A soldier's viewpoint

Originally Posted by Undertoad

No... the UN

Well, at least you admit someone else was responsible, and it was the UN with strong US backing.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

So their words wouldn't be used to go to war over it. This would make them a tool of the right which would be unacceptable..

Again, cite, please.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Sometimes. At other times it's boldly political: Iraq war cover for human rights abuses

Go back and re-read your own link. Amnesty was merely reporting the fact without comment that some of the slimes of the world were using the fact that global attention was focused on Iraq to get away with nasty things in their own countries. Facts are facts. Do you want the truth surpressed just because you don't like it?

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I write a lot here and I rarely call anyone brainless or moronic without evidence at hand.

I write a lot here and I have discovered that calling people names seldom makes them open their eyes to my point of view.

[alphageek31337]

There is one Angel in wartime, Tony. He carries a scythe. I'm not saying that Iraq, and probably the world, isn't significantly better off without Saddam Hussein. What I've said from the beginning, and I think most of the anti-war effort will agree with me on this, is that "Saddam was worse" is not a catch-all excuse to defend the horrible things that happen during a war, when you have no exit strategy and immediately disband any local sources of authority. I'm saying that, not unlike when we installed Saddam in the first place, our mucking about in the middle east is misguided and will probably come back to bite us in the ass. I'm saying that if you want to launch a humanitarian mission for the Iraqi people, that's what you call it. You don't create weapons of mass destruction or a link to al-Quaeda out of thin air, you say, "Hey, look, this guy's an asshole. He kills his own people all the time, and it's our (the world's) duty to see that he is deposed."

I like to think that, as Americans, we are above abusing the basic human rights of the people we are supposedly liberating. Saying that Saddam was worse, though he was, does not exonerate us for our failures. If we are going to try to win the peace, real peace with a stable, US-Friendly democracy, we have to treat these people with dignity and respect. As it stands, if we ever allow a real democracy, with more than our hand-picked candidates, Iraq will no doubt install an Islamic theocracy, and if we pick and groom the candidates, then we haven't really ever brought them democracy, have we?

[Undertoad]

Hey alph, I agree completely; mistakes were made. But in the long run it's the actual results that matter, which I like to evaluate regardless of what they said. Throw the politics out of it and play what-if with history. How would you have addressed the Middle East in late 2002?

[alphageek31337]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Hey alph, I agree completely; mistakes were made. But in the long run it's the actual results that matter, which I like to evaluate regardless of what they said. Throw the politics out of it and play what-if with history. How would you have addressed the Middle East in late 2002?

I believe we covered this in an earlier thread, which I will make no attempt to find because I am lazy. Basically what I said is that a War on Terror will fail because it addresses the issue in the opposite way that it needs to be addressed. You will not destroy terror. It is not an enemy, it is a tactic. Terrorism will happen as long as there are people with enough hate in their heart to commit these acts, and blowing up every hateful person will not remove the hate (and, in many cases, it will unavoidably result in suicide). What we need to do is remove the sources of this hatred. Use our muscle in Israel to force them to an accord with the Palestinians (I refuse to believe that a war in which you annex land can be considered "defensive"). Start treating the middle east as people living on top of an oilfield instead of an oilfield infested with people. As far as al Quaeda goes, they have already committed an offense. I have no problem whatsoever sending every single one of them to their virgins. However, war cannot be the only focus, and the use of force, by nature, must be reactionary. Of course we can't sit idly by and wait for the next attack, we must be proactive. But we must be proactive in spreading peace and eliminating hatred and destruction, or the cycle of murder will continue as it has in Israel, as it has in Ireland, as it has anywhere that neither side in a fight has had the sense, strength and restraint to actually stop the killing.

I was struck by something I learned around November of 2001 (the date could be wrong, but that is insignificant). Every single one of the 9/11 hijackers, and the vast majority of Islamic terrorists worldwide, have had a family member or close friend killed by an American or an Israeli (with an American-bought weapon). They let their hatred grab hold of them and take over their whole lives. They are driven only by the need to get vengeance upon the aggressor who wronged them. So they attack us. Then we are overcome by fear, anger and the need for vengeance, so we attack them. The inevitable civilian casualties of a massive war include peoples' mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. The hatred, the need for vengeance, is inspired again in another generation of Islamic extremists, so they attack us. And it continues, ad infinitum. Laid out like this, it is obvious that the only way for the violence to stop is if one of the sides breaks out of the cycle. As America cannot control what the rest of the world does (as much as we try...), the only way to stop the cycle of violence is for America to be the proactive one, the peacemaker. We were all hurt by 9/11, and feelings of anger and vengefulness are perfectly justified. However, if we don't rise of above them, the violence will never stop.

