GySgt

No he would not have. Kuwait was to be no more. The same for part of Iran just under a decade earlier.


And this is the entire problem. America is not permitted to do the right thing because critics prefer an America that shook the hands of the dictator that allowed us to feed ourselves immediately. This was never in our long term national interests and only served to give us temporary security and wealth. We feed ourselves by catering to the people under the tyrannical and oppressive regimes. It's this simple.

Up until 2001, we fed ourslelves through the dictator and the regime. At this point in history, we are finally forced to feed ourselves through the people. This is how it should have always been.

And Iraq is more stabilized today than it has ever been. If the price of oil had anything to do with what is going on in Iraq, then why have the prices only started to jump in the last year or two and not way back in 2003? The price of oil has everything to do with global demand and drilling limitations everywhere else. It is running out and it cost more to drill deeper. There was only so many dinosaurs and there haven't been any since.

You are thinking in terms if immediate gain. The economic interests of the world do not revolve around Iraq. The strength of the free world has always come from business deals that have been long lasting and where the people are happy. The immediate gains we received from populations who were prescribed misery blame only us for all their woes. This, in the end, proved not to be able to serve our long term national interests or our security. And as we all know and Europeans refuse to acknowledge, the health of America determines the health of the free world. We had been walking a path that was only exponentially getting rougher. The longer we waited to act on our true values the harder it was going to be to preserve our long term security. We were fooling ourselves. Clinton knew it as well as Carter. But Carter had a Cold War in his face and Clinton couldn't follow through with his promises to the world's suffering.

It is time we took the lumps we should have already engaged in for the world. We should have embarked on this in 91. We took the lumps throughout the Cold War and we are going to take the lumps for them during this period as well. This doesn't end with Iraq. The difference is that we didn't refuse our mission post WWII for 15 years as the world withered. We engaged with foresight. Today, we hide from obligation and refuse the experts who were warning us about a 9/11 type scenario for years and years.

If the world's economy suffers because we no longer cater to tyrants, than the Middle East isn't the only thing that needs to change. We should not be made to feel bad about ourselves by those who wish to preserve the past and to worship old orders of business that did nothing for long term economic security. We have come to an age where we are caught between two paths - rule with a fist or empower the people. In the age of information over load and globalization, there is no gray anymore with this. In our experience, longevity has always come from the people, not the tyrant. It's time we recognized the changing of the times and guided the world towards the light despite the wishes of those already basking in the light.

__________________

GySgt
Semper Fidelis
USMC

WI Crippler

Lets remove the current war(s) going on right now and simply ask ourselves the question. Could we(as a society) stomach fighting two simulatneous wars, on foreign shores, and lose well over 500,000 lives as well as hundreds of thousands of injuries and have the wherewithall to see it through to the end? Absolutely not. Its a different culture now than it was back then. We would have riots and college campus protests every day if our men got gunned down today like they did back then. OBL looks more and more like a true prophet when he called us a paper tiger after the pull out in Somalia. Our public simply does not have the testicular fortitude that it had back in WWII. Our military is powerful, but our country is weak.

__________________
"Fatigue makes cowards of us all" - Vincent T. Lombardi.

Mach

Well, not surprising.

If war is always justified if you want something, then your opinion is revealed for the unethical position that it is. Let's just go rob a bank while we're at it, I mean, they are the only thing keeping me from being extraordinarly wealthy.
Mind boggling.

Fortunately humans use something called t-r-a-d-e rather than engaging in destroying humans while proclaiming liberty and freedom are good.

-Mach

__________________
Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.- Conan

Mach

It has something to do with the floating bodies in the harbor. Apparently their liberty was at risk, and lost. Are you serious? The world was literally at war. Not the U.S. smart bombing 3rd world countries for sport as we do now.

-Mach

Iriemon

Interesting conclusions given the high security alert that has been in effect the last couple times I went to the airport.

__________________
Matthew 5:9

Iriemon

Who claimed Hussein was worth perserving? Are you refering to the Reagan administration's assistance to Hussein in the Iraq-Iran war?

The obvious difference between Hitler and Hussein is that Hitler had attacked and was occupying most of Europe, and declared war on the US.

Hitler was far more evil, and effected a genocide against a group of people for their religious beliefs. Hussein's actions against his people were based upon him staying in power. He did not engage in wholesale genocide simply to try to wipe out a group of people. Hussein was relatively tolerant, as a matter of fact, permitting the 1 million or so Christian Iraqis to live in relative peace, and actually hold high positions in his military and government.

As long as you didn't try to challenge his power, he generally left you alone.

Iriemon

That is the enire problem and it is this simple. The US war in Iraq was not based on Iraq attacking the US but was, using your own statements, an intentional lie and deception on the part of Bush administration to justify an attack that was not justified.

America did the wrong thing.

That is why there is so little support for it.

Doc Howl

Our right, as a nation, to trade was cut off by unrestricted submarine warfare, that killed, or threatened to kill, any American sailor on any ocean.

But that's beside the point. The Axis nations each formally declared war on us, before we declared war on them.

aegyptos

I have no idea what importance I should place on this observation.

Awesome!

400,000 U.S. military died in WW2 because our government didn't get it, not understanding Germany and Japan. We even had Hitler as man of the year in 1939. In the South Pacific we placed an embargo on Japan which gave the green light for war and millions died.

We now are being proactive keeping a presence all around the world since then and haven't had the 50-70 million estimated total lives lost in a WWar like we did in WW2 and you just think it's for sport? We have no other reason for doing what we do as a country huh? We just like to bomb people apparently?

Disagree with our policy and be a smart *** about it if you like, but the carnage is nothing compared to what that generation went through.

Were we rushing the beaches in WW2 hopping from island to island in the South pacific being ripped apart by the Japanese for sport? Was our government doing this for sport too?