1,000,000

[@_@ Artman]

1,000,000 (http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78).

In the week in which General Patraeus reports back to US Congress on the impact the recent ‘surge’ is having in Iraq, a new poll reveals that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003.

Some may ask: Why does it even matter how many people died? Does it matter if it were 30,000 or 300,000 or 3,000,000?

America freaks out over 3,000 dead on 9/11 and 3,000 soldiers dead in Iraq. But 30,000 or even 300,000 dead Iraqis (the people we supposedly "liberated) is no big deal apparently...

[Fellowship]

1,000,000 (http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78).



Some may ask: Why does it even matter how many people died? Does it matter if it were 30,000 or 300,000 or 3,000,000?

America freaks out over 3,000 dead on 9/11 and 3,000 soldiers dead in Iraq. But 30,000 or even 300,000 dead Iraqis (the people we supposedly "liberated) is no big deal apparently...

Indeed something is wrong VERY WRONG when people ignore things like this. It is very sad to me as a person who likes to see all people as people not just Americans as the "only" people. As a Christian I am indeed very saddened yet one not need be a Christian to see the sadness of this.

The following is the text of an opening post of a thread I made to indicate this and I used a much more conservative number of those dead in Iraq in that post:

The following is my opening post from my thread entitled "What Neocons Don't Tell You"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This thread is for the purpose of thinking through the actions of the US in response to 9/11 2001. I invite your thoughts in reply to what I will provide in this post:

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Yet there has been a minimum of 70,359 civillians killed in Iraq since the American invasion and following occupation.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Here are some facts:

US population is about 300 million

Iraq population is about 27 million

The population of Iraq is about 1/10th that of the US and yet they have lost about 23 times the number of civillians the US lost on 9/11.

Let us scale this to reflect what has happened here.

Take the Iraqi population and bring it up to parity of that of the US population; multiply it by about 10

270 ~ 300 million

Take the 70,359 iraqi civillian deaths and multiply them by 10

You get around 703,590 civillian deaths....

When you scale the Iraqi popluation to something close to that of the US and then scale up the civillian deaths they scale up to a number of 703,590.

Compare that to the 3,000 the US had on 9/11 2001.

3,000 goes into 703,590 234.53 times. That is to say that Iraq when brought to a population scale parity on par with the US population has experienced approx. 234.53 US 9/11's

234.53 9/11's

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 yet look at what is going on with the invasion / occupation.

Your thoughts?

Fellows

Ohh and not only have they had the equivalent of 234.53 9/11's

Look at things now:

""Eight million people are in urgent need of emergency aid; that figure includes over two million who are displaced within the country, and more than two million refugees. Many more are living in poverty, without basic services, and increasingly threatened by disease and malnutrition," said the relief agencies' report. The population of Iraq is 26 million. Child malnutrition rates have jumped from 19 percent before the invasion four years ago to 28 percent now, and there are two million internally displaced people, many of whom have no or little access to food rations.

The number of Iraqis "without access to adequate water supplies" is 70 percent, up from 50 percent since 2003."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/07/30/iraq.humanitarian/index.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If those dead number 1,000,000 the situation as stated in my quoted post above is understated by a factor of 14.3

It would mean Iraqis have had 3,353 9/11's

And Bush and co. talks the talk that we are trying to help the iraqi people.

What if that were the reason given for the attacks of 9/11 in America. Some foreign power just wants to help America..... Would we buy that with even one 9/11???

Fellows

[@_@ Artman]

Once again we meddled in others affairs and botched it up big time. I never thought I would live long enough to see the we repeat the Vietnam mistake but here we are again. And once again innocent civilians are dying by the hundreds and thousands.

[e1618978]

Saddam Hussein was killing 10K/year, and our previous sanctions were killing 90K/year, so it looks like the Iraq war bumped the total death rate from 100K/year to 250k/year.

I'm wondering what the goal of the administration really was when they invaded Iraq.

Cheney evidently knew exactly what would happen, since he predicted it 10 years earlier when talking about why we didn't finish the first gulf war. They also probably knew that there were no WMDs, so the only conclusion that you could draw is that they wanted Iraq to go into civil war, but I have no idea why they would want that.

[trumptman]

I'm sure you will agree this link doesn't attempt to justify, support, or do anything other than make note of civilian dead for the purpose of stopping the war.

Iraq Body Count (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/)

Nick

[@_@ Artman]

I'm sure you will agree this link doesn't attempt to justify, support, or do anything other than make note of civilian dead for the purpose of stopping the war.

Iraq Body Count (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/)

Nick

Yes, even Patraeus' chart shows approximately 37,000 civilian deaths in the past 20 months:

page 4 of this pdf (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/10_09_07_petraeus_charts.pdf)

Questions are (again): Why does it even matter how many people died? Does it matter if it were 30,000 or 300,000 or 3,000,000?

[jamac]

Please someone explain to me how it will get worse if we leave...???

Republicans please...

An eye for 1,000,000 eyes leaves a lot of people blind.

[e1618978]

Please someone explain to me how it will get worse if we leave...???

Republicans please...

An eye for 1,000,000 eyes leaves a lot of people blind.

Yeah - "how would Vietnam get worse if we left" (people oposed to the Vietnam war
were saying the same thing as you to get us out of there), from Wikipedia:

Effects on Vietnam

Main articles: Mayagüez Incident, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Democratic Kampuchea, Third Indochina War, Reeducation camp, and boat people

Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to the Khmer Rouge on April 17, 1975. The last official American military action in South East Asia occurred on May 15, 1975. Forty-one U.S. military personnel were killed when the Khmer Rouge seized a U.S. merchant ship, the SS Mayagüez. The episode became known as the Mayagüez incident.

The Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist government of Laos in December 1975. They established the Lao People's Democratic Republic.[106]

Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese officials, particularly ARVN officers, were imprisoned in reeducation camps after the Communist takeover.[citation needed] Tens of thousands died and many fled the country after being released. Up to two million civilians left the country, and as many as half of these boat people perished at sea.[citation needed]

On July 2, 1976, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was declared. In 1977, United States President Jimmy Carter issued a pardon for nearly 10,000 draft dodgers.[107]

After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) and ousted the Khmer Rouge. As many as two million died during the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Vietnam began to repress its ethnic Chinese minority. Thousand fled and the exodus of the boat people began. In 1979, China invaded Vietnam in retaliation for its invasion of Cambodia, known as the Third Indochina War or the Sino-Vietnamese War. Chinese forces were repulsed.[108]



Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge (Khmer: ខ្មែរក្រហម) was the ruling political party of Cambodia -- which it renamed to Democratic Kampuchea -- from 1975 to 1979. The term "Khmer Rouge," meaning "Red Khmer" in French, was coined by Cambodian head of state Norodom Sihanouk and was later adopted in English. It was used to refer to a succession of Communist parties in Cambodia which evolved into the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and later the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. The organization was also known as the Khmer Communist Party and the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea.

The Khmer Rouge is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people (estimates range from 850,000 to 3 million) under its regime, through execution, starvation and forced labor. Following their leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society - a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labor projects. In terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population (est. 7.5 million people, as of 1975), it was one of the most lethal regimes of the 20th century. One of their mottos, in reference to the New People, was: "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss

[trumptman]

Yes, even Patraeus' chart shows approximately 37,000 civilian deaths in the past 20 months:

page 4 of this pdf (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/10_09_07_petraeus_charts.pdf)

Questions are (again): Why does it even matter how many people died? Does it matter if it were 30,000 or 300,000 or 3,000,000?

