war, the First World War, actions taken years ago, decades and centuries ago come back to haunt us. Britain is on her fourth war in Afghanistan. Simply saying we have to get out and they'll be fine is naive and foolish showing you don't understand the situation out there, I take it you've never been out there? I feel it's pointless discussing this in many ways, as we are stuck on the 'dead babies' argument which is one I find particularly distasteful and unfactual. If you think Allied soldiers are gunning down defenceless civilians like ducks in a carnival stall, you really don't understand the troops and you are insulting them. I wish you would do some more thinking rather than emoting about the situation which everyone agrees is not good but one that we must try to do the best for everyone in. That includes the Afghans, we simply can't abandon them at this ppint in time for many reasons, see Peter Tatchell's views which I linked. he's a peace campaigner who has taken time to understand the situation. Leaving Afghan is extremely desirable but we can't make things worse, we have to leave them better, we owe it to the people there and we owe it to our troops who do believe they are making a difference for the good even if you don't, they are the ones on the ground so I'm guessing they understand the situation better than you do.

 

[Makalakumu]

The emotive moral outrage over the war is justified, Tez3. We've got people who are dying needlessly, we've got future generations that are being taxed for something that will not provide them any benefit, and we have a stubborn refusal by a massive amount of people to face the facts on the ground that are actually being reported by servicemen and women. See the link I provided earlier.

I see the whole idea that "we need to stay in order to fix the mess we made and/or make life better for afghans" as just another Fascist slogan. The idea that we can use force to make one group of people somewhere live according to how another group of people choose is fascist. How many regimes have tried this? How many have failed?

The ultimate irony, Tez3, is that you are actually supporting fascism with your posts. From other posts, I can see that you are normally vehemently against it, but in this case, you're inconsistent. This is a blind spot to consider in the future...

 

[john2054]

Hi Josh and Tez, with regard to Saddam's character, I agree that he was a bad murderous bastard, and i for one will not miss him. But that being said i think that spending Billions or Trillions is it, to attack bomb and rape a country (don't be offended my my precise use of language, but look it up if you don't believe me), is like using a rocket launcher to swat a fly. Not necessary and overkill. What's more it sets a bad example to our children, to know that the only way their elder's, parents and grandparents, know to deal with a foreign threat is with threats of violence and culminating in ultimate force, or whatever phraseology it is the army chooses to call its mission that day. Fact is we have affectively attacked and effectively dismantled not just the emotional dignity and well being of these countries, but also their history and dignity as well. It is all very well claiming the moral high ground with hindsight, but in the face of the slaughter which side of the pond were you gunning for? I know I was with the Iraqis all the way!