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Is the world a better place without Saddam Hussein?

Is the world a better place without Saddam Hussein?


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Sadly, I have no doubt you believe this sincerely.



I do because it's the truth, pretty much everything that Bush and his gang said about Iraq turned out to be lies.

If you think otherwise, believe what you want to believe. That won't cost me a nickle.

And it certainly won't help Bush's bottom basement image in future history books.



"Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door." ~ Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

 
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Yes. Does that justify our actions in Iraq? No.Its not our job to overthrow foreign nations leaders.

Your statement would be wise were it not that it ignored the foreign leader of topic. The problem with extending this sentiment towards Saddam Hussein in 2003 is that we ignored that sentiment in 1991 and throughout the next decade. It was the West, with America leading, that starved out countless Iraqis through the UN mission of containment and sanctions. It was the U.S. that built and escalating amount of troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait everytime Hussein rushed his troops towards those borders or flew fighter jets over Saudi and Jordanian air space. Osama Bin Laden's excuses for 9/11 involved the "starving chidlren of Iraq" and "foreigners in the Holy Land."

So when it comes to Saddam Hussein, merely stating that our job is not to overthrow foreign leaders doesn't quite cover the issue. Some would argue that instead of simply rushing in to ovethrow a foreign leader we gave him 12 years to stop being the Middle East menace his neighbors were constantly afraid of. The invasion of Iraq was always just a matter of time.

Now if you had actually gave it some thought and stated that the way we did it was stupid then I would have been with you. If you had stated that the idea of automatic nation building after we have punished an offender then I would have been with you. Hell, if you had stated that Rumsfeld was probably the worst Secretary of Defense in United States history, then I would have applauded your assesment. But the default protest of Iraq is tired. It was tired then when Bush was designing WMD excuses giving protestors designed excuses to complain about a bigger on going issue they pretended didn't exist.

As far as "our job," aside from war in the Pacific during World War II and Afghanistan, the vast majority of every single foreign war/conflict in American history has one common theme and has had nothing to do with defense. "Our job" is and has always been the preservation of economic security. Even our Revolutionary War was about economic freedom.
 
Wait a sercond ... what standard are you holding him up to? And what is Blair supposed to say? Blair is now held in contempt by many Brits for being the Bush's gofer ... I agree, he's not as dumb as Palin or Quayle, but come on guys ...




I am not saying that Bush is a genius, but he's way smarter than some people think.

As I said, a lot of smart people make bad choices in life.

I have never mis-underestimated people whose opinions don't fall in line with mine.
 
History's judgments evolve over time. I think I'll let a little more go by. Thanks.:cool:



Most historians and most academics in general with advanced degrees are liberal. That is a fact.

How do you think that future, liberal, academics will judge Bush?

It will not be a friendly court.
 
The world is a better place now because we don't have GWB in the whitehouse lying us into more wars and driving this country to the brink of economic and moral bankruptcy. The Iraq war has nothing to do with it.


Glass-Steagall Act.

1933 - The Glass-Steagall Act was one of the first reform efforts of Roosevelt after the Great Depression. It was introduced to banking law in 1933. It established the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC insured bank deposits of up to $2,500 and most importantly prohibited banks from making risky, unsecured investments.

1998 - Democrat President Bill Clinton and the Republican Party repealed it as a part of a deal. Republicans wanted it gone. Clinton wanted reform in welfare. The two collaborated.


If Glass-Steagall was implimented directly after the Great Depression in an effort to correct the economic foolishness of our institutions, what would be the harm in removing it? oday's recession mirrors the Great Depression. Do you think it is a coincidence that Glass-Steagall sits squarely between the two? Or do we just want to blame the Bush guy for inheriting an economic disaster waiting to happen?

Grow beyond the party partisan foolishness. Democrats won't bring up Glass-Steagall because it means blaming Clinton. Republicans don't defend Bush because it means blaming themselves. So what we have is a Congress and a White House getting away with it. Of course they only get away with it because their sheep continue to be ignorant of what is going on. Worse than ignorance is how plenty of people know this, but choose to play the blame-bush-game.

By the way, we are the most powerful nation in history with history's greatest spy network even before 9/11. What's more sad than Bush lying about WMD in Iraq is that so many Americans lacked the common sense to see beyond that shallow excuse and look at bigger things. The White House obviously had no faith in Americans to end what we had been doing since 1991. When Bin Laden reached out to people like you to tell you that 9/11 was because of the "starving children of Iraq" and "foriegners in the holy land," did you not think about the UN mission that offered him that excuse? Sadly, Bush had to rely on the threat of WMD to live up to the American rhetoric.
 
"Nation building" is precisely why we keep getting in trouble.



The USA should start doing almost all of its "Nation building" inside U.S. borders, there's plenty to do in the USA.

After we get the USA squared away would be a good time to start 'thinking' about helping others.
 
The mere act of repeating nonsense doesn't make it any less nonsense.



Your saying that something is nonsense doesn't make it nonsense.

