How to apologize for supporting the war on Iraq

Isn't that a little simplistic? I mean, how many options have to be exhausted -- or how unattractive do the remaining options have to be -- before you can consider a last resort?

I mean, technically, we don't have to do anything. We didn't have to go to war after Pearl Harbor; we could have just taken the pounding and then beefed up our Pacific defenses to make sure they couldn't do it again. (No, I'm not saying the situations are comparable.)

War should be considered an option, albeit an unattractive one, and its costs and rewards should be carefully weighed along with those of all the other options.

I think Iraq and the world is going to be better for the war, it just may take a while before people realize it. We are in a time now when people want instant gratification, especially after how quick the last gulf war went. While we don't want to see any of our military members killed, we have lost surprisingly few people compared to any previous wars. Shit we had lost nearly 25000 after 5 years in Viet nam. I do think we should find a way to make the Iraqi oil money pay for keeping our troops there until we can leave them with it.

Yes it should always be an option. To this administration it appears to be a preference though and that is the greater problem.

And they said that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter".

I wouldn't know.

All I know is that the family I do have over there supports the effort, so I support it too.

Nothing more, nothing less.

There is merit in such support. Even if some people will call it a lie.

The two are completely different processes. You can't argue that because one was expensive, that another will be as well.
You have to at least try to develop the technology and test it before you can dismiss it.

That would be a better way of putting it, yes.

Stay tuned: In coming weeks, we'll learn how to apologize for slavery, subjugating women, screwing over the Indians, Global Warming, and generally being rich, successful Imperialist Swine.

I wouldn't call things like slavery or the war in Iraq "successful".

I still support the war. I have two reasons.

1 - The "You break it, you bought it" principle. We made the mess, we need to clean it up. Can't leave till that's done.

2 - Despite what certain reality-impaired posters here profess to believe, if we give the perception of having been defeated and/or chased out of Iraq by the bad guys (al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, what have you), we invite much worse attacks against ourselves. We need to defeat the islamic fundamentalist whack-o's decisively enough that they can't spin it to lure another generation of suicide bombers into their nonsense. Basically, "don't fuck with the Americans. No percentage in it."

I'm just saying not to believe all the hype.

By that reckoning we should be having all kinds of problems with Vietnamese terrorists.

I agree.

I'm all for the war in Afghanistan. That's where OBL was. We should have put 150,000 troops there, caught his crazy, demented ass, and been done with him.

I was against the war in Iraq and I still say it was a mistake. Now that we're there, there's no turning back. If we pull out, the whackos of Islam will see it as weakness. Yeah, we made the mess; we owe it to the Iraqis and the world to clean it up.

And I still say Bush should be hung from a sour apple tree for getting us into that clusterfuck.

http://menendez.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=294953

The fuckup with Iraq began on 9/12/01. We did not put this country on a warfooting immediately, and that has hurt us badly. We should have followed the model we adopted in WWII (with a few minor changes), ended civilian production of goods, started building military hardware by the metric assload, poured money into R&D, encouraged Americans to get off the oil teat, and generally done everything we need to do to really kick some ass in the world. With 100K+ troops in Afghanistan, we could have smashed the Taliban, and had Osama on trial by Christmas 2001. Rebuilding the country would have been a snap, and with the country secure, going into Iraq would have worked much better than it presently has.

Pulling out of Iraq now may seem like a bad idea, but one of the problems that the troops in Iraq are complaining about is that the Iraqi government basically isn't doing shit to improve things. They're letting our guys do all the work and shell out all the money. Perhaps if we start packing up, they'll get off their asses. If they don't, then fuck 'em. For less money than we've spent so far on the war, we could have:
* Giant robot
* The operating Moonbase
* Orbital hotels
* Spain-Morrocco tunnel
* New SST
* New York-LA Maglev
* Floating city
* An android army
* Blasters and railguns

So if we pulled out, put the money we've been spending in Iraq into building the things listed above, not only could we have a lot of fun, but if the Iraqis or somebody else got a little too uppity, we could sit back and sic our android army on 'em, or throw rocks on 'em from our moon base.