Well because a certain number pops up no matter whether there is a war or not simply because of human nature. For example every year in the United States there are around 16,500 murders a year even when we are not at war. The amount of per capita deaths from violence/war higher or lower than before the war is what we would attribute to the United States and the actions it has undertaken. The number itself isn't enough. It needs a context because it occurs regardless of whether Saddam is in power or not, regardless of whether we are in Iraq or not, and regardless of whether we are at war or peace.

As E# is noting with Vietnam, when we left the slaughter didn't stop, it intensified. So if the per capita violent death rate is say.... 10.4 per 100,000 now and we estimate it would raise to 15.7, would that be an argument to stay or leave? If it was 10.4 before we came and is 8.4 now, they we have done good. If it is the same then the effect is nil.

So I'm not saying that the number is unimportant. The deaths no matter the number are important and we all wish the number was 0. However some context is necessary to fully understand what the true effect of the actions are related to us being there.

Nick

[sammi jo]

[PNAC/AIPAC/neocon]One million "Muslime" down, 1.1 billion to go. Mission commenced[/PNAC/AIPAC/neocon]

[SpamSandwich]

Saddam Hussein was killing 10K/year, and our previous sanctions were killing 90K/year, so it looks like the Iraq war bumped the total death rate from 100K/year to 250k/year.

I'm wondering what the goal of the administration really was when they invaded Iraq.

Cheney evidently knew exactly what would happen, since he predicted it 10 years earlier when talking about why we didn't finish the first gulf war. They also probably knew that there were no WMDs, so the only conclusion that you could draw is that they wanted Iraq to go into civil war, but I have no idea why they would want that.

"Goal? What goal?

Oh... you mean after Saddam was taken out? Hell, I dunno."

- George Bush :embarrass

[sammi jo]

Saddam Hussein was killing 10K/year, and our previous sanctions were killing 90K/year, so it looks like the Iraq war bumped the total death rate from 100K/year to 250k/year.

I'm wondering what the goal of the administration really was when they invaded Iraq.

Cheney evidently knew exactly what would happen, since he predicted it 10 years earlier when talking about why we didn't finish the first gulf war. They also probably knew that there were no WMDs, so the only conclusion that you could draw is that they wanted Iraq to go into civil war, but I have no idea why they would want that.

Considering the $multibillion investment in "mini-city" military bases and a US Embassy the size of the Vatican.. its not as if we were going to go in there, kick Saddam out, do a token search for WMDs that they knew didn't exist, then proclaim "mission accomplished" and leave.

The point of the invasion was to establish a permanent presence in the middle east. The US military never intended to leave, and once there, leaving was never an option. The Administration has always considered Iraq to be the focal point of the "war on terror", a term use to bolster justification with the actual mission, ie to take control of the worlds richest energy resources, rationalize a vastly expanded military budget and make the region more secure for Israel, all in one neat package. It's no big secret, they've told us this already. Tommy Franks echoed it 2 days back when he said that we would most likely remain in Iraq for decades.

Pacifying and managing Iraq, while preventing the insurgency might have worked if the Administration had taken the advice of General Shinseki, who was calling for half a million troops. Shinseki was hauled over the coals for that by Rumsfeld and others in the administration, presumably because such strategy might have resulted in relatively peace there, thus making the permanent US military presence there hard(er) to justify.

[jamac]

Yeah - "how would Vietnam get worse if we left" (people oposed to the Vietnam war
were saying the same thing as you to get us out of there), from Wikipedia:

Effects on Vietnam

Main articles: Mayagüez Incident, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Democratic Kampuchea, Third Indochina War, Reeducation camp, and boat people

Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to the Khmer Rouge on April 17, 1975. The last official American military action in South East Asia occurred on May 15, 1975. Forty-one U.S. military personnel were killed when the Khmer Rouge seized a U.S. merchant ship, the SS Mayagüez. The episode became known as the Mayagüez incident.

The Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist government of Laos in December 1975. They established the Lao People's Democratic Republic.[106]

Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese officials, particularly ARVN officers, were imprisoned in reeducation camps after the Communist takeover.[citation needed] Tens of thousands died and many fled the country after being released. Up to two million civilians left the country, and as many as half of these boat people perished at sea.[citation needed]

On July 2, 1976, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was declared. In 1977, United States President Jimmy Carter issued a pardon for nearly 10,000 draft dodgers.[107]

After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) and ousted the Khmer Rouge. As many as two million died during the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Vietnam began to repress its ethnic Chinese minority. Thousand fled and the exodus of the boat people began. In 1979, China invaded Vietnam in retaliation for its invasion of Cambodia, known as the Third Indochina War or the Sino-Vietnamese War. Chinese forces were repulsed.[108]



Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge (Khmer: ខ្មែរក្រហម) was the ruling political party of Cambodia -- which it renamed to Democratic Kampuchea -- from 1975 to 1979. The term "Khmer Rouge," meaning "Red Khmer" in French, was coined by Cambodian head of state Norodom Sihanouk and was later adopted in English. It was used to refer to a succession of Communist parties in Cambodia which evolved into the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and later the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. The organization was also known as the Khmer Communist Party and the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea.

The Khmer Rouge is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people (estimates range from 850,000 to 3 million) under its regime, through execution, starvation and forced labor. Following their leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society - a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labor projects. In terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population (est. 7.5 million people, as of 1975), it was one of the most lethal regimes of the 20th century. One of their mottos, in reference to the New People, was: "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss


How again is that worse?
And why again did your friends not learn anything from this?

I can sense your jealousy of Pol Pot, Bush didn't kill more than him, but there are still 492 days left maybe.....

Here we have people not only disillusioned enough to become suicide bombers, no, we have 4 million displaced people who have lost all their human dignity and at this point would be happy to find work in an agrarian labor camp. At least they would have something other to do than watch their daughters become whores to help with money for food in the Syrian refugee camps.
Bravo!

e# how much property do you own in Baghdad?

[e1618978]

How again is that worse?
And why again did your friends not learn anything from this?

I can sense your jealousy of Pol Pot, Bush didn't kill more than him, but there are still 492 days left maybe.....

Here we have people not only disillusioned enough to become suicide bombers, no, we have 4 million displaced people who have lost all their human dignity and at this point would be happy to find work in an agrarian labor camp. At least they would have something other to do than watch their daughters become whores to help with money for food in the Syrian refugee camps.
Bravo!

e# how much property do you own in Baghdad?

I have no idea what you are talking about, I was trying to point out that if we leave things will get worse. Your post was just random free floating hostility.

When we left Vietnam, things got much worse, just like if we left Iraq in the near future. I don't think that there is any rational counterpoint to this. Anyone who advocates leaving Iraq now is aiding and abetting the massive genocidal war that will result if we leave.

[Nightcrawler]

I have no idea what you are talking about, I was trying to point out that if we leave things will get worse. Your post was just random free floating hostility.

When we left Vietnam, things got much worse, just like if we left Iraq in the near future. I don't think that there is any rational counterpoint to this. Anyone who advocates leaving Iraq now is aiding and abetting the massive genocidal war that will result if we leave.

That's a catch-catch-situation. When you invade in the first place you create a power-vaccuum that is filled by the invader, and once you leave a power-struggle ensues making the situation worse than before. That's why the invader is also responsible for the aftermath.

The morale of the story is: Don't invade in the first place.

Nightcrawler

[e1618978]

That's a catch-catch-situation. When you invade in the first place you create a power-vaccuum that is filled by the invader, and once you leave a power-struggle ensues making the situation worse than before. That's why the invader is also responsible for the aftermath.

The morale of the story is: Don't invade in the first place.

