Subject:
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Re: Where's Larry and Hoppy when you need 'em???
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:04:53 GMT
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Viewed:
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3861 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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Democrats aren’t, with a few noted exceptions, calling for immediate
withdrawal, so your question is misleading. Still, the benefits of
departure would be many: among them, we’d stop wasting billions of dollars
each month;
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Look at it as an investment in future security. Calculate the cost of a
nucular (sic) detonation on one of our cities.
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Ah, yes. Dr. Rice’s famous “smoking gun mushroom cloud” argument. Sorry, but
that’s not sufficient. Hussein did not have and was not actively seeking a
nuclear weapons program, so any argument based on that premise is invalid. It
may be the case that certain elements in Iraq are now seeking nuclear
materials, but then we can lay the blame squarely on Bush. Likewise, if Iran is
pursuing nuclear weapons technology, we must consider that they are doing so out
of the not unreasonable fear that regional chaos resulting from Bush’s
disastrous war would require Iran to come up with ways to defend itself.
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we
would stop being an occupying force;
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We are not an occupying force in the traditional definition. We are there to
assist the legitimate Iraqi government to resist terrorism that is being
perpetrated on their own people.
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But this isn’t a war in the traditional definition, as you’ve stated repeatedly.
Also, you have claimed that “we need to fight them there so we don’t have to
fight them here,” and that’s a markedly different proposition from “protecting
them on their own soil.”
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we would eliminate the perception that
we’re tring to stir up chaos (if not all out civil war); and on and on.
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Civil war will foment whether we stay or go, but most vociferously if we go.
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Nice use of Dubya’s recent buzzword “foment.” But in any case it’s hardly
certain. But it is pretty certain that civil war would not have resulted if
Hussein were still in power. I’m not sorry that he’s dead, and I wouldn’t want
him back in power, but we can’t claim innocence in stirring up the civil war
that resulted from our wholly absent post-invasion plan for Iraq.
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President Bush’s prosecution of the war on terror is a policy decision, which
is inherently neither right or wrong. You can agree or disagree with it, but
in the end, that’s all it is. Right now it is HIS call by virtue of his
re-election (please tell me that that statement won’t take us in the
selection-election direction).
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That’s a trivial quibble and a distraction. If you’re asking whether I think
the President has the power to establish policy, then the answer is yes, of
course. But that doesn’t mean the policy can’t be correctly judged to be
successful or disastrous. You seem to afford the office of President and its
occupant a certain worshipful deference. Will you be as reverent if a Democrat
takes office in 2009? Will you afford, say, President Hillary Clinton the same
broad, sweeping, and unchecked powers that you’re willing to grant to President
George W. Bush?
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Prove to me that Iraq is currently a center of world terrorism. I’m not
talking about Sunnis and Shiites acting within Iraq’s borders--I’m talking
about a dangerous international threat originating within Iraq. Or do you
suggest that we act as the world’s policeman? And for how long?
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The threat in Iraq now solely rests upon whether or not we remain in the
region.
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And it results entirely from the fact that we invaded a sovereign nation under
false pretenses.
Hey, while we’re on the subject, could you please tell me the reason that we
invaded Iraq, and could you cite a date that the reason was given? The reason
keeps changing, in magnificently Orwellian fashion, and I can’t keep track.
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Please answer these two questions, for the record:
What would qualify as success in Iraq?
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The formation of a stable, democratic [1] state of Iraq.
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Not likely to occur in the next decade, at least.
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So? What if we gave up on Japan after 5 years? On Germany? Who knows what
would have happened to them?
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Let me get this straight: we’re fighting a war that is unlike any traditional
war (according to its cheerleaders), but we’re using traditional war to justify
the methods of its execution? Must be nice, having it both ways.
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How about the ongoing civil war, which is indeed a civil war by any measure
except the one favored by Bushco?
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It will only improve if we stay, not go.
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Are you sure? On what basis? You yourself have claimed that the insurgents, in
their cowardice, are attacking Iraqi civilians because they can’t attack US
military forces, as a sort of proxy. Well, if we take the US military out of
Iraq, then by your analysis the motivation for attacking the proxy will vanish.
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How about a decimated national
infrastructure coupled with a civilian bodycount numbering well into the
hundreds each month in Baghdad alone?
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Compared to Japan or Germany; nominal.
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Refresh my memory: did Japan and Germany descend into bloody civil war
following their defeats in WWII? Were there active militias attacking US
military personnel during the post-war occupation?
Once again: “it’s unlike traditional wars until I need to justify it in terms of
traditional wars.” Sorry, but no dice. You need to find a better justification
than a pair of dissimilar case from 60 years ago.
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And here’s another question: What, specifically, would Bush have to do
before you’d say “you know, maybe he has made a royal mess of things?”
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The Ayatollah Khomeini created the mess; OBL created the mess; SH was the
problem. President Bush is doing what he believes is the best way to fix it.
The biggest mistake he (or the dems) could make is to start believing that
the royal mess has a quick fix solution.
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Right, right. Bush bears no responsibility for anything that happens on his
watch unless it benefits Republicans. Just like Clinton bears no responsibility
for anything bad that happened between 1993 and 2001, right?
The Ayatollah followed the ouster of a US puppet, and maybe your boy Reagan
should have done something about it other than the whole Iran-Contra debacle.
OBL used the training and resources afforded him by the CIA during the Reagan/
Bush years. Hussein was our good buddy during the Reagan/Bush years, happily
deploying the WMD that we gave him.
Hmmm... I’m sensing a pattern here.
Dave!
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Where's Larry and Hoppy when you need 'em???
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| Hey all :) (...) That doesn't do much to address the point, Dave! You're right, but John probably is too. (...) To secure a stronghold on the oil-fields of the Middle-East in preparation for protecting the US supply chain and projecting force into (...) (18 years ago, 26-Jan-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
| | | Re: Where's Larry and Hoppy when you need 'em???
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| (...) Well, that is only thanks to the Israelis when they wiped out Osiraq. (...) Please. Radicals would have nuked us long before Bush had they the means and opportunity. (...) Which is exactly why we shouldn't allow them to acquire them! (...) (...) (18 years ago, 26-Jan-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Where's Larry and Hoppy when you need 'em???
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| (...) Look at it as an investment in future security. Calculate the cost of a nucular (sic) detonation on one of our cities. (...) I don't think that the troops have a problem with this, so why on earth do the dems and the left have one? (...) We (...) (18 years ago, 25-Jan-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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