Arguably so, but as long as you keep on blinders on why and how it is a mess, you have no chance whatsoever of cleaning it up. And the main blinder is believing it can cleaned up by the military.

You are giving the perception of having been defeated. Staying in Iraq doesn't change that, it only reinforces the additional perception that you have no clue what's going on and are blindly following stupid politicians.

I'm not apologizing.

We've eliminated Saddam Hussein and his regime who--let's not forget--killed Iraq's citizens by the truckloads.

We've ended the relentless persecution of the Iraqi Kurds.

We've given the Iraqis a chance at a democratic government and so far they've put together a Constitution and held free elections.

We've killed shitloads of Al-Qaida fighters and several high-ranking Al-Qaida leaders who've been drawn to the conflict in Iraq.

We've turned large swaths of the Sunni population in Iraq against Al-Qaida. Among the Shi'ites, we seem to have dashed Al-Sadr's hopes for disunity.

We've shown that we're serious about WMDs and have pressured at least one Arab nation--Libya--to get out of the WMD business.

We've gotten the Saudis to get off the fence and start prosecuting the radicals in their midst and to make some efforts--small though they may be--at democracy and modernity.

We've established bases that--along with those in Afghanistan--bring us to the doorstep of Iran--the biggest state sponsor of terrorism--on either side.


Despite all of the defeatism about this being a war we cannot win, I believe that (1) we already have won it, and (2) in time, it will be seen to be a huge advance in our strategic position in the Middle East.

So what?

So what?

Yeah, right! That's gonna last.

And thanks to us, they're making more every day.

If it weren't for us, there would be no al Qaida in Iraq.

Reagan took care of Libya over 20 years ago.

And where are those WMDs?

Yeah, right! Only one thing matters to the Saudis: US dollars for oil.

Iran wouldn't be a problem if we'd left 'em alone after WW2.

I'll believe it when I see it. We're not even close.

Don't give a shit.

Really don't give a shit.

Good for them. Still don't give a shit.

Useful, but the same thing could have been achieved by staying in Afghanistan and not fighting a two front war.

I'd be more curious to know how many supported them in the first place.

Can't dispute that, if you have or even pretend to have WMD's, we'll free the shit out of you.

Eh, Saudi Arabia's problem.

Isn't that what we have Aircraft carriers for? Which, incidentally, we could have built 100 of with the amount we've spent on the war.

1) Won't disagree with you.
2) That's an awfully costly strategic position.

The point I'm making overall is, for all the "good" that we've done, we could have done it through alternative means for a lot cheaper, with less disruptions to America's war fighting capability and economy.

So, next time someone uses the death toll--most of whom have been killed buy Iraqi insurgents--during our operation in Iraq, it would be helpful to remember that similar numbers died routinely under Hussein.

Aside from the humanitarian aspect? Having a homeland of their own and the freedom to govern their own affairs will take pressure off Turkey.

It now has for several years. Their government operates under it every single day.

Where do you suppose Al-Qaida came from before Iraq? If being in Iraq creates them, how did they ever come to launch such devastating attacks on us on 9/11?

But most of Al-Qaida in Iraq is NOT Iraqi. They're being drawn from other Arab states.

No, he didn't. Pan-Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland ring any bells?

Libya gave them up and turned over all the material to us.

Since you can't dispute the point, you're reduced to arguing the motivation behind it.

So in your world, the only country with freedom of choice is the U.S., right? After anything we do, everyone else is powerless but to go along with the tide of history.

You CAN'T dispute that Iran is a threat and that we're in a better position to strike them now, so you have to BLAME US for creating them. Well, I don't recall us paying them to finance Hezbollah, or to make nukes, or to take hostages in 1979. Those are THEIR choices.

Time will tell, but you aren't seeing as many stories about our difficulties in Iraq these days, are you?

1. Don't give a shit that Hussein was killing Iraqis. It's not our job to police the world. Should have listened to George Washington.

2. Don't give a shit about the Kurds. Or the Wheys.

3. The only way Iraq's "democratic" gub'mint is gonna last is if we stay there to prop it up.

4. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Let's invade them.