Nightcrawler

You can't change the past - are you implying that it is OK to advocate for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq if you didn't support the invasion? Withdrawing troops is an action that would result in more people dying, so are you blameless if you withdraw troops just because the invasion was somebody else's idea?

[@_@ Artman]

U.S. Secret Air War Pulverizes Afghanistan and Iraq (http://alternet.org/waroniraq/62511/)

The U.S. military is increasingly relying on deadly air strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan as the ground occupations fall apart, killing untold numbers of civilians.

According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan's North Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan's Pakitka Province and slammed into a Madrassa, or Islamic school, this past June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were dead.

The killers were robots, General Atomics MQ-1 Predators. The AGM-114 Hellfire missiles they used in the attack were directed from a base deep in the southern Nevada desert.

According to Associated Press, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of bombs dropped on Iraq during the first six months of 2007 over the same period in 2006. More than 30 tons of those have been cluster weapons, which take an especially heavy toll on civilians.

The U.S. Navy has added an aircraft carrier to its Persian Gulf force, and the Air Force has moved F-16s into Balad air base north of Baghdad.

Balad, which currently conducts 10,000 air operations a week, is strengthening runways to handle the increase in air activity. Col. David Reynolds told the AP, "We would like to get to be a field like Langley, if you will." The Langley field in Virginia is one of the Air Force's biggest and most sophisticated airfields.

The step-up in air attacks is partly a reflection of how beaten up and overextended U.S. ground troops are. While Army units put in 15-month tours, Air Force deployments are only four months, with some only half that. And Iraqi and Afghani insurgents have virtually no ability to inflict casualties on aircraft flying at 20,000 feet and using laser and satellite-guided weapons, in contrast to the serious damage they are doing to US ground troops.

<sarcasm>I love the smell of history repeating itself in the morning!</sarcasm>

http://www.gonemovies.com/WWW/MyWebFilms/Oorlog/ApocalypseKilgore1.jpg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5eXFeW0aI0)

[Splinemodel]

Posters have linked the Iraqi death toll to the Vietnamese death toll of their war, and this is relevant in the fact that they are both death tolls of civil wars. While US involvement in both of these civil wars may have expedited and perhaps accenuated the conflict, it's not likely that conflicts would have been avoided even had the US not intervened. With Iraq, it's extremely difficult to attribute civil war deaths to US involvement, because, as it's obvious to everyone, we are taking a more passive role.

In other words, blaming US entry in Iraq for the death toll of a civil war is somewhat contrived. It's impossible to predict what the outcome would be had the US not intervened, and given the instability of the region it's hard to believe that civil war will never have erupted. If you seek to deliver a more serious reason for full withdrawl, you're going to have to do better than playing this numbers game. Really, that's the only argument you are using, and it's hard to support in an a-posteriori fashion.

While I agree that there are better ways to deal with the middle east than what we are doing currently, with the occupation, I feel like I might be the only one who actually has ideas of what these might be. Seriously, without pretending that the Islamic terrorist threat isn't an issue, what would be your solution towards reducing perceived US contribution to the Iraqi civil war?

[Fellowship]

edit: Forget it,, not worth the time to argue.
Fellows

[Nightcrawler]

You can't change the past - are you implying that it is OK to advocate for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq if you didn't support the invasion? Withdrawing troops is an action that would result in more people dying, so are you blameless if you withdraw troops just because the invasion was somebody else's idea?

The problem is that the US invaded for the purpose of gaining direct access to Iraq's oil and to let american oil-companies get control over them, and for the purpose of building permanent US-military-bases for strategic control of the middle-east.

Both of which have to be reversed with all means necessary. If it's possible to convince the US peacefully to withdraw completely, ie. undoing their military bases and embassies, in a timeframe of five years, and to renationalise iraq's oil-fields, then that would be the preferable way to go.

But if that's not possible, the violent way will have to be pursued, ie. a growing insurgency that makes it impossible for the US to remain in control of Iraq and that also undermines Iraq's US-puppet-government, and therefore force the US to withdraw like in Vietnam.

Sure the death-toll will be very high for the iraqis, and the civil-war between shias and sunnis will be hardly preventable and Iran, Saudi-Arabia and Turkey will engage in the civilwar directly or indirectly to secure their interests, but I think in the long run that sacrifice is worth it.

Just one idea which could prevent a full-on-civil-war:
It would be great if the insurgency evolved to such a point to unite shia and sunnis in Iraq in the fight against the US and against the US-puppet-regime, and also against Al-Qaeeda.

That's my opinion, but in the end the iraqis will have to decide themselves what they want and which sacrifices they are able to accept.

Nightcrawler

[tonton]

Posters have linked the Iraqi death toll to the Vietnamese death toll of their war, and this is relevant in the fact that they are both death tolls of civil wars. While US involvement in both of these civil wars may have expedited and perhaps accenuated the conflict, it's not likely that conflicts would have been avoided even had the US not intervened. With Iraq, it's extremely difficult to attribute civil war deaths to US involvement, because, as it's obvious to everyone, we are taking a more passive role.

In other words, blaming US entry in Iraq for the death toll of a civil war is somewhat contrived. It's impossible to predict what the outcome would be had the US not intervened, and given the instability of the region it's hard to believe that civil war will never have erupted. If you seek to deliver a more serious reason for full withdrawl, you're going to have to do better than playing this numbers game. Really, that's the only argument you are using, and it's hard to support in an a-posteriori fashion.

While I agree that there are better ways to deal with the middle east than what we are doing currently, with the occupation, I feel like I might be the only one who actually has ideas of what these might be. Seriously, without pretending that the Islamic terrorist threat isn't an issue, what would be your solution towards reducing perceived US contribution to the Iraqi civil war?

Yeah, right.

Sorry to say, Spliney, but you've been hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Tricked into believing that the death toll would be anywhere close if not for US involvement. Either that or you're not being intellectually honest about it.

[@_@ Artman]

Posters have linked the Iraqi death toll to the Vietnamese death toll of their war

I never did. I was only posting a poll suggesting another number that indicates another tally of the civilian deaths.

But as far as political, administrative and militarily Iraq (& Afghanistan) far surpasses the stupidity, ignorance and ineptitude that was the Vietnam War. Though this war is far more superior as far as in the advanced medical treatment on the ground for our troops (we learned much in Vietnam about that) and (debatable) superior military power and technology we still have the bad habit of not recalling the terrible mistakes of previous conflicts and of cooking the books to make us believe that in "another six months" there will be "another six months" and so on...

While I agree that there are better ways to deal with the middle east than what we are doing currently, with the occupation, I feel like I might be the only one who actually has ideas of what these might be. Seriously, without pretending that the Islamic terrorist threat isn't an issue, what would be your solution towards reducing perceived US contribution to the Iraqi civil war?

One, I'd like to hear your ideas. Two, the war in Iraq wasn't against terrorism it was for oil. Third, we brought the terrorism to Iraq and it has instilled and aided the Iraqi sectarian groups to fight amongst themselves. We didn't perceive this and we are paying the price. So we have caused the civil war.

Watch Frontline's The Lost Year in Iraq (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yeariniraq/view/) and you'll get an idea of what and who caused all this.

[trumptman]

The problem is that the US invaded for the purpose of gaining direct access to Iraq's oil and to let american oil-companies get control over them, and for the purpose of building permanent US-military-bases for strategic control of the middle-east.

Let's say you are 100% right on this. The U.S. is empire. They want control. They want the oil. They want to be there permanently.

