War and those who wage it

[piercehawkeye45]

If it was that easy...

[Aliantha]

Some people only care about their nearest and dearest, others care more widely about those in their neighbourhood. Some others care about their state, and yet others care about their countrymen.

Others care about humanity as a whole.

Yes I'd save my children before saving anyone else if that were ever a situation I might find myself in, but I'd still have compassion for others regardless of where they were from...except maybe the one who was trying to kill me or mine. Then I'd probably feel a little bit less concerned for their outcome.

I think it comes down to how close you think your enemies are and exactly how and who you percieve those enemies to be. I suppose some people see the general population of Iraq to be the enemy while others see only the sunis as the enemy while others see the shiites as the enemy, and others still see the US and coalition forces as the enemy.

Everyone that is killed in this war deserves compassion. They are fathers, brothers, sons, daughters, sisters, mothers. They are children of someone. They have love in their lives and they give love to someone. These people are human beings, and no matter what side of the political fence they are on, they deserve compassion, as do their families.

War is terrible and everyone involved in it grieves about the outcome for themselves personally, or for their state, or their country, or for their humanity.

[Aliantha]

btw, I think this thread should be in philosophy.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Some wars, such as WWI and WWII, are ones we were more or less forced into, but others, as Iraq, are ones that could easily be prevented.

Careful, your party affiliation is showing. WWI was a war of choice.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by classicman

I found it to be nothing more than an attempt at justifying the bullshit thats he has been posting over the last week. I wish i could have seen it in person. He was tripping all over himself trying to take back the "hope more yanks die" comment.

I must agree.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Yes I'd save my children before saving anyone else if that were ever a situation I might find myself in, but I'd still have compassion for others regardless of where they were from...except maybe the one who was trying to kill me or mine. Then I'd probably feel a little bit less concerned for their outcome.

I agree 100% Thats all I'm saying. The closer we are to someone the more we care - period. Its just natural and normal.

Originally Posted by regular.joe

…..
No, we should not feel any more or less compassion for the Iraqi soldier or the American soldier...or for the Iraqi insurgent, or the foreign national in Iraq working as a soldier for the insurgency. All are doing what they believe is right, today.

….. and if you mean “they”, as “we individuals, who do what we think is right” then I can’t help but agree with you.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

His argument is:

….. I have found America to be the "bad guys" and I have no compassion for their side.
If you don't get it yet, read those two points again until you do.

Mis-quoting isn’t such a good thing, really. Did I say “no compassion”? I don’t think so. If you don’t get it yet, read my post again until you do.

Originally Posted by DanaC

I also think the distinction between viewing those deaths at an emotional level (and therefore with great sympathy) and viewing them at a political level is an interesting one and fits my own dualist response to news about the war at times.

You do understand.

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

….. how will we know when we are at our last option and how do we know that is the best in every scenario?

That’s an excellent point because it speaks of the complexities of confrontation – and in the case of Irak it can support the invasion or even critisize it. Your point is real life stuff rather than the usual black/white sensationalist thing that most people prefer.

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Everyone that is killed in this war deserves compassion. They are fathers, brothers, sons, daughters, sisters, mothers. They are children of someone. They have love in their lives and they give love to someone. These people are human beings, and no matter what side of the political fence they are on, they deserve compassion, as do their families.

Precisely.

[aimeecc]

So we were justified in WWII since no amount of talking would have ended the genocide until... there was no one left to genocide? Let's think about Iraq. 1998 Saddam killed 5,000 Kurds. Gassed them. Furthermore, over Iraqi missiles were launched at population centers inside Iranian cities between 1980 and 1988 resulting in almost 13,000 casualties - mostly civilian. There were several thousand killed on the Iraqi side, mostly Kurd, by the Iraqi Air Force dropping chemical agents on them from the late 1980s through the early 1990s.
WMD? Saddam offered no proof that the remaining stock of missiles laden with chemical agents he used in the 1980s and 1990s were ever destroyed. Furthermore, just because we have yet to find them, everyone is so quick to claim he didn't have them. He had them. He used them. This is a fact. Did he bury them? Did he export them to Syria? I don't know. But there is nonrefutable evidence he had the chemical agents (like sarin, mustard... etc), as well as the delivery method (missiles), and a history of using them.

Here, for example, is a description of the chemical attack on Halabja from the 1993 Human Rights Watch report, Genocide in Iraq:

Those outside in the streets could see clearly that these were Iraqi, not Iranian aircraft, since they flew low enough for their markings to be legible. In the afternoon, at about 3:00, those who remained in the shelters became aware of an unusual smell. Like the villagers in the Balisan Valley the previous spring, they compared it most often to sweet apples, or to perfume, or cucumbers, although one man says that it smelled "very bad, like snake poison." No one needed to be told what the smell was. … Some tried to plug the cracks around the entrance with damp towels, or pressed wet cloths to their faces, or set fires. But in the end they had no alternative but to emerge into the streets. It was growing dark and there were no streetlights; the power had been knocked out the day before by artillery fire. In the dim light, the people of Halabja could see nightmarish scenes. Dead bodies—human and animal—littered the streets, huddled in doorways, slumped over the steering wheels of their cars. Survivors stumbled around, laughing hysterically, before collapsing.

