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Topic: should the us have gone to war? (Read 18198 times)
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Bes8888
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Do you think the US should have gone to war with iraq?
Why or why not?
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maestro
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We haven't, yet. Hussein might still take us up on the opportunity to leave the country and go into exile. Not too likely but it'd be a good thing if he did.
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underwater
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Abraham Pleads for Sodom
[Genesis 18: 16-33]
When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him."
Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know."
The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the LORD . Then Abraham approached him and said: "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing-to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
The LORD said, "If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake."
Then Abraham spoke up again: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?"
"If I find forty-five there," he said, "I will not destroy it."
Once again he spoke to him, "What if only forty are found there?"
He said, "For the sake of forty, I will not do it."
Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?"
He answered, "I will not do it if I find thirty there."
Abraham said, "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?"
He said, "For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it."
Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?"
He answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it."
When the LORD had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
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- I will only vote for people that live in my local community and that are willing to meet with me to discuss the issues.
- I will only pay a tax (preferably a LVT) that is levied by my local community and spent on local infrastructure improvements and security.
- To me, FedGov does not exist.
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Anti-Federalist
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A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making
By ROGER MORRIS
(from the New York Times)
SEATTLE — On the brink of war, both supporters and critics of United States policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass: America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began some two decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's.
Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. Forty years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein.
The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.
From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem's harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington's Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt — much as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980's against the common foe of Iran. By 1961, the Kassem regime had grown more assertive. Seeking new arms rivaling Israel's arsenal, threatening Western oil interests, resuming his country's old quarrel with Kuwait, talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East — all steps Saddam Hussein was to repeat in some form — Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed.
In 1963 Britain and Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other United States allies — chiefly France and Germany — resisted. But without significant opposition within the government, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on. In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, American agents marshaled opponents of the Iraqi regime. Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents. The C.I.A.'s "Health Alteration Committee," as it was tactfully called, sent Kassem a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though the potentially lethal gift either failed to work or never reached its victim.
Then, on Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. "Almost certainly a gain for our side," Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.
As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.
According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.
The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the United States had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad — for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq.
But it wasn't long before there was infighting among Iraq's new rulers. In 1968, after yet another coup, the Baathist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr seized control, bringing to the threshold of power his kinsman, Saddam Hussein. Again, this coup, amid more factional violence, came with C.I.A. backing. Serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the late 1960's, I often heard C.I.A. officers — including Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a ranking C.I.A. official for the Near East and Africa at the time — speak openly about their close relations with the Iraqi Baathists.
This history is known to many in the Middle East and Europe, though few Americans are acquainted with it, much less understand it. Yet these interventions help explain why United States policy is viewed with some cynicism abroad. George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek regime change in Iraq. Mr. Bush and his advisers are following a familiar pattern.
The Kassem episode raises questions about the war at hand. In the last half century, regime change in Iraq has been accompanied by bloody reprisals. How fierce, then, may be the resistance of hundreds of officers, scientists and others identified with Saddam Hussein's long rule? Why should they believe America and its latest Iraqi clients will act more wisely, or less vengefully, now than in the past?
If a new war in Iraq seems fraught with danger and uncertainty, just wait for the peace.
Roger Morris, author of "Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician," is completing a book about United States covert policy in Central and South Asia.
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« Last Edit: March 18, 2003, 03:05:32 pm by Anti-Federalist »
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Anti-Federalist
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The Xanax Cowboy
By MAUREEN DOWD
(the New York Times)
WASHINGTON — You might sum up the president's call to war Thursday night as "Message: I scare."
As he rolls up to America's first pre-emptive invasion, bouncing from motive to motive, Mr. Bush is trying to sound rational, not rash. Determined not to be petulant, he seemed tranquilized.
But the Xanax cowboy made it clear that Saddam is going to pay for 9/11. Even if the fiendish Iraqi dictator was not involved with Al Qaeda, he has supported "Al Qaeda-type organizations," as the president fudged, or "Al Qaeda types" or "a terrorist network like Al Qaeda."
We are scared of the world now, and the world is scared of us. (It's really scary to think we are even scaring Russia and China.)
Bush officials believe that making the world more scared of us is the best way to make us safer and less scared. So they want a spectacular show of American invincibility to make the wicked and the wayward think twice before crossing us.
Of course, our plan to sack Saddam has not cowed the North Koreans and Iranians, who are scrambling to get nukes to cow us.
It still confuses many Americans that, in a world full of vicious slimeballs, we're about to bomb one that didn't attack us on 9/11 (like Osama); that isn't intercepting our planes (like North Korea); that isn't financing Al Qaeda (like Saudi Arabia); that isn't home to Osama and his lieutenants (like Pakistan); that isn't a host body for terrorists (like Iran, Lebanon and Syria).
I think the president is genuinely obsessed with protecting Americans and believes that smoking Saddam will reduce the chances of Islamic terrorists' snatching catastrophic weapons. That is why no cost — shattering the U.N., NATO, the European alliance, Tony Blair's career and the U.S. budget — is too high.
Even straining for serenity, Mr. Bush sounded rattled at moments: "My job is to protect America, and that is exactly what I'm going to do. . . . I swore to protect and defend the Constitution; that's what I swore to do. I put my hand on the Bible and took that oath, and that's exactly what I am going to do."
But citing 9/11 eight times in his news conference was exploitative, given that the administration concedes there is no evidence tying Iraq to the 9/11 plot. By stressing that totem, Mr. Bush tried to alchemize American anger at Al Qaeda into support for smashing Saddam.