This is basically Pax Americana. It has good and bad points. Has the U.S. been the cop and enforcer in Europe via bases in Germany and via membership in NATO since WWII. Yes it has. Is this good or bad? That is much harder to answer. Europe as a content did nothing but beat the crap out of itself with war after war for centuries. We've now had it go from almost continual European wars to European Union while the U.S. has been the cop on the beat. The merits of all this can of course be debated, but the reality is that change has occurred.

Japan and China have a similar sort of history on the Pacific side of things and again, we are going on the half century mark with no major conflicts when these sorts of wars used to pop up quite regularly.

So if you are 100% correct the U.S. is invading for no other reason than to establish a seat for itself at the table from which it will dictate that everyone stop fighting, start getting along a buy crap, is this bad?

Was it bad for Europe and Asia?

When Clinton went into former Yugoslavia and bombed the crap out of the Serbs, that was Pax Americana at work. He put down (for a while anyway) the same type of conflict that has started wars continually on the European continent.

BTW, just to make sure some of those knee-jerkers out there don't question my memory, here is The Clinton Doctrine (http://www.thenation.com/doc/19990419/klare) from The Nation, 1999.

All major candidates, Republican and Democratic, support Pax Americana. It slips out here and there. This is why Obama ends up calling a little genocide a "good thing" and so forth.

Both of which have to be reversed with all means necessary. If it's possible to convince the US peacefully to withdraw completely, ie. undoing their military bases and embassies, in a timeframe of five years, and to renationalise iraq's oil-fields, then that would be the preferable way to go.

Would it be the preferable way to go? How about we get the U.S. to leave Germany first. We've only been there what... 50+ years now.

But if that's not possible, the violent way will have to be pursued, ie. a growing insurgency that makes it impossible for the US to remain in control of Iraq and that also undermines Iraq's US-puppet-government, and therefore force the US to withdraw like in Vietnam.

Vietnam has sure benefited from our withdrawal.

Sure the death-toll will be very high for the iraqis, and the civil-war between shias and sunnis will be hardly preventable and Iran, Saudi-Arabia and Turkey will engage in the civilwar directly or indirectly to secure their interests, but I think in the long run that sacrifice is worth it.


So numbers much higher than now in terms of deaths will be worth it because one of these quasi-kings will eventually (hopefully) sit on a throne alone with blood of his enemies flowing through the gutters so peace can be achieved. That is quite a sacrifice.

Just one idea which could prevent a full-on-civil-war:
It would be great if the insurgency evolved to such a point to unite shia and sunnis in Iraq in the fight against the US and against the US-puppet-regime, and also against Al-Qaeeda.

Sure and wouldn't it be great if the Israelis and Palestinians just up and hugged. Wouldn't it be nice of the Serbs, Bosnians and Kurds just all started humping each other. Wouldn't it be nice if China suddenly no longer gave a damn about Taiwan and so forth.

It would be nice indeed if all the groups who have been killing each other for a thousand years just stopped. That would be very nice indeed.

That's my opinion, but in the end the iraqis will have to decide themselves what they want and which sacrifices they are able to accept.

I hope I don't come across too mean Night, because honestly, you and I are really both of the same view here. It is the sort of argument I get into with Fellowship. I don't desire America as empire. However you look up the history of war in any region before that and well... it is profoundly more bloody. It is the difference between reality and platitudes. I love the intentions and platitudes myself.

If the United States, brought every soldier home. I'm not talking about just those in Iraq, or even Afghanistan, I'm also talking about those in Germany and in our bases throughout the world, do you believe no one worldwide or regionally would try to fill the void, nor is not doing so already?

I go through these same questions and that is why I am asking them of you. I'm not claiming to have the answers or even saying there is a right answer. However believing that walking away when Iran and Saudi Arabia are already having a war by proxy there, doesn't say to me that peace will return to the area and seeing as Iran is attempting to go nuclear, war might even spread.

Nick

[e1618978]

Both of which have to be reversed with all means necessary.

Why? I am all for US control of the world's oil supplies, being an American and all. Why is the reversal of this so urgent that you are willing to sacrifice millions to do it?

[SDW2001]

Indeed something is wrong VERY WRONG when people ignore things like this. It is very sad to me as a person who likes to see all people as people not just Americans as the "only" people. As a Christian I am indeed very saddened yet one not need be a Christian to see the sadness of this.

The following is the text of an opening post of a thread I made to indicate this and I used a much more conservative number of those dead in Iraq in that post:

The following is my opening post from my thread entitled "What Neocons Don't Tell You"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This thread is for the purpose of thinking through the actions of the US in response to 9/11 2001. I invite your thoughts in reply to what I will provide in this post:

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Yet there has been a minimum of 70,359 civillians killed in Iraq since the American invasion and following occupation.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Here are some facts:

US population is about 300 million

Iraq population is about 27 million

The population of Iraq is about 1/10th that of the US and yet they have lost about 23 times the number of civillians the US lost on 9/11.

Let us scale this to reflect what has happened here.

Take the Iraqi population and bring it up to parity of that of the US population; multiply it by about 10

270 ~ 300 million

Take the 70,359 iraqi civillian deaths and multiply them by 10

You get around 703,590 civillian deaths....

When you scale the Iraqi popluation to something close to that of the US and then scale up the civillian deaths they scale up to a number of 703,590.

Compare that to the 3,000 the US had on 9/11 2001.

3,000 goes into 703,590 234.53 times. That is to say that Iraq when brought to a population scale parity on par with the US population has experienced approx. 234.53 US 9/11's

234.53 9/11's

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 yet look at what is going on with the invasion / occupation.

Your thoughts?

Fellows

Ohh and not only have they had the equivalent of 234.53 9/11's

Look at things now:

""Eight million people are in urgent need of emergency aid; that figure includes over two million who are displaced within the country, and more than two million refugees. Many more are living in poverty, without basic services, and increasingly threatened by disease and malnutrition," said the relief agencies' report. The population of Iraq is 26 million. Child malnutrition rates have jumped from 19 percent before the invasion four years ago to 28 percent now, and there are two million internally displaced people, many of whom have no or little access to food rations.

The number of Iraqis "without access to adequate water supplies" is 70 percent, up from 50 percent since 2003."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/07/30/iraq.humanitarian/index.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If those dead number 1,000,000 the situation as stated in my quoted post above is understated by a factor of 14.3

It would mean Iraqis have had 3,353 9/11's

And Bush and co. talks the talk that we are trying to help the iraqi people.

What if that were the reason given for the attacks of 9/11 in America. Some foreign power just wants to help America..... Would we buy that with even one 9/11???

Fellows

My thoughts? That analogy has been used before. It's as dumb and irrelevant now as it was then.

[e1618978]

My thoughts? That analogy has been used before. It's as dumb and irrelevant now as it was then.

Saying "that argument is dumb" is a cop out, and not particularly convincing.

[Nightcrawler]

Let's say you are 100% right on this. The U.S. is empire. They want control. They want the oil. They want to be there permanently.

This is basically Pax Americana. It has good and bad points. Has the U.S. been the cop and enforcer in Europe via bases in Germany and via membership in NATO since WWII. Yes it has. Is this good or bad? That is much harder to answer. Europe as a content did nothing but beat the crap out of itself with war after war for centuries. We've now had it go from almost continual European wars to European Union while the U.S. has been the cop on the beat. The merits of all this can of course be debated, but the reality is that change has occurred.

Japan and China have a similar sort of history on the Pacific side of things and again, we are going on the half century mark with no major conflicts when these sorts of wars used to pop up quite regularly.

