Our Troops Must Stay - Page 3

No my point was about people that choose an action that harms themselves vs. an action taken by another person that harms them.

It's a joke meant to expose the absurdity of the Bush logic. And I damned near got blown up on 7/7 in London.

See, now you have come up with a much better analogy.

That may have originally been the case, but your response quoting BRussell and saying "not according to" means that you shifted your point to effectiveness.

Me too. And I'm grateful we're both here to talk about it.

You're right. My fault for following your rabbit trail. That will teach me.

Whew. Now that THAT'S done.

Anyone wanna go grab dinner?

Hmm, can I say moral hazard?

Whatever the cause, marketing, nicotine addiction, people freely choosing to kill themselves, whatever, the numbers are absolutely staggering. Every two days the same number of people die from cigarettes as died on 9/11. Every two frickin days. As many women die from breast cancer in a few weeks, every few weeks, week in and week out, year after year, as died on 9/11.

Our priorities are out of whack when something completely redefines our country and our policies, when something else that is much, much more serious barely gets notice.

I'm not suggesting that 9/11 should be ignored, just that we don't seem to really put our energy into things according to their importance. Going to war and kicking ass is really cool if you're president, I'm sure. Reforming health insurance must really suck. But which is actually more important?

How can we force them to take nicotine out of cigarettes? That's a biggie.

I actually do agree with you. We often have our priorities whacked by whatever is foremost in our collective conciousness. As a country we often fail to look beyond the end of our nose.

1. Obviously any civilian death is bad, but if we'd manage to kill Iraqis at the same killed:killer ratio that happened on 9/11, you might have a point. Right now collateral damage has amounted to FAR LESS than 1 death per coalition troop in the region. 9/11 registered about 157 Americans dead per terrorist.

2. Insurgents are doing a great job killing their own, too. How many civilian deaths have they caused and do you count them as coalition collateral damage? To do so would be questionable.

3. How many more of Saddam's own people would have been terrorized by their leader had he not been pulled from power?

4. How many lives have been saved by catching insurgents before they were able to blow themselves up in a crowd?

Let's face it, each side of this argument could go on forever. My point has always been that coalition forces and Iraqi civilians DO need to be concerned about those 10,000 insurgents in a land of millions. If 19 people can affect America they way they did, 10,000 can affect Iraq in a far worse way, I fear.

I'm afraid to say I do find that response pretty unconvincing - it could easily have been trotted out on a press realease issued by either the Bush or the Blair administration and they aren't known for their depth of analysis.

I'm struggling to see the relevance of the statistical games. Terrorists killed 3,000 innocent civilians in NYC. US/UK forces have killed (probably - we don't know for sure) several tens of thousands of innocent civilians since the beginning of the second Iraq War. How can these deaths POSSIBLY be less important? If we are saying they are a necessary evil in a good and honest crusade, I'd suggest it would help if the war in fact appeared good and honest (or indeed even legal).
How does Iraqis (or Syrians, Afghanis etc) killing Iraqis justify US forces killing civilians (and indeed, using very dubious weapons such as "white phosphorus" on them)?? Is it sufficient that we propably didn't mean to kill them. Are you aware of the concept of "depraved indifference"?

As you may be aware, regime change as sole motive for invading another sovereign state is ILLEGAL in international law. Be it Saddam or be it latter day Hitler, the UN and the body of law which has grown up since WWII makes it a crime to invade a sovereign state just because the ruler is a tyrant. All of this MUST be conducted via the UN. It is an amusing sidenote (unless of course you live in Iraq in which case it's quite possibly a life and death issue) that the head of the Iraqi parliamentary opposition said a few days ago he thought the torture was WORSE now than under the previous regime. And people call this freedom.

The insurgents weren't there before. Comparing before and after, they are a problem caused by the US forces, though presumably unintentionally. So the fact that occasionally one or two get caught is very little consolation to the hundreds of people who get blown up each week by bombers. Saddam's tyrant regime in Iraq did not have insurgents (to any great degree) - people just lived in fear of him.

Yes. The argument could go on forever. And I could wait for ever to hear an honest, truthful, and legimate reason for US and UK forces to be occupying Iraq and (in the process) killing (no doubt unintentionally) large number of civilians.

Isn't the irony here that terrible as the WTC attacks were, NYC got off really lightly. Had it been liberated by foreign troops, it would have had a REALLY bad time.