5. Ditto.

6. Well, let's go invade Libya.

7. Oh! So Libya had Hussein's WMDs.

8. The Saudis are looking after their interests. We should look after ours.

9. Sure! Iran is a threat now. If they depose our gub'mint and install the Shah of America in the White House, then I'll be pissed off.

10. American kids are getting killed and wounded every day. Fuck that shithole.

Even if it means nothing to you, it can't be ignored as an accomplishment. Especially by those who wave the bloody shirt as part of their critique.

Ditto.

Ditto. But a free Iraq is a lesson to the Arab world.

Afghanistan is not starved of resources, and despite the simplistic claims that are often made, finding bin Laden is not a matter of putting more troops there. In any event, the Afghani state we installed continues to exist and does not seem likely to collapse any time soon.

Is it more important to you that they supported Al-Qaida in the past or US now?

And you'll never see the upside of that. You'll never see a report on CNN about a WMD attack that didn't happen. Nonetheless, the chances of it happening have been reduced.

Wrong. Our problem. The poison in Saudi Arabian society is what came calling on 9/11.

You can't station 50,000 troops on a carrier. You can't have armored brigades ready to go on a carrier. You can't land heavy bombers on a carrier. Carriers are good and useful, but they're no substitute for bases.

It does you no good unless you have the people to crew them and the planes to launch off of them, which we wouldn't. To say nothing of the fact that there aren't enough material resources on the market to build 100 carriers in any reasonable length of time.

Maybe. But at the end of the day, an improved situation is still an improved situation.

I don't see how. If we brought down Saddam without troops there, the country very well would've collapsed into civil war, perhaps with Al-Qaida taking the upper hand.

No, it won't be recognized while Bush is in office--he's much too polarizing a figure--but shortly after next Inauguration Day--especially if the Democrats get in and are forced to acknowledge that their rhetoric doesn't match reality--that there will be some "reconsiderations" about the War in Iraq, and they will be considerably more positive than what we hear now.

Yes, that's why Turkey had to invade Iraq a couple of weeks back, because so much pressure was taken off Turkey that if they didn't invade and put some pressure back on, the entire country would have deflated.

The reality is that a Kurdish state which would satisfy the Kurds, would have to be made of parts of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. What we've done is emboldened the Kurds to the point that Kurdish groups in three countries are now violently agitating for the right to form their own country. We'll be lucky if it doesn't turn into a larger version of the Israeli/Palestinian mess.

I'm sorry, whose group was it that killed 3,000 innocent civilians six and a half years ago?

Yes, Saddam's t3h evul, the world loses nothing without his presence and to paraphrase one notorious WFer, I'm glad he's dead. But there are so many experts who have come out the woodwork to say bin Laden is the far greater threat of the two.

So would taking out bin Laden in quick order.

His continued freedom has been nothing less than inspirational to them.

It's Bush's biggest fuckup, in a long line of his fuckups.

I wondered how long Liet could repress the overbearing obnoxiousness we all remembered so well.

All now seems as it should be in the universe again.

If Dendroica would come back, we would have all of our house full of crazies on board.

It also requires competent leadership.

You know the kind that listen to experts (including their own generals) and not just ideologues.





If we had done the right shit early on, we wouldn't have to ask the American people to make these sacrifices, no matter what the cost.

I thought they were already safe because of the no-fly zones that were enforced by Clinton and Bush 41.

Meh.

Not without getting thousands of coalition troops killed as well. I know they haven't taken out any senior coalition guys, but I'd still call this on a draw.

I call this one a draw too. Solving a problem we helped create doesn't really belong in the "win" pile.

Iraq has shown we'll go after a nation that wants WMDs, and Pakistan and North Korea have shown the world we'll tiptoe around countries that already do have WMDs.

Do you think that really encourages our enemies to stop their weapons programs? Because I think it encourages them to speed them up.

I don't think that's because of us. I think that's because the Saudis are looking out for themselves, which has always been their main goal. It wouldn't matter what was going on with the rest of the world.

In preparation for what?

The war? Sure. It's just the followup that's been mishandled.

In time? Sure, eventually.

At a reasonable cost in terms of money and lives? I don't know.