So if you are 100% correct the U.S. is invading for no other reason than to establish a seat for itself at the table from which it will dictate that everyone stop fighting, start getting along a buy crap, is this bad?
Was it bad for Europe and Asia?

An empire has sometimes and maybe even often a pacifying effect on those it conquered. But in the case of the islamic world empires, like the french and british ones, have as well brought much misery.

The fact that the US-empire brought good effects to Europe and Japan is no guarantee that it would likewise to the middle-east. In the case of Europe and Japan there were no relevant ressources to be exploited.

Besides there was no conflict between universalistic religions and the concepts of theocracy and secularism...

Then there is the proven history of favouring Israel and helping in its oppression and driving out of the palestinians.

All these three problems deny the US to become a benevolent emperor in the middle-east.

But it's not only that, muslims have a long history of independence, long fights against the mongols, the christian crusaders, the european colonists, against the Soviet-Union... and now against the US and Israel.


The question remains, what do muslims fight for? Why can't they simply give up and let themselves be conquered and controlled?

Identity, culture, history and religion.

You have made the example of Germany, or europeans in general and Japan, as being pacified under US-control. That may be true, but the price has been that they lost their identity and are now nothing but shadows and imitation of american's consumer-culture.

I and many other muslims think though that US-culture, or western culture, is not only incompatible with muslim culture but also damaging and wrong in an objective way. In the end western culture is selfdestructive..

You can see the effects in Europe's and Japan's dwindling reproduction-rates, now way under the ratio needed to self sustain the population.
The reasons for this are the modern world's highly anti-family-requirements and -wishes, the idea to measure everything in costs and efficiency, in short the ideology of capitalism, that worships the young, productive single.

Capitalism and secularism is what the US now tries to inject into the islamic world, and while both are very seducing and attractive, they are both wrong and destructive.

Islamism is a direct answer to these western ism-challenges, that tries to form Islam into a modern ideology, in order to be competitive in the arena of ideologies.

When Clinton went into former Yugoslavia and bombed the crap out of the Serbs, that was Pax Americana at work. He put down (for a while anyway) the same type of conflict that has started wars continually on the European continent.

BTW, just to make sure some of those knee-jerkers out there don't question my memory, here is The Clinton Doctrine (http://www.thenation.com/doc/19990419/klare) from The Nation, 1999.

All major candidates, Republican and Democratic, support Pax Americana. It slips out here and there. This is why Obama ends up calling a little genocide a "good thing" and so forth.


Like I already said, the US-regime's policy is independent of parties or candidates, that Clinton refocused the US' policy in the post-coldwar-period is no wonder, it was on his watch, regardless who had been president in that time would have issued the same policy.

Actually the policy is not a new one, it's the same as during the coldwar, Clinton merely persuaded the US-public that even after the coldwar the US would have to engage militarily outside its borders. The reason was that the US-public asked to cut down spending on the military and secret agencies.

So how best to persuade the US-public, that the US should act as the world's police and to upgrade its weapon-arsenal than to solve militarily a humanitarian crisis in Europe?

Another benifit was to demonstrate to Europe that it still needs the US..

But I think this time the US has overstepped.

Nightcrawler

[e1618978]

You can see the effects in Europe's and Japan's dwindling reproduction-rates, now way under the ratio needed to self sustain the population.
The reasons for this are the modern world's highly anti-family-requirements and -wishes, the idea to measure everything in costs and efficiency, in short the ideology of capitalism, that worships the young, productive single.

Western culture has made the USA and Japan rich, and rich people have fewer babies. If the Islamic cultures got rich with a big middle class, they would also have lower birth rates.

[Fellowship]

My thoughts? That analogy has been used before. It's as dumb and irrelevant now as it was then.

I am starting to think that you and Splinemodel have no care in the world for people living outside the US. It is as if you both can not relate to the fact that indeed other human beings on the planet are people too. People that might actually be peaceful, humble and just trying to provide for their family. When you say that my analogy is "dumb and irrelevant" I would say that you are mistaken. I just can't imagine that you actually believe the Iraqi people are deserving of the level of deaths seen in the name of "we are trying to help them".

Do you really believe that?

Fellows

[Nightcrawler]

Western culture has made the USA and Japan rich, and rich people have fewer babies. If the Islamic cultures got rich with a big middle class, they would also have lower birth rates.

Don't confuse correlation with causation. I think it's not richdom but culture/religion/worldview and espescially social framework that is the cause.

Currently, and for the last few decades, in the western world all people are motivated from the age of children through school and media to become materialistic and to pursue a carreer. That of course leads to more richdoms, but also to crippled families since women are less and less inclined to take time to get babies and to grow them up, when they could use the time to get on with their carreer and to earn money.

It's a catch-catch-situation.

Personally I think the problem lies with the concept of individualism and the culture it breeds, that forces every one to seek his personal fulfillment in materialistic form, instead of a culture centered around families and communities.

The culture of individualism cheers and adores the one who makes the most money, with the effect of long workhours, with the effect of less time for family and children, from men and women alike. If men are therefore living their whole life in work, coming home exhausted, just to wash and sleep, how can women be expected to care for home and family.
In that scenario, life plays in work and carreer and so women also want to live.. to earn money, to receive fulfillment and be recognized for their abilities.

It's completely understandable.

So the solution is imho a culture centered around family and communities where work is being viewed as something to enable family-life and not something that has worth in and of itself. In that scenario, the family and community would have precedence over anything else, and therefore work-time for earning money reduced so much as not to disturb family/community-life.

In my opinion, the western model is only a few inches short of slavery.

Nightcrawler

[dutch pear]

So the solution is imho a culture centered around family and communities where work is being viewed as something to enable family-life and not something that has worth in and of itself. In that scenario, the family and community would have precedence over anything else, and therefore work-time for earning money reduced so much as not to disturb family/community-life.

In my opinion, the western model is only a few inches short of slavery.
Nightcrawler

:no:
I'm sorry, but the generalistic black-and-white picture of western civilization you're trying to paint here simply does not hold true as a general description of the west*. Sure, over-the-top individualism/materialism IS a big problem for western societies but IMHO you vastly underestimate the countermovement centering around those exact same values you claim to be all but absent from the west. Looking at my age-group (25-35) lots of people enjoy to be working and earning enough for a high living standard but nearly everyone I know values a life centered around family and friends way higher than earning as much as possible. Lots of friends with small children work only part-time to live that life.

* - I'm speaking from my experience of living and working and knowing people in western Europe here.

[e1618978]

Don't confuse correlation with causation. I think it's not richdom but culture/religion/worldview and espescially social framework that is the cause.

Many things affect the birthrate, for the most important being:

1. How financially useful are kids?

Two things really reduce the value of children -
(1) The transition from an agracultural society (where children are needed to
help on the farm) to a non-agricultural society.
(2) Government sponsored social security/retirement plans (where in traditional
societies children were your retirement plan).

2. How empowered are women?

The more educated women are, the more likely they are to get a job. Women with
education and/or jobs tend to have fewer children.

3. How hard is it to have children?

In traditional societies, where men do nothing to help out in the house, and spend
the evenings drinking with their male friends after work, women have fewer children.

#1 and #2 are entirely related to wealth. #3 we have managed to avoid for the most
part in the west, but in Japan they have a tripple wammy, and hence they have the
worst demographic picture of any western nation.

Now, I don't think that #1 and #2 are going to change - it is better to have those things than to have a good birthrate.
In the west we have it about as good as you can get when you are rich - since most Islamic societies would fall flat on
their face wrt #3 above (just like Japan did), they would have an even worse birthrate than we do were they to match
us in #1 and #2.

But I don't think that they have anything to worry about, because #2 is unlikely to change any time soon in the
middle east.

