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| SFReader Forums > The Real World > World Events > Victory in Iraq | Forum Quick Jump
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
      
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 7/11/2006 11:59 AM (GMT -5) |   | would say "marginalized" would be the best of possibilities. Call me skeptical, but if the Republican Guard enter Iraq, I think we've got another major war on our hands. Maybe (I said MAYBE) another world war, depending on who all wants to get involved.
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Yeah, I was just trying to say, the result of "losing" the war over there, whether it's a world war or just the invasion/occupation, would be, the US will be more or less powerless in terms of global politics.
I think we've been on a very slippery slope since "W" and his cabal rigged the 2000 election. Even wihtout Iraq we'd be facing a "hostile" administration, down on civil-liberties, loading up the Supreme Court with x-treme right wing conservatives, breaking social security and squandering the US record surplus on tax cuts for billionaires. Not to mention, the porous "Immigration" strategy they have and insane "policies" for energy and education!
"Embrace climate change; how do we know global warming isn't a *good* thing?"
Well it is if you are itching to drill for oil under those pesky polar ice-caps!!
I think the Bush cabal was going to spell serious problems for America with or without Iraq. In some ways the failure in Iraq is helping to contain some of the more dangerous and threatening items on their domestic agenda, and ironically, may be tipping everything to the Dems, re: Rove's oft-touted theory that in times of a closely divided "electorate" one party can seize power and set the political tone for 100 years. But everthing is so gerrymandered and corrupt, the so-called will of the American people is no longer being even mildly considered. It's like the way the Nazis ran the reichstag. Sure people vote, but somehow the result is always the same! A win for the Fuhrer.
They're doing that all-right, but they may have to wait a while before they overturn Roe V Wade, open the borders for their slave-laborers and sell us all to Prince Bandar -- whilst building a trillion dollar "Star Wars 2" slush fund, er I mean, *defense* system. And "embracing" global warming. (How do you embrace a hurricaine and a dust bowl simultaneously? By buidling your "dream home" in the now-temperate anarctic circle! Paradise!)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060712/sc_afp/australiaantarctica_060712173026Shoot, Iraq's even sidetracked them from their "War on the liberal media." I'm guessing the Republican party is going to pay through the nose for a very long time for the "war on journalism" waged by Rove and Cheney and Bush. And gas will probably dip down in price as we get closer to the mid-terms, that's all penciled in by the admin and their Saudi buddies -- long before the supposed causes for oil-hikes even existed.
Daniel
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darkbow
Rabbit lord
Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1760
| Posted 7/11/2006 4:09 PM (GMT -5) | | Daniel,
If you're not familiar with them, I suggest you rent and watch two DVD documentaries: "Why We Fight" and "Control Room."
"Why We Fight" is about the military-industrial complex in the U.S.
"Control Room" is about Al Jazeera during the early part of the Iraq war.
I'm skeptical of documentaries, mainly because of Michael Moore (even if I should happen to agree with him on a point, I don't agree with HOW he tries to prove it), but these two documentaries were eye openers in many ways.
I'll also suggest the movie "Lord of War" starring Nick Cage. Yes, it's a movie, thus fiction, but it's scary how close it is to reality. | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 7/11/2006 4:28 PM (GMT -5) | | | Thanks, Darkbow. I'll keep those in mind.
On Michael Moore:
I happened to see Far. 911 recently and thought the latter half of the movie was very powerful. I thought, on the other hand, that Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" was an under-achiever, given the extremely provocative title and subject matter.
Decent documentary but not a great one, if you know what I mean.
On Iraq and US foreign and domestic policy under Bush:
"In vertigo you will be...." <crunching heavy metal riffs in background>
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darkbow
Rabbit lord
Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1760
| Posted 7/11/2006 5:07 PM (GMT -5) | | Shortest Straw!
Wow! A quote from my favorite metal album of all time. I'm impressed. | | Back to Top | | |
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Scott M. Sandridge
Former King of Shameless Plugs
Date Joined Dec 2005
Total Posts : 714
| Posted 7/12/2006 9:57 AM (GMT -5) | |
nathan said...
