Question for Iraq war supporters

[jillian]

Let's run the clock back to 2002, and ask this question: suppose it were definitely confirmed that Saddam Hussein was actively developing nuclear weapons, as so many believed at that time.

Would we all agree then that an invasion was justified?

No. There are far too many other variables which would have had to be considered. Tactical strike? If the development progressed to a certain point? Perhaps. But certainly not a full scale invasion, particularly when our state department already knew what would happen if our troops went to Baghdad.

 

[maineman]

Let's run the clock back to 2002, and ask this question: suppose it were definitely confirmed that Saddam Hussein was actively developing nuclear weapons, as so many believed at that time.

Would we all agree then that an invasion was justified?

no.

and if you ask that question about Iraq, why don't you ask it about North Korea?

 

[Doug]

So, an attack then -- perhaps a massive bombing campaign -- but not actually troops on the ground, except maybe for swift in-and-out raids to kill key personnel?

 

[Doug]

North Korea is indeed a problem, but one for which I think the least worst strategy is containment, for the moment. North Korea is not embedded in the same sort of religious/national matrix as Iraq was/is. Tipping over Kim Jong Il, even if it could be done without tremendous slaughter, which I believe it couldn't, doesn't pay the same sort of dividends that establishing a functioning democracy in Iraq would give us. (Whether or not the latter is possible is still an open question.)

 

[maineman]

Did we consider attacking India when IT developed nuclear weapons? Pakistan?

Like it or not, Colin Powell candidly stated that Saddam was no longer a threat to us or even his neighbors months BEFORE 9/11.

I know that the neocons love to say that 9/11 changed everything, but it should not have changed our ability to prioritize. We had islamic extremists sworn to attack us and we decided to invade conquer and occupy Iraq because they were in violation of UN sanctions and that they maybe had stockpiles of 20 year old chemical weapons?

an analogy: my kitchen is on fire, my son has sliced off his finger on the circular saw in the garage, my daughter is being raped by a motorcycle gang on the front lawn and I have termites. Bush-like response: first thing we do...we call the Orkin man!

 

[maineman]

I do not think that it is or ought to be the mission of the United States and its military to cram democracy down some other people's throats at the point of a gun, regardless of how nice we think the results might be for us in the long run.

 

[Doug]

The spread of nuclear weapons should not be a matter of indifference to us. I beieve we missed a chance when the Soviet Union collapsed to propose univesal nuclear disarmament. At a minimum, even we couldn't find universal agreement, we would have scored a propaganda victory.

The problem is not nuclear weapons as such, it is the danger of their use, and in particular their use against us. The scenario to worry about is the clandestine supply of one or more of these devices to anti-American terrorists, either via Third World slipshodiness and corruption, or deliberately.

Pakistan's nuclear weapons are, at the moment, the ones to worry about. I don't have any proposals here, since I do not know enough about the internal politics of Pakistan.

In any case, Iraq was not invaded because of any immediate threat of nuclear weapons being developed by it. No serious person believed this story, which was just a pretext. The real motivation for invading Iraq was the "drain the swamp" theory. I happen to agree with this theory, although at the time i thought that the cold-blooded invasion of Iraq was a mistake. (However, I knew little about Iraq at the time, particularly its sectarian divide, and thought that there would be massive nationalist resistance.) That's all moot, since we are there.

The question is: what sort of world will we be living in ten, twenty, thirty years from now, if we do not see the advance of democratic freedoms in the Muslim world? It may be that there is little we can do to help this advance -- in which case we had better dig out Herman Kahn's book of the same name and start thinking the unthinkable.

 

[eots]

The spread of nuclear weapons should not be a matter of indifference to us. I beieve we missed a chance when the Soviet Union collapsed to propose univesal nuclear disarmament. At a minimum, even we couldn't find universal agreement, we would have scored a propaganda victory.

The problem is not nuclear weapons as such, it is the danger of their use, and in particular their use against us. The scenario to worry about is the clandestine supply of one or more of these devices to anti-American terrorists, either via Third World slipshodiness and corruption, or deliberately.

Pakistan's nuclear weapons are, at the moment, the ones to worry about. I don't have any proposals here, since I do not know enough about the internal politics of Pakistan.

In any case, Iraq was not invaded because of any immediate threat of nuclear weapons being developed by it. No serious person believed this story, which was just a pretext. The real motivation for invading Iraq was the "drain the swamp" theory. I happen to agree with this theory, although at the time i thought that the cold-blooded invasion of Iraq was a mistake. (However, I knew little about Iraq at the time, particularly its sectarian divide, and thought that there would be massive nationalist resistance.) That's all moot, since we are there.