From my point of view, when you are arguing for social change to correct the demographics, you really
are arguing for one of the following:
1. Remove social retirement plans
2. Kick women out of the universities/workforce
3. Go back to family farming as the norm
or 4. Men contributing equally to child raising

And only #4 has any positive merit at all.

[@_@ Artman]

...crickets (http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=144&a=3566)...

[jamac]

That's a catch-catch-situation. When you invade in the first place you create a power-vaccuum that is filled by the invader, and once you leave a power-struggle ensues making the situation worse than before. That's why the invader is also responsible for the aftermath.

The morale of the story is: Don't invade in the first place.

Nightcrawler

Exactly!!

[@_@ Artman]

I'm going to be a stand up guy...Why you should check sources (http://hanlonsrazor.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/why-you-should-check-sources/).

The ORB didn’t check with the Iraqi morgues or have on hand records of actual documented deaths. Like the 600,000 estimate from a year ago, this figure was made by polling a handful of people and then extrapolating the data across the entire population.

I’m not saying the number is wrong, I’m simply saying that to look at this as evidence that the American media is hiding a report that “shows” over a million Iraqis have been killed is a bit misleading. Take it in contrast to the IBC Project (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/), which deals solely with provable, documented violent deaths and pegs the number at just under 80,000.

Given that there are slews of hidden graves littered about Iraq as well as the fallibility of morgues releasing figures when so many have admitted to being backed up and unable to deal with the bodies coming in, I have no doubts that the IBC’s estimate is far on the low side. However I’d also wager that the ORB’s is on the high, indeed the earlier estimate had a margin of error of nearly 30% so imagine what this one is. As with so much in life, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle.

Thought I'd bring this to you. Still my questions stands...Why does it even matter how many people died? Does it matter if it were 30,000 or 300,000 or 3,000,000?

[jamac]

I have no idea what you are talking about, I was trying to point out that if we leave things will get worse. Your post was just random free floating hostility.

When we left Vietnam, things got much worse, just like if we left Iraq in the near future. I don't think that there is any rational counterpoint to this. Anyone who advocates leaving Iraq now is aiding and abetting the massive genocidal war that will result if we leave.

Vietnam has no oil ....
The only result of us leaving is that Halliburten & CO will have to pay more $ per barrel (if they still take $)
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2170237,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

Pol Pot didn't kill anyone for oil or to enrich himself. He was just insane. He did not invade a country half way across the planet to make sure his citizens will be able to drive Hummers and to pay off his donors.

Who has the higher moral grounds here?

[franksargent]

I'm going to be a stand up guy...Why you should check sources (http://hanlonsrazor.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/why-you-should-check-sources/).



Thought I'd bring this to you. Still my questions stands...Why does it even matter how many people died? Does it matter if it were 30,000 or 300,000 or 3,000,000?

Artman,

Thanks for the honesty. I had decided not to post in this thread because of my previous critique of the 2006 The Lancet study where I posted extensively on three key points of that particular study, and an additional fact that the peer review of that study was undoubtedly done by reviewers who have conducted similar studies using similar methodologies, so it would be natural for them not to question the methodology, since this would call into question their very own methodologies.

Basically, an intellectual "ownership" or territorial issue. You know, the "nature of the beast." :\

It's just so much easier to ask people questions, than to do the heavy lifting, actually go through accurate records (if these even exist), to dig up bodies and identify them as actual victims related (or known) to the people being questioned. No control group, no double blind study.

It is also my opinion that the Iraq Body Count underestimates the actual death toll, perhaps by a factor of 2X to 5X, I would expect the actual death toll to be a healthy six digit number.


But to answer your question, it really doesn't matter to you or me, since we are still alive, and haven't lost acquaintances, friends, or loved ones in this conflict.

Conversely, it does matter greatly to those who have lost acquaintances, friends, or loved ones in this conflict, on both sides. :\

[@_@ Artman]

But to answer your question, it really doesn't matter to you or me, since we are still alive, and haven't lost acquaintances, friends, or loved ones in this conflict.

Conversely, it does matter greatly to those who have lost acquaintances, friends, or loved ones in this conflict, on both sides. :\

What hurt me was that I was almost elated when I saw 1,000,000 (hence the title). That's like thinking, "YEAH! Now let's see what they think NOW! Especially when acquaintances, friends, or loved ones there are still alive, should get home soon and the rest get on with their lives. Soon.

[tonton]

But to answer your question, it really doesn't matter to you or me, since we are still alive, and haven't lost acquaintances, friends, or loved ones in this conflict.

Conversely, it does matter greatly to those who have lost acquaintances, friends, or loved ones in this conflict, on both sides. :\

On the contrary. It does matter to people like Fellowship, Artman, Shawn and myself, because we're humanitarians. We feel with the depth of our heart that an innocent Iraqi father sitting in his sparse home trying his best to support his family in a warzone, ending up dead because someone thinks there's a "terrorist sympathizer" hiding in the house next door really is just as much a tragedy as a fireman dying in the WTC tower collapse.

And after you add 999,999 more of those Iraqis, including mothers, sons, daughters, grandparents, and even some who may rightfully hate Americans because of what they've done to their country and their families, it makes 9/11 look like something very, very insignificant.

It does matter to us.

[franksargent]

On the contrary. It does matter to people like Fellowship, Artman, Shawn and myself, because we're humanitarians. We feel with the depth of our heart that an innocent Iraqi father sitting in his sparse home trying his best to support his family in a warzone, ending up dead because someone thinks there's a "terrorist sympathizer" hiding in the house next door really is just as much a tragedy as a fireman dying in the WTC tower collapse.

And after you add 999,999 more of those Iraqis, including mothers, sons, daughters, grandparents, and even some who may rightfully hate Americans because of what they've done to their country and their families, it makes 9/11 look like something very, very insignificant.

It does matter to us.

Everything is relative, I knew that my statement was cold, selfish, and crass. It's called "baiting the hook!" :D

Yet, when you really think about it deep down the bottom line is survival, your own (or your friends and families, or even a complete stranger's) survival.

Maybe we all need a care meter, or better yet a deed meter.

Those that have died, must have cared greatly, for either their own lives or for their beliefs. But they can no longer speak for themselves. So other people must speak for them. Other people must speak and care for those still in harms way.

My entire life has been one of deep care for human injustices and needless loss of life. :\

[e1618978]

Vietnam has no oil ....
The only result of us leaving is that Halliburten & CO will have to pay more $ per barrel (if they still take $)
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2170237,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

Pol Pot didn't kill anyone for oil or to enrich himself. He was just insane. He did not invade a country half way across the planet to make sure his citizens will be able to drive Hummers and to pay off his donors.

Who has the higher moral grounds here?

The oil just makes the stakes higher, so the power struggle will be more intense when we leave, leading to more bloodshed than happened after we left Vietnam. You still are not making any logical sense, you are just stringing random things together to try and make a point.

Everyone who is advocating for the US to leave is aiding and abetting civil war and genocide. I personally think we need to split the country into three pieces before it will calm down enough for us to leave. We also probably need to bomb the shit out of Iran, to stop them from (1) getting a bomb and (2) taking over Iraq when we leave. If it is true that they are funding the insurgents, then we are effectively at war with them already anyway. As long as a bunch of people are going to die, they might as well die making the place safer, instead of making it blow up like Lebanon did (Iraq would be the new Lebanon if we left now).