Nothing would ever satisfy you or change your mind, even if it were "honest, truthful, and legitimate."

"honest, truthful, and legitimate."


If only we'd heard something in that vein to the contrary.

Here's another word: "subjective."

Objective Truth.

Why can't the republicans survive without postmodernism?

You haven't even begun to try. You've just told me Saddam was a bad chap, the insurgents are killing lots of people too and we're trying to stop them. And that's the justification for invading another country. This is my concern - you actually have the right to vote.

Objective Truth = Water flows out of the sink's faucet.
Subjective Truth = Water doesn't flow out of the sink's faucet with enough pressure.

Objective Truth = American troops are in Iraq.
Subjective Truth = American troops should be in Iraq.

See the difference?

EDIT: Clarified my first example.

I have no interest in doing so.

You do realize that at some point, post modernism was a liberal philosophical theory?

I was eating object and subjective truths for a light afternoon snack twelve years ago.

What is your point?

You do realize that I really don't care? I don't care if Koko the monkey came up with "post-modernism." I know what the word "objective" means and I know what the word "subjective" means. Add those onto "truth" and I guess you get "post-modernism." Gosh, and I didn't even have to read a book about it. I love how adding a few words together creates a philosophical theory. But then again 2+2=4 IS a mathematical equation, simple and mundane as it is.


I've heard that white wine goes well with that.


That you're trying way too hard at this.

My ORIGINAL point was that the information and evidence that exists about the war will never change someone's mind if they are dead-set against it. In the same respect, those who support the war will never be convinced by the same information and evidence that we should not have gone to war.

To get back to the thread topic, I agree that us leaving *might* stop or significantly slow down insurgency. But if we weren't there, the insurgents might then turn their attention to destroying the budding democracy there.

Another issue is that Iraq has a lot more problems that we need to stay there to fix...since we partially caused them. If those problems were gone and all we were doing was staying to finish off insurgents, then I'd be all for leaving. Let the Iraqi law enforcement handle them. But that's not the case.

A little bird told me that the US was responsible for Saddam's rise to power in Iraq in the first place. Someone want to verify or explain and expand on this? Sounds intriguing.

I believe it is basically true, yes.

Cheers from a past contributer to these forums.

I was not a supporter of the war, but after it began...and after the 'peace' began to go wrong...I was a supporter of the U.S. staying in - out of a sense that they had a responsibility to set right what they had put in motion. Now, I think, we might be past the point that their continued presence is doing any good. It may just be fueling problems. It will be terrible for Iraq when the U.S. leaves. But it still might be better than if they stay. And maybe, just maybe, the Iraquis will be able to sort this out (mostly) by themselves.

It's risky - very risky - but all options seem risky at this stage.

But, but, but! If the US leaves, Iraq will descend into chaos! There will be killings every day!

FWIW, I'm with you. I had, initially, believed that once we were in, we were in. But how much more awful could it get if we pulled out? Iraq formally erupts into civil war and then segregates itself into three countries?

Maybe. But Iraq is a bastardised country artificially created by the British - splitting it up into separate countries may not be any worse than where the country is today (though the Turks are unlikely to be pleased with an independent Kurdistan).

Yes, and there is the matter of who of the three gets the oil.

I thought a 3-way split made sense at one time. I don't any more.

Idealistic as it may be, it would be nice to have them "work and play well" with one another.

Won´t work. Even ignoring the kurds and if we found the golden cut of the land so each group got their share it would never be fair on an individual level (members of a "wrong" group trapped on the wrong side of the fence).

Yes but nothing like objective has come along. No matter how you feel about this the facts remain. No threat, no WOMD, No fast withdrawl, and doesn't look like it's working.


PS. I forgot to add lots of dollars are being spent and lots of people are dying.

The whole history of this is laced with half truths and not enough evidence to support it items.

So far there's been nothing but subjective ideas in favor of the supporters of this war/occupation. That's how it got started in the first place. Subjective ideas favoring a " Threat ".

These are cold hard facts no matter what your interpretation.

Sorry.

You know at the end of the Vietnam war there were critics of us leaving.

They seemed to think that the south would fall and the " Domino " effect would take place and all of southeast asia would become communist threating Japan and other coutries.

Well the south melded once again to the rest of the country ( this was a no brainer ). As to the rest guess what didn't happen?