The question is: what sort of world will we be living in ten, twenty, thirty years from now, if we do not see the advance of democratic freedoms in the Muslim world? It may be that there is little we can do to help this advance -- in which case we had better dig out Herman Kahn's book of the same name and start thinking the unthinkable.

maybe the don't want you version of democratic freedoms, maybe they are not lesser beings than you that need your salvation, maybe you should be more concerned with the erosion of your democratic freedoms instead of trying to force your version of reality on the Muslim nations, you are then the terrorist wanting to overthrow there nation and enforce your beliefs on them and bring to there children the great American freedoms of hustler magazine, gangster rap,the murder of the unborn...maybe they say no thank you we will work through our issues as a people and a nation our way

 

[maineman]

The spread of nuclear weapons should not be a matter of indifference to us. I beieve we missed a chance when the Soviet Union collapsed to propose univesal nuclear disarmament. At a minimum, even we couldn't find universal agreement, we would have scored a propaganda victory.

The problem is not nuclear weapons as such, it is the danger of their use, and in particular their use against us. The scenario to worry about is the clandestine supply of one or more of these devices to anti-American terrorists, either via Third World slipshodiness and corruption, or deliberately.

Pakistan's nuclear weapons are, at the moment, the ones to worry about. I don't have any proposals here, since I do not know enough about the internal politics of Pakistan.

In any case, Iraq was not invaded because of any immediate threat of nuclear weapons being developed by it. No serious person believed this story, which was just a pretext. The real motivation for invading Iraq was the "drain the swamp" theory. I happen to agree with this theory, although at the time i thought that the cold-blooded invasion of Iraq was a mistake. (However, I knew little about Iraq at the time, particularly its sectarian divide, and thought that there would be massive nationalist resistance.) That's all moot, since we are there.

The question is: what sort of world will we be living in ten, twenty, thirty years from now, if we do not see the advance of democratic freedoms in the Muslim world? It may be that there is little we can do to help this advance -- in which case we had better dig out Herman Kahn's book of the same name and start thinking the unthinkable.

I am fairly certain of a few things:

1. If the message we want to send to the muslim world is to stop trying to kill Americans, and the method we chose to send that message is to kill Muslims, we had better be prepared to kill ALL of them, at home and abroad.

2. As desirable as the prospect of multicultural Jeffersonian democracies spring up like crocuses throughout the Muslim world might be to us, trying to start that blossoming trend by invading, conquering and occupying a Muslim country and attempting to cram that democracy down their throats at the point of a gun is probably NOT the best way to convince other Muslim nations to move toward multicultural democracy unless the implied threat is that we intend to invade, conquer, occupy and force feed our brand of democracy to ALL of them at the point of a gun, and even so, my experience with Muslim men is, you threaten them, and they merely stiffen their resistance to your ideas.

3. Spending trillions of dollars and spilling gallons and gallons of American blood in an effort to force the people of Iraq to get along is insane. Iraq is nothing but some territory created on a big map in Europe at the conclusion of WWI as the victors decided how to divvy up the spoils of war and the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. The Caucasian Christian aristocrats who drew the borders of that "nation" had NO idea of the differences and millennium long enmities between Sunni and Shi'ite and Kurd.... they were all just brown skinned, rag headed monkeys to them, and it has taken strong armed autocratic dictatorial governments to keep a lid on that place ever since then.

4. I know that, regardless of the pap that Bush tries to feed us, radical Islam does NOT hate us because of our freedoms. Rather, they hate us for our support of corrupt muslim monarchies and dictatorships and they hate us for our unilateral, uncritical support of Israel, and they hate us for our intrusions on THEIR part of the world. And radical Islam does indeed find fertile ground for recruiting amongst the socioeconomically disadvantaged and disaffected muslim youth who grow up in dictatorships, many strongly supported by America because of our addiction to their oil.

5. There is no legitimate question for which a preemptive, unprovoked war is the right answer.

 

[Alpha1]

So you propose we do nothing to stop them from killing us? Or are you implying we do what they want us to do and hope they stop killing us?

Neither us acceptable....if they insist and persist in killing Americans, we must and will act in kind...and if it takes killing all of them, so be it....no society in the world should be allowed to use terror on people at will because they have political, social or religious gripes with others....or use terror on US citizens because they don't agree with their or other regional governments that have invited the US into their country.....

You claim "they hate us for our support of corrupt muslim monarchies and dictatorships"....
Then you claim, "it has taken strong armed autocratic dictatorial governments to keep them inline"
And then you claim, "we not invade and remove those same 'corrupt, autocratic dictatorial governments to give those ragheaded monkeys (your words, not mine) the opportunity to govern themselves in their own fashion....

Well, which is it? They hate us if we support their corrupt muslim monarchies and dictatorships, and they hate us when we remove those corrupt muslim monarchies and dictatorships....someday you might realize, plain and simple, they hate us because we are infidels....my guess is no matter what...you will blame the US first....

No, their is nothing legitimate about a preemptive, unprovoked war....but by the same token...
if you provoke war, threaten other countries,
and attempt to kill citizens of other nations by world wide terror,
or aid and abet terrorists,
it is you that has already struck preemptively, and declared war.....

In this age of WMD we cannot and will not ignore the nations of the world...
WMD truly is a threat to human existence..this is Pandora's box and the keys to that box must be few and guarded....

 

[M14 Shooter]

No, their is nothing legitimate about a preemptive, unprovoked war....

