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 22:23:00 GMT
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Viewed:
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3708 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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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.
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Well, that is only thanks to the Israelis when they wiped out Osiraq.
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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.
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Please. Radicals would have nuked us long before Bush had they the means and
opportunity.
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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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Which is exactly why we shouldn’t allow them to acquire them!
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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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Things have changed. We are fighting against al-Qaida AND offering assistance
to the Iraqi government against militant Baathists.
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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.”
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Thank you. I wasn’t aware that he’d taken a shine to it...
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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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But the bottom line is that innocent people die either way; only the names are
changed. But the difference is that now there is hope for a better 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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Your question is a profound one to me, and is key to living in a democracy.
Yeah, if HRC won, I’d have to live in a country where I disagreed with my
leader. So, what do I do? Work to impeach her at every turn? Call her names
and mock her; call her a chimp and an idiot? Remind everyone that she isn’t
even the best qualified person to be POTUS in her marriage, much less the
country?
I will not mock President Obama and call him “Halfro-American” or other such
things. I will respect him as the POTUS, president of my country. And I when I
disagree with his/her policies, I will civilly debate them with people like you
who presumably support them. And incidently, my main gripe with WJC is that he
disgraced the office by his irresponsible behavior. That made it very hard for
me to respect him.
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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.
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Perhaps. But I doubt that Iraqis who object to our presence in Iraq really care
what justification we used, only that we are there.
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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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Our Civil War started as a way to reunify our country, and along the way became
a war over slavery. Doesn’t mean anything, I believe.
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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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Be fair, Dave! I used those examples only for comparison of time of occupation.
Japan and Germany are success stories, and I am saying that part of that reason
is that we stuck it out in those regions for the long haul.
Heck, I’d be all for transferring our forces in those regions and placing them
in Iraq!
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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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I think they want Joe Iraqi to think that. But once we leave, they will
continue to kill until they are in power.
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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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Again, I was only using those examples to compare X amount of destruction and
loss of life. Japan and Germany had horrific damage. So has Iraq. Japan and
Germany turned out okay; so can Iraq.
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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.
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In all fairness to me, I didn’t say or even imply that, Dave!
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Just like Clinton bears no
responsibility for anything bad that happened between 1993 and 2001, right?
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No. I don’t blame Clinton for not recognizing the threat of OBL after the first
bombing of the WTC. That is simply hindsight is 20-20 rubbish.
And even if I were in the blame game in the past, I have now quit and taken my
marbles elsewhere!
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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.
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Presidents do what they think they must at the time. Sometimes they do well
(end the cold war), and sometimes they screw up (Clin...er Nixon;-)
Yeah, SH was our buddy, blah, blah, but so was Stalin. And then he wasn’t. And
then SH wasn’t.
It would be a lot less complicated if we only had to deal with responsible
democracies, rather than tinpot dictators and religious fanatics. Then an org
like the UN might actually be useful for something....
JOHN
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Where's Larry and Hoppy when you need 'em???
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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 (...) (18 years ago, 26-Jan-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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