No need to apologize, a] you didn't resort to name calling but kept your indignation to the political spectrum. b] if I had lost my brother I'd be just a touch cynical myself.
Some of your points confuse me however. I'm not a fan of a guy (Bush) who whips out gay marriage and abortion everytime his poll numbers go down. I think he sold his soul over border security so he's pals could have cheap labor. I don't like that he wen't with Rumsefled over a true thinking-warrior like Powell. I too agree w/ you that if we had put all of our rescources into Afghanistan there'd be a Wal-Mart and McDonalds on every paved street by now.
I don't think we should let our distaste for the son of privilage cloud certain foriegn policy truths. Or that we should resort to trying to use primary colors to view every shade of gray a multi-decade war against islamafasicsm throws our way.
I'm no fan of the UN and if America needs to do something it needs to do something whether they like it or not. It is a useful tool but not the highest governing body in the world. We do not have a one world government.
Also, I understand you don't like how Bush went into Iraq. If you want to make a moral argument then okay, I'm with you. But it wasn't a war crime by any technical legal sense, by stating such so flatly you are purposefully ignoring nueance and precedent; the twin pillars of international law. Hate Bush? Yes. War crime? No. The 1st time Saddam's anti-aircraft guns locked on American planes in the no-fly zone under the original Gulf War charter we could have laid him out, as 1 example of the multi-facet legal approach used. In fact under the '91 agreement Bush could have just struck without all the other hoops he jumped through to make it look proper. That pre-war show was mostly just that: show.
Iraq did not have 'little' to do with islamic terrorists. Saddam may have had little to do with Al Quida. But he had runways and 747s laid out for terrorist training. He plus Syria were the financial backs of Hezbollah, Hamas, Marytrs Brigade and regular supplied weapons and bombs into Israel. Al Quida was an administrative and liason body with all terror orgs. To include the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood a international group closely tied to the PLO armed wings. The relationships are incestuous and convoluted, as good terror relationships should be for them to work.
Baghdad hasn't had a culture for 3k years. It's had one 50 year Sunni fasicist culture after 50 year British rule after Ottoman rule after Persian rule. The Kurds desperately wanted us in. The Shia died by the tens of thousands in a modern version of the Bay of Pigs when, after Desert Storm, America said 'we got your back' then let them get slaughtered. If we had an ounce of humanitarian honor we should have helped a long time ago.
Plus. Now we are there. These aren't the Viet Cong who after we leave will be happy to just kill 2 million of their own people. Their coming here. Also if we leave now Iran owns Iraq. Given the concentration of oil reserves in both states that is a desperate doomsday scenario.
Librals who are father left than myself will loose their minds over having rights to privacy trampled because of shady wire taps (as they should), but when you point out how Saddam's sons used to make high school principls bring girls on tours of their palaces so they could pick out the teen agers they wanted to rape we just shrug that it's their culture? If we can pursue legal means to stop the Republicans then we should be bunny hopping over ourselves to kill Saddam's regimes. Our outrage at horror shouldn't be blunted because they're not American. Such views are for the far-right, not us lefties. JFK's wars of liberation are our ideological birthritght and should notbe ceded to political correctness.
In my bleeding liberal heart I hold the opinion that as long as our military is voluntairly and not conscription we should deploy to fight tyranny and Islamafascist everywhere we can get the fight, on whatever pretext -- though I'm not saying that's Bush agenda.
Strangeer, if you really can look at crypto- vs. Islamic- fascists and thing it is a matter of semantics then all I can really say is look at America under Regan-Bush (1) for 12 years and Afghanistan under the Taliban for 20. Such broad, nonsensical strokes don't do your arguments justice.
Now-- that wasn't ranty was it  ?
You said it far better than I ever could've, Nate. 