William Greider writes in The Nation, "As a bogus rallying cry, `Remember 9/11' ranks with `Remember the Maine' of 1898 for war with Spain or the Gulf of Tonkin resolution of 1964. . . ." A culture more besotted with inane "reality" TV than scary reality is easily misled. Mr. Greider pointed out that in a Times/CBS News survey, 42 percent believe Saddam was personally responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and in an ABC News poll, 55 percent believe he gives direct support to Al Qaeda.
The case for war has been incoherent due to overlapping reasons conservatives want to get Saddam.
The president wants to avenge his father, and please his base by changing the historical ellipsis on the Persian Gulf war to a period. Donald Rumsfeld wants to exorcise the post-Vietnam focus on American imperfections and limitations. Dick Cheney wants to establish America's primacy as the sole superpower. Richard Perle wants to liberate Iraq and remove a mortal threat to Israel. After Desert Storm, Paul Wolfowitz posited that containment is a relic, and that America must aggressively pre-empt nuclear threats.
And in 1997, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Fox News, and other conservatives, published a "statement of principles," signed by Jeb Bush and future Bush officials — Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Elliott Abrams. Rejecting 41's realpolitik and shaping what would become 43's pre-emption strategy, they exhorted a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity," with America extending its domain by challenging "regimes hostile to our interests and values."
Saddam would be the squealing guinea pig proving America could impose its will on the world.
With W., conservatives got a Bush who wanted to be Reagan. With 9/11, they found a new tragedy to breathe life into their old dreams.
[emphasis added By Anti-Federalist]
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« Last Edit: March 18, 2003, 03:08:42 pm by Anti-Federalist »
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StevenN
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I just saw on C-SPAN tonight a Col. representative talking about "patriotism". It seems like it was OK to criticize Bush and his foreign policies before now; but now we're in a war. "We have to support the President." If not we're unpatriotic. It almost seemed as him he was subtly supporting censorship.
It also irks me that people say we should at least "respect" the position of President. Ummm, since when did the President become one of these Emperor-gods or a Divine-right king? As a libertarian, I see way too much "respect" given politicians.
"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious" -Oscar Wilde
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« Last Edit: March 18, 2003, 08:41:19 pm by StevenN »
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"A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man" -- Jebediah Springfield
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Norris
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As I see it, from a Libetarian perspective, the Iraq issue revolves around INTERVENTION.
INTERVENTION=PROVOCATION
Let's put the shoe on the other foot:
Chinese media and politicians decide Bush is a tyrant and since America has nuclear capability and has still refused to disarm after numerous resolutions by the Council of Communist Nations demanding they disable their warheads, China must now go in and free the Americans from this tyrant, and make the world safe by disabling Americas weapons.
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All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident. --Arthur Schopenhauer
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maestro
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I will explain one mans opinion of the apparent dichotomy of pro-war and pro-liberty.
For there to be liberty un-coupled with regular use of force, there must be a system of justice that can assure with regularity that rights are protected. As such, with a proper legal system, and the force to back that legal system, we can theoretically have a libertarian society without forceful intervention of any sort.
In the international arena, there is no set of laws which are binding upon all nations. All international laws are merely treaties to be followed or ignored with only a diplomatic penalty to pay. As such, there is no proper means to prosecute a country or a leader without first going to war to subdue the country or capture the leader or both. There is no uninterested judicial party capable of doing this (thank god, since such a world government would almost certainly not be pro-liberty), and as such, those who feel strongly about an issue, and who have enough power to do so, are the ones who take on the duty of prosecuting the enemy leader or country. This is necessarily done without legal intervention, since there is no legitimate legal intervention possible. The only form of intervention is war upon the prosecuting state, allying with the defendant state. No one likes Iraq _that_ much.
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JasonPSorens
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You write, "Thank God" that there is no world government, but when the U.S. government takes it upon itself to punish all other governments that may possess weapons it does not like, how does that differ in any material way from world government?
Conservatives seem to like world government so long as it is led from the White House (by a Republican), while liberals like it so long as it is led from the United Nations or a Democrat White House.
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Audio signature (MP3) "Experience has shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a populous state to be run by good laws." --Aristotle, The Politics
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maestro
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The US is not powerful enough to act as an undisputed judge, jury, and executioner. Therefore there is no single dominant power which can define morality and law for the rest of the world. As long as there are multiple sovreignties, there is room for change and improvement, in the form of reduction of government. Under a world government, we are almost guaranteed to lose freedom to some degree or another.
If the US becomes a serious threat to freedom, instead of the disturbance that it currently is, freedom loving people have a chance in another nation. If we had a world government, there'd be no place to run to.
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johnstargel
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maestro
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Given the choices, I think any freedom loving person would prefer the influence of america be greater than that of any other nation. I know of no freer nation in the world, although we're far from perfect. As such, the US is the best place to start bringing the principle of freedom back to the forefront of politics.
However, I do understand the desire that america not be so powerful as to become the defacto world government, as I am concerned about that, myself. Fortunately, that's not likely to ever happen.
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maestro
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By definition, some country must be the greatest influence. Would you prefer that China or Russia or France be that greatest influence?
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Anti-Federalist
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By definition, some country must be the greatest influence. Would you prefer that China or Russia or France be that greatest influence?
Wrong, just because America may have the greatest military strength doesn't mean that it has to exercise that power around the world and intervene in other countries' affairs. I know you keep harping on "American Interests." With that logic, we can and should invade 2/3rds of the countries. Using your logic, it's not a question of "if" only "when." I can't imagine that anyone on this Forum wants a "weak" America. They just want a "Just" and "Libertarian" America ! Personally, I'm more concerned with our lying politicians than I am about petty dictators who are NOT threatening us. You simply refuse to acknowledge that our meddling in the Middle East has PROVOKED a lot of hatred for the U.S. Your answer to that issue is MORE INTERVENTION AND MORE PROVOCATION. |
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