A big chunk of Iran is Kurdish, and that part could be split off of Iraq and Iran to form its own country, and they have been and will continue to be our steadfast allies. We could also leave a permanent garrison in Kurdistan. What is left of Iran would absorb southern Iraq to form "New Iran", and Syria would absorb central Iraq. Both Iran and Syria would be so busy re-building their new territories that they would not bother us so much for a while hopefully.

[trumptman]

An empire has sometimes and maybe even often a pacifying effect on those it conquered. But in the case of the islamic world empires, like the french and british ones, have as well brought much misery.

Misery is the human condition. This is why with the numbers we are discussing here, I've asked for a context compared to historical violent deaths on a per capita basis. What we are left with at this stage is asking if the United States acting in Iraq while Iran and Saudi Arabia fight each other via proxy is worse than when Saddam was slaughtering certain segments of his own people, letting them starve under sanctions, and every decade or so attempting war against one of his neighbors.

Both are forms of misery. Non-misery is not a true option because these various factions are always fighting for power and have been for quite some time.

The fact that the US-empire brought good effects to Europe and Japan is no guarantee that it would likewise to the middle-east. In the case of Europe and Japan there were no relevant ressources to be exploited.

You are correct that there is never a guarantee. While Iraq could be exploited for oil, I'm sure the United States would prefer simply to use it as a counter-balance to others in the region, pay fair prices for the oil, and garner a friend and ally. Also exploiting is so short term and profits are much better assured if you can trade with friend or ally for decades or even centuries. From what I have read all the "loans" given during redevelopment of these countries (Japan, Europe) have never even been repaid, and instead were forgiven. It simply becomes easier to trade and grow rich that way rather than exploit.

Besides there was no conflict between universalistic religions and the concepts of theocracy and secularism...

I'm not sure I follow you here. Please elaborate.

Then there is the proven history of favouring Israel and helping in its oppression and driving out of the palestinians.

You are correct that the United States won't help exterminate the Jews, but that doesn't mean establishing a democracy won't help bring more peace within other factions.

All these three problems deny the US to become a benevolent emperor in the middle-east.

It doesn't have to be the entire middle-east. These things become quite interesting to watch. As I've noted it doesn't always work out right and even when it does, I'm not sure I support it, but the actions themselves are fascinating to watch. You can see how China, a communist country for example which as a belief system is certain antithetical to the United States, is still trading with the United States and is at times, played off both Japan, a very close ally and India a similar country but with a different system of government. It definitely is a tightrope o progress. Overtime I suppose the thought is that progress and individual rights grow to the point where war is disdained.

But it's not only that, muslims have a long history of independence, long fights against the mongols, the christian crusaders, the european colonists, against the Soviet-Union... and now against the US and Israel.

...and each other. Don't forget that as well.

The question remains, what do muslims fight for? Why can't they simply give up and let themselves be conquered and controlled?

Identity, culture, history and religion.

You have made the example of Germany, or europeans in general and Japan, as being pacified under US-control. That may be true, but the price has been that they lost their identity and are now nothing but shadows and imitation of american's consumer-culture.

You could be correct. I go through this myself and wonder, is is really worse now for these shadow consumers than when they were peasant farmers, or did the culture and history just seem more rich because the very few winners had to do so little to keep power, could flaunt that power so readily, and lastly did not have to compete against other sources of entertainment and leisure at the time.

It is a worthy set of considerations.

I and many other muslims think though that US-culture, or western culture, is not only incompatible with muslim culture but also damaging and wrong in an objective way. In the end western culture is selfdestructive..

You can see the effects in Europe's and Japan's dwindling reproduction-rates, now way under the ratio needed to self sustain the population.
The reasons for this are the modern world's highly anti-family-requirements and -wishes, the idea to measure everything in costs and efficiency, in short the ideology of capitalism, that worships the young, productive single.

Capitalism and secularism is what the US now tries to inject into the islamic world, and while both are very seducing and attractive, they are both wrong and destructive.

Islamism is a direct answer to these western ism-challenges, that tries to form Islam into a modern ideology, in order to be competitive in the arena of ideologies.

This is a true point. I don't know if you lurker or were registered back when, but if you do a search you will see a series of posts where I asked similar questions. I asked when viewed objectively, if a culture can be healthy when it cannot even sustain itself via reproduction. I noted that from the Islamic point of view, that the reduction in per capita birth rate was likely viewed as a type of genocide and would be justified in being fought against. Lastly as you noted, most of it comes down to chasing after bobbles and trinkets in the pursuit of some consumerist dream/nightmare. I cannot say that I had all the answers but you can be assured I was at least asking some of the same questions.

Like I already said, the US-regime's policy is independent of parties or candidates, that Clinton refocused the US' policy in the post-coldwar-period is no wonder, it was on his watch, regardless who had been president in that time would have issued the same policy.

Actually the policy is not a new one, it's the same as during the coldwar, Clinton merely persuaded the US-public that even after the coldwar the US would have to engage militarily outside its borders. The reason was that the US-public asked to cut down spending on the military and secret agencies.

So how best to persuade the US-public, that the US should act as the world's police and to upgrade its weapon-arsenal than to solve militarily a humanitarian crisis in Europe?

Another benifit was to demonstrate to Europe that it still needs the US..

But I think this time the US has overstepped.

Again, mostly agreed. I think the United States has mostly been "overstepped" since the end of the gold standard and Nixon inflating away most of the costs of the Vietnam War. On the financial side of things we hear very strong rumblings with regard to reserve currency status, protectionist trade agendas and so forth that show the United States can not be the police and consumer and debtor for and to the world anymore nor should they have ever been.

Western culture has made the USA and Japan rich, and rich people have fewer babies. If the Islamic cultures got rich with a big middle class, they would also have lower birth rates.

The United States grew richer for a hundred years while still having an exploding population growth and birthrate. The boomers came out of the period when, it will likely be decided in the future, was the wealthiest in terms of influence and power for the United States.

Most of this will be found, in my view, to be tied to excessive feminism creating antagonism between the sexes and misery to most folks when freedoms have been forgone in order to "help the children" via family courts. The decline of marriage, no-fault divorce and the rise of modern day slavery and debtors prisons via the family courts will be found to be the case, not wealth.

I'm going to be a stand up guy...

Thought I'd bring this to you. Still my questions stands...Why does it even matter how many people died? Does it matter if it were 30,000 or 300,000 or 3,000,000?

Because death is the final destination for all and so a context is necessary. Violent deaths occur during war or peace and so again, the question to ask is how much more violent death is occurring that would have normally occurred. There is never a state free from violent deaths.

On the contrary. It does matter to people like Fellowship, Artman, Shawn and myself, because we're humanitarians. We feel with the depth of our heart that an innocent Iraqi father sitting in his sparse home trying his best to support his family in a warzone, ending up dead because someone thinks there's a "terrorist sympathizer" hiding in the house next door really is just as much a tragedy as a fireman dying in the WTC tower collapse.

And after you add 999,999 more of those Iraqis, including mothers, sons, daughters, grandparents, and even some who may rightfully hate Americans because of what they've done to their country and their families, it makes 9/11 look like something very, very insignificant.

It does matter to us.

I find it interesting that you call yourself a humanitarian when your same political ideology in the United States a man could end up dead via violent crime in the United States or any other country and you would want his murderer rehabilitated rather than punished. He could end up removed from the lives of his wife, his own children and forced from his own home via a restraining order all on the whim of the other parent and you or at least some of those you name call criticism of such a process misogyny.

As I've tried to put across to Nightcrawler here, most people don't object to having a say via the vote, having a bit more money in the pocket and a few more bobbles to consider for purchase.