Distant Passages: The Best from Double-Edged Publishing 2005
Which lich fell in the ditch? | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 7/12/2006 11:08 AM (GMT -5) | | |
Nathan said:
In my bleeding liberal heart I hold the opinion that as long as our military is voluntairly and not conscription we should deploy to fight tyranny and Islamafascist everywhere we can get the fight, on whatever pretext -- though I'm not saying that's Bush agenda.
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The problem is: there is no military solution to global terrorism.
If we want to change the global-politico flow toward Islamic extremism, it's gonna take a lot more than bombing cities and occupying countries.
These military "solutions" just breed more terrorists, and they are tactically perilous as well, not to mention based on strategies that no longer apply to the situation at hand.
Go back over the past 100 or so years of military conflict and you'll see a pattern, from Napoleon in Spain*, through to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 80's that shows professional armies (especially conscripted armies) getting bested again and again by guerillas.
Isn't that how America (partly) won its own independence so many years ago? "Terrorism" I am sure it looked and felt pretty similar to Iraq for the occupying Brits. Even if that's not true, I feel pretty confident that military solutions are only slightly applicable to the so-called "war" on terrorism.
***article quote***
*Which brings me to Napoleon's two biggest mistakes. The first was Spain. Napoleon got Spain treacherously. He had an agreement whereby he could march through it on the way to Portugal, which was bothering him by interfering with his sanctions against trading with the British. Once his armies were in Spain he took the place over, whereupon his forces engaged in their usual practices of priest-pestering, church-looting and removing sparkly things and artworks to other locations for safekeeping.
Napoleon's big mistake was underestimating the religious feelings of the staunchly Roman Catholic Spanish. He thought they'd embrace "liberation", but it seems they had a curious attachment to their own beliefs. The British annoyed Napoleon in Spain by winning battles against him, but the real defeat of the French was caused by widespread guerilla resistance.
From Margaret Atwood article "When You Open the Door to War" in Los Angeles Times, originally printed March 2003.
Daniel
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4554
| Posted 7/12/2006 2:04 PM (GMT -5) | | Daniel,
What did we get out of it? Well, we made it possible for your average wanna-be-a-Martyr to get a bus ticket to Iraq rather than having to save for a plane ticket for NYC. We took away their leaders use of distance and home-ground for avoiding being physically present in the confrontation itself, and thus have been able to actually kill some of the cowardly dogs that have been recruiting murderers to strike at us while they stayed safe at home. All that is a plus in my book.
As to all the other troubles and injustice in the world, is it your arguement that because we can not take on the whole ball of wax at once, we shouldn't try to take any of it? That we should have ignored the Taliban's support for the 9/11 attacks and Iraq's non-comliance with the cease-fire of '91 in favor of launching a corrective action against the Saudi's? While I'll grant they are no less guilty they had and continue to give less overt provocations. If so, I say that we had to start somewhere and that we chose the right places.
Now, I'll grant that things should have been planned better for the post invasion phaze of our operations. Our abilities at nation building have always been hampered by our disinclination to abide by the successful 19th century British and 20th century Soviet models. We don't want to take over and stay. We never have, even in the places we ended up doing so-- like the Philipines and Purto Rico. It is much, much harder to take in a feral child and raise it to be a competent adult than to make it a coolie-slave on a plantation. Yet we always try and unfortunatly we always underestimate how difficult it will be.
I don't care much for Bush myself, I think he's a half- hearted conservative who looks to his own first. But I have to say that we will survive his foibles and weaknesses and our women won't be wearing burkas while he's in charge, something I could not say about the alternatives we had to him.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine #9 Sept. 05
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 7/12/2006 2:26 PM (GMT -5) | | | don't care much for Bush myself, I think he's a half- hearted conservative who looks to his own first. But I have to say that we will survive his foibles and weaknesses and our women won't be wearing burkas while he's in charge, something I could not say about the alternatives we had to him.
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What?!
You think Islamic extremists are going to *invade* the US and force our women to wear burkas unless Bush is President?
I guess the spin machine works better than I thought!!!
Daniel
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