You can call a cow a horse, but that won't help it win the Kentucky Derby.
 
Your saying that something is nonsense doesn't make it nonsense.

You can call a cow a horse, but that won't help it win the Kentucky Derby.

Or, you can do as you've been doing and call a cow patty a cogent argument. :roll:
 
Most historians and most academics in general with advanced degrees are liberal. That is a fact.

How do you think that future, liberal, academics will judge Bush?

It will not be a friendly court.

this is also a response to your earlier e-mail SN ... it's not hard for him to be smarter than what most people think ... low threshhold ...

on this point, is it possible that a disproportionate number of acdemics are liberals because liberals are more likely to put more faith in science and the scientific process, so that their analysis of Bush will not be a positive one not because they are liberal, but because they will rely more on evidence, data, etc. and the evidence, as we're seeing already, will not put him in a favorable light? I'm hoping for a fair court, not a friendly or hostile one. But, even that may not matter, since increasingly people on the right reject outright analyses by those on the left regardless of how good it is, and vice versa.

I've known Jack for a couple of years now on these threads, and he tends to be kinder to those on the right than on the left ... you should get his take on Pinochet, Castillo Armas, and Somoza ... interesting ...
 
The USA should start doing almost all of its "Nation building" inside U.S. borders, there's plenty to do in the USA.

After we get the USA squared away would be a good time to start 'thinking' about helping others.

Oh do I ever AGREE with your comments! Kudos
 
It is the same as saying the world is better with him.



In order to get rid of Saddam Hussein the USA spent about $1 trillion (and counting), lost 4,500 dead, and 30,000 wounded American warriors, killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi's, and pretty much destroyed Iraq's infrastructure.

The only country to gain from the Bush mis-administration's illegal war in Iraq was and is Iran. The USA and the West gained nothing in Iraq.

That tells me that getting rid of Saddam Hussein did not make the world a better place.

A lot of Iraqi's say that it didn't even make Iraq a better place. My mind is still open on that one.
 
In order to get rid of Saddam Hussein the USA spent about $1 trillion (and counting), lost 4,500 dead, and 30,000 wounded American warriors, killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi's, and pretty much destroyed Iraq's infrastructure.

The only country to gain from the Bush mis-administration's illegal war in Iraq was and is Iran. The USA and the West gained nothing in Iraq.

That tells me that getting rid of Saddam Hussein did not make the world a better place.

A lot of Iraqi's say that it didn't even make Iraq a better place. My mind is still open on that one.

Oh, well, by that measure, leaving Hitler in power would have been a grand bargain. Seriously, how does one get so twisted as to think such as you do?
 
Oh, well, by that measure, leaving Hitler in power would have been a grand bargain. Seriously, how does one get so twisted as to think such as you do?

Are you serious? Equating taking out Hussein to taking out Hitler? Talk about twisted ...
 
Are you serious? Equating taking out Hussein to taking out Hitler? Talk about twisted ...

Are you serious?

I'll leave you to figure out what I actually meant; my threshold for suffering those who can't follow a train of thought two cars long is at its limit for today.
 
Simple-take the opposite of anything that the Bush mis-administration said about the Iraq war and you will have the truth.


No you wont. Westerners like simple. This is where "WMD" came from. This is also where ignoring all the issues building towards 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq come in for protestors.

While the rest of the world actually deals with the grey, Westerners need everything to fit into perfect categories of organization and fixed to labels. Do you think hundreds of thouands of starving Iraqis cared about WMD or Democracy or 9/11? If we are to assume that those words held little meaning to them prior to 2003, why do you think those words were used by the White House when addressing a Western world? It's because we are shallow people in the West and our leaders know it. The less we know about what we do to the rest of the world for our economic securities, the better we like it. What we don't like is a war that involves economic security, because it reminds us that energy doesn't simply spring forth from the ground as if a gift from the energy fairy. This is why "WMD" and "Democracy" are used. "Democracy" and "Freedom" are the same words used by American leaders when trying to convince Americans that war in Europe was necessary during both World Wars. Do you think America's econmic security being threatened was used by Truman or Roosevelt to convince Americans that Europe mattered? No way. Willing to forgive a little deciet for those periods though arent you?

You see, we don't care how many people starve or are oppressed into economic misery and religious zealousy under leaders we maintain just as long as we don't conduct a war to remind us of it. And when an event like 9/11 occurs we like to pretend that our enemy simply hates freedom or that Americans simply had it coming to them. It's not war that bothers people who have absolutely nothing to do with it as they flip channels in their Western world. It's feeling that they are supposed to care that drives them to protest the very thing that provides them that channel flipping security. We would rather ignore nations we condemn to hell through peaceful means than actually break a sweat dealing with an issue that has been ignored for too long for our securities.

Do you actually think France cares about Libyans or Africans below the Sahara? Of course not. Just 1 month prior to insisting that American help them against Libya's dictator, they were publicing announcing their support for Tunisia's dictator. It's all about economic security. So when looking for the truth, one might need to think harder than just opposites of what politicians state to an academically lazy and spolied West.
 