Pre-emptive wars are not necessarily unprovoked, and as such it is perfectly possible for a pre-emptive war to be legitimate.

 

[maineman]

So you propose we do nothing to stop them from killing us? Or are you implying we do what they want us to do and hope they stop killing us?

why do you always frame questions as either/or? In answer to your two overly simplistic questions: NO and NO.

Neither us acceptable....if they insist and persist in killing Americans, we must and will act in kind...and if it takes killing all of them, so be it....no society in the world should be allowed to use terror on people at will because they have political, social or religious gripes with others....or use terror on US citizens because they don't agree with their or other regional governments that have invited the US into their country.....

suggesting that a small Islamic extremist group is representative of Islamic society in general is frighteningly bigoted and absurd.

You claim "they hate us for our support of corrupt muslim monarchies and dictatorships"....
Then you claim, "it has taken strong armed autocratic dictatorial governments to keep them inline"
And then you claim, "we not invade and remove those same 'corrupt, autocratic dictatorial governments to give those ragheaded monkeys (your words, not mine) the opportunity to govern themselves in their own fashion...

Well, which is it? They hate us if we support their corrupt muslim monarchies and dictatorships, and they hate us when we remove those corrupt muslim monarchies and dictatorships....someday you might realize, plain and simple, they hate us because we are infidels....my guess is no matter what...you will blame the US first....

again.... more idiotic either/or. Either we support corrupt muslim dictatorships or we invade conquer and occupy them. Idiotic.

No, their is nothing legitimate about a preemptive, unprovoked war....but by the same token...
if you provoke war, threaten other countries,
and attempt to kill citizens of other nations by world wide terror,
or aid and abet terrorists,
it is you that has already struck preemptively, and declared war.

Iraq did not attack us. Al Qaeda did.

In this age of WMD we cannot and will not ignore the nations of the world...
WMD truly is a threat to human existence..this is Pandora's box and the keys to that box must be few and guarded.

so why hasn't dubya decided to invade conquer and occupy North Korea?

 

[mattskramer]

Pre-emptive wars are not necessarily unprovoked, and as such it is perfectly possible for a pre-emptive war to be legitimate.

I think that my neighbor is planning to beat me up. He looked at me with that “evil eye”. I don’t have any absolute proof that he is planning to hurt be but just to be safe, I better break into his house and mess things up for him.

 

[eots]

I think that my neighbor is planning to beat me up. He looked at me with that “evil eye”. I don’t have any absolute proof that he is planning to hurt be but just to be safe, I better break into his house and mess things up for him.

thats just short term thinking. if I where you I would get some family members with guns to move into his place and keep a real good eye on him

 

[M14 Shooter]

I think that my neighbor is planning to beat me up. He looked at me with that “evil eye”. I don’t have any absolute proof that he is planning to hurt be but just to be safe, I better break into his house and mess things up for him.

I'm sorry... does this have a point, one relevant to what I said?

 

[mattskramer]

I'm sorry... does this have a point, one relevant to what I said?

At what point is a preemptive attack/war justified – if someone looks at you funny, if you merely have suspicions, if you have no absolute irrefutable proof of no-goodness?

 

[M14 Shooter]

At what point is a preemptive attack/war justified – if someone looks at you funny, if you merely have suspicions, if you have no absolute irrefutable proof of no-goodness?

You tell me -- what is good enough for you?

Is the apearance of the Japanese fleet off Hawaii sufficent for you to take action, or do you wait until the Kates drop the first torpedo?

 

[Warner]

Wrong, the lie is that Wilson proved anything. All he did is go hang out at Hotels and talk to diplomats he knew.

And Yellow Cake was most assuradly found in Iraq.

You want to make a claim, YOU prove it, you have claimed the yellow cake report was a lie, provide evidence. You will discover there is none, it was an opinion not a fact that Wilson discovered anything. No one has proven yellow cake false.

Exactly. The lie was presenting this information to the public as if it were fact.

Logic 101 says you cannot prove a negative. It is impossible to "prove" there was no yellow cake in iraq. All that can be proven is that no yellow cake has been found.

 

[Warner]

Let's run the clock back to 2002, and ask this question: suppose it were definitely confirmed that Saddam Hussein was actively developing nuclear weapons, as so many believed at that time.

Would we all agree then that an invasion was justified?

No. Look at Iran, where we know a significant nuclear program has been underway. Even so they are years from having a testable weapon, and years beyond that of having a usable weapon.

Iraq was, at an unrealistic minimum, 10 years away from having a viable nuke even if all the supposed evidence were true, and 15 years is more realistic. The only way they would short cut this would be to obtain weapons grade material. Even with such material, they lacked the technical capability to work the stuff, and would have been at least 5 years away from a usable weapon.

So no, even if the information were true it did not justify the invasion of Iraq in 2002.

 

[Warner]

You tell me -- what is good enough for you?

Is the apearance of the Japanese fleet off Hawaii sufficent for you to take action, or do you wait until the Kates drop the first torpedo?

Ummm.. lets make your example more realistic. Was the fact the Japanese had a navy sufficient for you? Even if it were in the Sea of Japan?