And the entire war was based on this premise.

Reasoning similar to another war I know of.

For those of you too young to remember some facts keep in mind the south and the north Vietnamise had been fighting for 200 years before the french got there ( that was years before us ) seperate of any communist ideology. So they had been fighting all along just like another place I know.


So we came.

We left.

And no real changes except a lot of people dead, a huge amount of money spent, and some craters in their farmland.

Any questions about the lesson learned here kids?

Jimmac, You really can´t compare the two situations... what we are discussing here is not some domino effect, but what will happen internally in Iraq if we left. And its not like some other country is going to take over Iraq and put stability back into the country. Those we are fighting is not backed by a relativ stable government that is able to enforce any kind of relative stability, no matter how much you can compare the tactics with Vietnam.

Our forces are the only thing that is able to project any kind of stability into Iraq right now, no mater how dirty this stability is.

Well you edited your post, so I´ll make this addition:


But it became more and more clear that one side would be able to win the war (not the one you backed) and it did, 200 years of war ended. his is not the case in Iraq.


A comment as a question? Fuck you?

I believe you can and should. We were sold a bill of goods about another war that just wasn't true. Also terrible things would happen if we left. That was the dommino theory which I didn't coin was very well used in it's defense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory

This time it was " Imminent Threat ".

And here we are stuck in another quagmire that we can't win.

These were both false situations that cost us dearly and we should have learned then not to invade without all the real facts.

There are many similarities if you look beyond the geography and ideologies. Instead look at how they started, how they went, and how they will probably end up.

We are discussing the situation as it is now, not as it was four years ago. The title of the thread is not "Should we have invaded Iraq" but "Our Troops Must Stay".

"Imminent threath" was the argument for going to war. "Domino effect" was the argument for going into Vietnam AND staying there. Go back and discuss what happens IN Iraq if we left, just like the rest of us are doing.

It's all connected. I did start out my premise with the history of critics that didn't want us to leave Vietnam. Learn from history.
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" Imminent threath" was the argument for going to war. "Domino effect" was the argument for going into Vietnam AND staying there. Go back and discuss what happens IN Iraq if we left, just like the rest of us are doing. "

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And they're not suggesting the terrorists will take over the country ( threating us ) if we leave Iraq?

Mr moderator I'm not trying to challenge you or derail this thread with stories about Vietnam. I'm just saying there are many similarites and perhaps we should learn from history and apply it to this situation.

We are discussing if we should stay or go and you insist the situation is like Vietnam. Okay so please answer me this:

What will most likely happen if we left Iraq and how does that compare to VIetnam?

I believe the country after a time will continue as if we hadn't been there. There will most likely be another questionable leader that will rise to power. However this big " terrorist threat " will not change either way. Either way the situation will not change because of our presence.

Except for the continued bloodshed because we are there.

Things will take their natural course. Iraq will be one country again. Without our interference. Sure there will be blood shed but that's happening ( and not in a small way ) right now because of our presence. We may not like who's running this country but what are we going to do? We can't occupy it forever. And this doesn't seem to be preventing that from happening anyway. At some point you have to cut your losses and admit this venue just isn't viable and leave. Just like Vietnam.

For a long time there we were trying to bolster the South Vietnamise military just like we are trying to bolster Iraq's government. The idea is that we can't leave before that happens. Well I believe we can bolster until doomsday and it won't work. Why? Because just like Vietnam we must put their future in their own hands. They can't possibly have pride and hope for the future while they're being told what to do by an occupying force.

I believe the bulk of them don't want us there because we're just another force telling them what to do.

Also just like Vietnam there are dynamics to this conflict seperate from the terrorists and the remains of the Saddam's government. They had ideological and religious differences a long itme before any of us got there.

Just like someone else suggested in this thread : " Maybe the way to fix it is to leave ".

Once again ( in case you missed it ) earlier in this thread I brought up the idea of how do you think the American revolution would have went if the french had come in and helped us defeat the british and then occupied the colonies? Would we have had hope and the drive to develope our own nation? Or would we now all be speaking french?

Also the terrorist breeding ground threat is speculation ( designed as an excuse to keep us there ) just like the Dommino theory. Just like Vietnam.

Are all the mods here on crack?

Just passionate...... I guess.

That was a little beyond passionate, I think.