Instead it is the antagonism between the sexes that exists within our own culture, an antagonism that leads to an inability to couple and give rise to the future generations an antagonism that amounts to cultural and ethnic genocide without the labels attached that they fight. We ought to fight it here as well and certainly not export it.

We all are straddling some slightly different sets of lines with regard to beliefs here. However I object to the labels. I don't call someone a humanist when many of their values lead to a per capita decline in birthrate so strong that soon there are no future generations for which to fight. Wealth did not mean a death sentence in the past. It often meant that you had the largest number of children. A recent study postulated that the change in values that led to the productivity and wealth explosion was simply a type of evolution whereby the groups who held the values had a higher life expectancy, and gave birth to so many more children than those who did not and as result died so much sooner and with fewer or no children.

Nick

[Nightcrawler]

Many things affect the birthrate, for the most important being:

1. How financially useful are kids?

Two things really reduce the value of children -
(1) The transition from an agracultural society (where children are needed to
help on the farm) to a non-agricultural society.
(2) Government sponsored social security/retirement plans (where in traditional
societies children were your retirement plan).

Not really, these changes espescially number (1) have indeed led to the drop of fertility rate from 7+ to 3+ children per woman, but don't explain the drop experienced by nearly all western nations during the 20th-century, from 3+ to 1+ children per woman.

2. How empowered are women?

The more educated women are, the more likely they are to get a job. Women with
education and/or jobs tend to have fewer children.

True, women have a time-window of fertility, between the age of 14 and 40. When women are on their way to graduate and to establish a carreer, the window is reduced to the age of 35-40. In that time they would have to find a man willing to have children with her, and a boss willing to give her time off for a year or two and later to offer her a part-time-job.

These obstacles aren't impossible to climb, but they reduce the possibility of multiple childrens per woman considerably.



3. How hard is it to have children?

In traditional societies, where men do nothing to help out in the house, and spend
the evenings drinking with their male friends after work, women have fewer children.

That is true for Spain and Italy, which is why they have even less children per woman than the rest of europe, but that explains only a difference and not the general outcome, as even societies that don't have such problems, like Germany and the scandinavian countries, don't reach the fertility-rate needed to sustain the population.

#1 and #2 are entirely related to wealth. #3 we have managed to avoid for the most
part in the west, but in Japan they have a tripple wammy, and hence they have the
worst demographic picture of any western nation.

Maybe, that is one possible interpretation, but it could also be because Japan has assissimilated to modernity much stronger than Europe and the US, where there are counter-weights in the form of various religions and immigration from thirdworld-countries.

Now, I don't think that #1 and #2 are going to change - it is better to have those things than to have a good birthrate.
In the west we have it about as good as you can get when you are rich - since most Islamic societies would fall flat on
their face wrt #3 above (just like Japan did), they would have an even worse birthrate than we do were they to match
us in #1 and #2.

Maybe, but I think a modern society, one based on workdivision, capitalism, high education, equal freedoms and carreer-possibilities for women... lead to richdom, but at the same time to a highly reduced fertility-rate, in most cases below replacement-level.

Currently we concentrate on women in analysing how fertile they are, but in modern societies it's also men that have less interest in getting children, having the responsibility to finance them.

The other thing is that men are more interested in young women, age between 16-30, but these are active in getting a carreer on, and while they are ready to have sex, they prevent getting pregnant through pills, condoms or abortions...

In fact these latter possibilities are working in favour of most men, since these and the social changes that the modern world enables, ie. the possibility to engage on all levels with women without being married, enable men to have sex without commitment.


But I don't think that they have anything to worry about, because #2 is unlikely to change any time soon in the
middle east.

Most of the middle-eastern countries and also most of the islamic countries have already arrived in modernity, ie. in urban reality in contrast to the agricultural past. The fertility-rate has dropped therefore to 3+ children per month much like the western countries rate during the 19th and early 20th century.

The next drop is the one that has to be prevented by learning from the mistakes of the western world that has already experienced the drop.

Ireland is a very interesting country to analyse in that regard as it had a fertility-rate of 3+ children per woman up until 1975, but since then dropped until it reached 1,87. So Ireland experienced the same drop as the other european countries but only decades later than them.

Up until 1975, abortions, contraception-instruments and divorces were prohibitted, but after 1975 slowly but surely allowed. The new possibilities led to the empowerment of women, and the ability for them to pursue long education and carreer.

During the same time, the importance of religion in Ireland declined similarly.



From my point of view, when you are arguing for social change to correct the demographics, you really
are arguing for one of the following:
1. Remove social retirement plans
2. Kick women out of the universities/workforce
3. Go back to family farming as the norm
or 4. Men contributing equally to child raising

And only #4 has any positive merit at all.

Maybe #4 will work, who knows, but there is another aspect that should not be overlooked:

We are talking here about genders, men and women, that have their psychological/spiritual/emotional and biological differences, and the social frameworks up until the 20th century supported them, but since ww1, the first modern total war, when all the men were on the battlefields, the women worked in the factories producing the weapons and ammunition.

What the women did was to do what men did up until then, and the movement of emancipation and feminism since then aimed at turning women into men, not only to be of equal worth but to become the same, to do and think and enjoy the same things, and #4 aims at turning men into women, so that the circle closes, and there is only one gender.

I think that was and is a wrong development, I think for a sound society it's needed that men and women have their rolemodels and frameworks that give identity and guidance.

And that brings me back to my other favourite argument: Secularism leads to eroded religions, morals and social frameworks, and for the culmination of all this, the fertility-rate serves as a highly visible symptom, but it's hardly the only one.

The reason why the US has managed to at least sustain the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman is three-fold: a) because of immigration from undeveloped countries and b) because of memberstates in which contraception, abortion.. is still not practiced and related: c) because of the southern bible-belt.


Nightcrawler

[e1618978]

And that brings me back to my other favourite argument: Secularism leads to eroded religions, morals and social frameworks, and for the culmination of all this, the fertility-rate serves as a highly visible symptom, but it's hardly the only one.

Wealth leads to secularism, thank god. Wealth -> secularism -> emancipation of women -> lower birth rate. I personally see secularism as a benefit of wealth and education, rather than a detriment. Also, I don't see how you can say that morals are lower in secular societies, because crime of all types have been dropping dramatically in the US since 1950 - and the murder rate has only started to bump back up in step with this latest rise of the religious right to power.

There are all kinds of correlations here, the problem is finding causation.

[Nightcrawler]

Wealth leads to secularism, thank god. Wealth -> secularism -> emancipation of women -> lower birth rate. I personally see secularism as a benefit of wealth and education, rather than a detriment.

Of course you like secularism, but I don't like it at all. I guess we will have to disagree on that one and let it be, otherwise we could discuss aeons on why secularism is evil or a blessing.

Also, I don't see how you can say that morals are lower in secular societies, because crime of all types have been dropping dramatically in the US since 1950 - and the murder rate has only started to bump back up in step with this latest rise of the religious right to power.

Morals are definitely lower in secular societies, that is if we view morals as religious concepts, as sinning, sex outside of the marriage is a thorough moral failment, taking of usury, lying, cheating, being offensive to the parents.. and a lot of other things that are amoral but not criminal.

As to the crime-drop, that has not only happened in the US, but in nearly all western states after the Soviet-empire crumbled. In the 90's policing-techniques improved, but I don't think that is the cause for the drop, some say it is a new ethos, which disaproves of violent or excessive behaviour, that is developed among populations that became more wealthy and secure. Possible and probable, it may also have to do with the end of the cocaine-era that was largely replaced by marijuana.

There are all kinds of correlations here, the problem is finding causation.

I agree.

Nightcrawler