The USA should start doing almost all of its "Nation building" inside U.S. borders, there's plenty to do in the USA.

After we get the USA squared away would be a good time to start 'thinking' about helping others.

Yes..yes...the same old rhetoric used by Americans since before World War I. America, like all nations, will never be squared away. This is the price of civilization.

The problem with such a simple outlook is that it ignores the fact that our economic security has always relied upon the health of foreign regions. Our very first excursion abroad was the Barbary Pirates Wars merely a few decades after the Revolutionary War. Those wars were about securing our a trade route through the Mediterranean from pirates that Europeans had been paying ransom and bribes to for decades. The brand new U.S. couldn't afford to pay these ransoms and bribes, so sailors and Marines deployed.

Fast forward to 9/11 - Do you think that 9/11 would have happened had the Middle East been a healthy region? No way. This has always been our foreign policy mission, no matter how the words are written or how politicians spin the truth across a radio and later on TV, dealing with a nation has always been about that region.

Of course, there is plenty to do in the U.S. Our problem here is not foreign dealings. It's the "incoproration of America" since the Reconstruction Period that has created most of our problems. It wasn't until Roosevelt (FDR) that the White House actually placed the government on the side of the citizenry. We have plenty of wealth. We can do whatever we want. Unfortunately, we have plenty of politicians that have designed an unfair economic system while preaching to us about diversions since Cleveland (can be argued before that). The very minute the majority of America truly realizes that they have no representation in Washington, the quicker we can address those internal problems.
 
Are you serious?

I'll leave you to figure out what I actually meant; my threshold for suffering those who can't follow a train of thought two cars long is at its limit for today.

When you're incapable of making an intelligent point, simply pretend you said something profound and quickly move on ... hurry ...
 
I do because it's the truth, pretty much everything that Bush and his gang said about Iraq turned out to be lies.

WMD in Iraq was the lie. You imply that there was more? What does it say that you needed that lie? What does it say that Obama has kept virtually every single foreign policy that Liberals used to protest about? Maybe you should get beyond the simple of the 2003 protestor.

And it certainly won't help Bush's bottom basement image in future history books.

I believe historians are more intelligent than the average channel flipper. They have a way of looking at all the issues and coming to a proper conclusion. Nobody with even an ounce of intelligence today confines the invasion of Iraq to "WMD." My assessment is that historians will do what they have done for all presidents and see a greater truth than today's CNN or FOX sensationalism. Did you know that Vietnam actually went back to Roosevelt? That Truman began financing France's stay in Vietnam? That Kennedy started placing troops in Vietnm? Probably not. But you know Johnson and Nixon, right? Think of Bush as merely the guy who inherited a built up mess that eventually was going to need sorting out.

Rumsfeld, on the other hand, worse SECDEF in history.
 
my wife just saw this and asked if you could rebuild me while you're at it ...

Yep, she definitely needs to get to the eye doctor for new glasses ASAP! I was concerned before, now I am becoming alarmed!

As a test, hold a coupon, preferably one that has tiny print, that gives her the works at any spa she chooses.. IF she can read it...and she probably can...you'll know she's just teasing you, and she loves you just the way you are! See how easy it is? :lamo:
 
It's only natural that things get worse before they get better in such a situation. I'm sorry that you can't accept what has happened, but it happened and now crying over it online isn't going to change a thing. The thing we need to do is look to the future and not at the past.

It isn't just me, its the majority of people in the world and was a big factor of why the GOP lost the Whitehouse. Those that refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
 
A lot of Iraqi's say that it didn't even make Iraq a better place. My mind is still open on that one.

Iraq is in a bad place because it is covered entirely by Middle Eastern Muslims. Perhaps looking at the situation for what it is rather than from the perspective that Muslims need dictators under our umbrella to behave would stop giving them their license to refrain from looking in the mirror. The Middle East is a mess because of Muslims. Not Jews in Israel. Not Westerners who have nothing to do with how they raised their children in religious zealousy. Not Pokemon in Japan for distracting Muslim children from the path of God. Not from anything outside of their own culture. It wasn't long ago that even European cultures involved the slaughter of tribes and the necessity to murder their own while sucking everybody else into it.

Your mind is not open. It is focused on Bush protest and shut in a need for things to be simple. Bush supplied simple to you. WMD remember?
 
I would be interested to see how resilient americans really would be if the same thing happened to them.

Hell, some freaked out when just a couple dozen Saudis attacked us using our own planes! Those people would **** their pants if another country militarily invaded and occupied us like we did in Iraq.
 
WMD in Iraq was the lie.



Sarge, I'm not going to waste your time and mine by replying to all of your posts, I'll just say that I read your posts and agree with most of what you say.

America will never be all that it could be until we all start caring more about every American than we do about any political party.

Or something like that.

I don't claim to have all of the answers, I don't even know all of the questions.

Have a good one.
 
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