Edit: As I think more about this, I think you and I fundamentally disagree on one thing, Toad. You say mistakes were made. I say mistakes are being made.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Hey alph, I agree completely; mistakes were made. But in the long run it's the actual results that matter, which I like to evaluate regardless of what they said. Throw the politics out of it and play what-if with history. How would you have addressed the Middle East in late 2002?

Hmmm, the end justifies the means? Damn, that's a slippery slope.

[Happy Monkey]

Iraq, as the only secular state in the area, with no love for politically-minded clerics, would probably be just about last on the list of danger zones.

[xoxoxoBruce]

just about last on the list of danger zones

Except to Iraquis.

[Undertoad]

Every single one of the 9/11 hijackers, and the vast majority of Islamic terrorists worldwide, have had a family member or close friend killed by an American or an Israeli (with an American-bought weapon).

Cite.

I don't know about the family members being killed thing, but if you want to see a very well researched and cited discussion of the strong Saudi link with 9/11, here's an excellent spot: http://billstclair.com/911timeline/m...almihdhar.html
Once more, it brings the reader back to the same question, why didn't we go after the people REALLY responsible for 9/11? When are we going to go after Bin Laden?

[Happy Monkey]

For more Iraqi perspectives, put this into Real Player:

rtsp://teles.berkeley.edu/events/jschool/hersh.rm

and skip to 41:45.

Then go here:

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index....3959111120.xml

and search for "prefer".

[Undertoad]

After all the useless back n forth on Tommy Franks opinion, what does he think today? He punches big holes in Kerry's concept of how things went in today's NYT (reg reqd). I am voting for Kerry with the expectation that I may wind up opposing his foreign policy.

Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never "took his eye off the ball" when it came to Osama bin Laden. The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist cells are operating in some 60 countries, and the United States, in coordination with dozens of allies, is waging this war on many fronts.

As we planned for potential military action in Iraq and conducted counterterrorist operations in several other countries in the region, Afghanistan remained a center of focus. Neither attention nor manpower was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. When we started Operation Iraqi Freedom we had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, and by the time we finished major combat operations in Iraq last May we had more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.

We are committed to winning this war on all fronts, and we are making impressive gains. Afghanistan has held the first free elections in its history. Iraq is led by a free government made up of its own citizens. By the end of this year, NATO and American forces will have trained 125,000 Iraqis to enforce the law, fight insurgents and secure the borders. This is in addition to the great humanitarian progress already achieved in Iraq.

[warch]

There are lots of unanswered questions about missing Bin Laden at Tora Bora. I havent read the whole thing yet but Seymour Hersh has been talking about it and this is from his book"Chain of Command". Franks take some heat. Pakistan is alarming.

Quote:

In fact, military and intelligence officials said, Franks' proposal to shift some of the Marines to Tora Bora was bitterly resisted at the time by the Marines, who have insisted since World War Two on operating in self-contained units. Eventually, the Marines and CENTCOM worked out an extraordinary written memorandum of understanding (M.O.U.) that outlined the conditions under which the Marines would operate. It set the terms of the engagement. "It's all about what is the mission," a Pentagon consultant said. "We're not the Army," a former Marine planner told me. "We don't only do ground operations. We're no the Air Force. We don't do air only. We go in with our armor, our artillery, our close air support. We beat everybody because we do it all together."

CENTCOM's insistence on using Marines in what the Marines saw as the high-risk Anaconda attack revived the interservice conflict. One glaring problem, officials told me, was the lack of intelligence. The CENTCOM planners were unable to tell the Marines, a former high-level intelligence official said, whether the Al Qaeda would "fight or run away. It drove the Marines nuts," the former official added. "How dumb can you be? They said, 'Maybe they'll fight or maybe they'll run away.' The Marines said, 'Fuck You. We're not going to do it. These are young kids at risk.' That's why I love the Marines."

"If you try and make us do it," the former office quoted a Marine as saying, "we will go public and expose the whole mess" - including the existence of the memorandum of understanding. The CENTCOM command was told that "the public will come out on our side." The Marines were not included in the final plan.