United Nations reports from 1986, 1987, and 1988 confirm (based in part on reports from Iraqi soldiers who had been taken prisoner) that Iraq used mustard gas and nerve agents in the Iran-Iraq war and that these killed a growing number of civilians. In 1993, Physicians for Human Rights found evidence of nerve agents in soil samples in the Kurdish village of Birjinni and cited Kurdish eyewitnesses who said that one day in August 1988, they saw Iraqi warplanes drop bombs emitting "a plume of black, then yellowish smoke" and that shortly thereafter villagers "began to have trouble breathing, their eyes watered, their skin blistered, and many vomited—some of whom died. All of these symptoms are consistent with a poison gas attack." The March 24 New Yorker carries a lengthy account by Jeffrey Goldberg of Iraq's systematic gassing of the Kurdish population, based on extensive eyewitness interviews that Goldberg recently conducted in Halabja and other Kurdish-controlled areas in Northern Iraq. None of those interviewed seem to doubt that it was Saddam Hussein's army that gassed them. (Click here for Goldberg's recent Slate "Dialogue" about the piece with the Council on Foreign Relations' Warren Bass.)

http://www.slate.com/id/2063934

BTW, Human Rights Watch aren't exactly pro-Bush.

Not that I am a fan of the Iraq War. I was/am primarly against it because the obvious outcome was going to be civil war (I am a big Thomas Friedman fan, and he forcasted this 2 months before our invasion). However, I have no doubt Saddam was an evil person, that killed his own people, and that he had the ability to produce WMD. He already had them, already used them. The UN inspectors were making NO progress. Saddam was not making people available to interview, he was not allowing them inside facilities. When he did allow them inside facilities, he did not allow them full access. When he granted interviews, it was not without one of his agents listening to the conversation - therefore none of the people could say anything without fear of reprieval. In previous instances in which Iraqis defected, he had their entire families killed.

Did you know they found over 20 MiGs BURIED in the sand? Buried MiGs. Wow.

Iraq is larger than California. With all of our technology, we can't find all the meth labs, or even missing kids, in California. Everyone is so quick to jump on the "see, he didn't have any" bandwagon just because the WMD haven't been located. My bet is they are in Syria, or buried deep.

BTW, they have found over 500 weapons filled with chemical agents - mostly artillery shells with Sarin gas. BTW, it is against the Geneva convention to use those. They have also found over 1500 gallons of chemicals that were most likely to be used to make these chemical agents.

I wish people would educate themselves on the facts about WMD and Iraq. It was not just something Bush thought of out of thin air. Iraq had a history of using them.

[Undertoad]

After having the same argument for five straight years, I tire.

[aimeecc]

Your argument that they did not have WMD, even though the UN, the organization you love, acknowledged that at some point in time, yes they indeed had WMD?

Its so easy for you to forget that. I wonder why? It doesn't fit into all your arguments?

I am not/was not for the war. However, it is paramount for any discussion for you to have the facts straight. Even the inconvienent facts that do not support your position.

[Undertoad]

I have taken your position on the war for five years. But I tire.

[piercehawkeye45]

There is a big difference on the reasons why we went to war with the Axis Powers and Iraq. We did not go to war with Germany because of the holocaust, we actually didn't know about it until after the war, but for various other reasons such as the drastic imperialism and spread of fascism throughout Europe and eventually the entire world. Both Germany and Japan were not going to be stopped and the only way to defeat them is if the United States joined in the war.

The reasons for going into Iraq are still not fully known to the public because our administration obviously lied about their true intentions with Iraq. And guessing at their reasons, we can see them as more imperialistic than self-defense which makes sense with the entire neoconservative agenda which led the attack and propaganda.

We did not know if they had WMDs or not, I'm almost positive their was no definite proof either way before we attacked. We could assume they did because we gave them those weapons in the Iraqi-Iranian war and we didn't think they used them all on their own people (which is another difference between Iraq and Germany).

Either way, we should not have gone into Iraq because we thought they had chemical weapons and we have to question whether we should attack a country just because they have WMDs anyways.

[aimeecc]

I agree. The US should not attack just based on WMD. Pakistan and India have had WMDs since the 90s, yet we did not attack them. France has WMDs, but we don't attack her either. And true, we didn't do it for any altruistic reason - to save the Iraqi people.

My point is that AD continually makes it point to say we invaded based on WMD that don't exist and that the UN was making progress. The UN was not making progress, and it cannot be ascertained that Iraq did not have WMD, considering for several decades Iraq did. AD needs to base his accusations against the US on fact, not on feelings of hatred towards the US.

[tw]

Originally Posted by aimeecc

The UN was not making progress, and it cannot be ascertained that Iraq did not have WMD, considering for several decades Iraq did.

The UN had made tremendous progress. However we never realized how successful UN inspectors had been until after the invasion. By 1995, Saddam had even destroyed all his hidden weapons. This in part because his in-laws had defected and told the complete story.

In 1998, Clinton successfully destroyed any remaining facilities that could have produced any advanced weapons.

Saddam was bluffing. He had to. He had no serious military capacity. In hindsight, he may have been on the edge of a coup d'etat. He was a threat to no one. But even more obvious, Saddam never had any interest in attacking the US. It is well known that Saddam was doing everything possible to restore American support without exposing to enemies such as Iran how militarily weak he really was. Saddam's entire agenda even before 1990 was to nurture American support. That gets lost among those who hear extremist spin.

UN inspectors were far more effective than the UN inspectors even knew. Saddam was completely defanged - a threat to nobody. He was bluffing which was his only option.

[regular.joe]

I wish I had that kind of poker face..I'd say it worked.