Boo Radley
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Well, it was called "The War on Terror." :shrug:
Notice the comment "impossible to accomplish."
Well, it was called "The War on Terror." :shrug:
Got any proof to back up that contention?But did not work together.
Got any proof to back up that contention?
BS that is simply your strawman.The affirmative is the claim that they were. .
BS that is simply your strawman.
You would have a valid point if there were no weapons inspectors in Iraq.Many influential people world wide believed he was a serious threat, including Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. That's what we knew at the time, and that's what we went off of. Did you know at the time that we or one of our allies wouldn't get attacked with WMD's?....of course you didn't. And how do you know that he didn't bury them in the sand? Is it more important for you to hail some kind of moral victory with the advantage of hindsight rather that to say with humility that we tried our best?
Many influential people world wide believed he was a serious threat, including Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. That's what we knew at the time, and that's what we went off of. Did you know at the time that we or one of our allies wouldn't get attacked with WMD's?....of course you didn't. And how do you know that he didn't bury them in the sand? Is it more important for you to hail some kind of moral victory with the advantage of hindsight rather that to say with humility that we tried our best?
I've always wondered if much of the PTSD from this war comes from our service people injuring and or killing Iraqi's for the sake of freedom and justice, only to have the case made ad nauseam that it was totally unjustified.
Well, it was called "The War on Terror." :shrug:
Yes, it was, which was one of the problems. Fighting a "war on terror" is fighting a strategy of warfare. We didn't really know who our enemy was, at least not specifically. Fighting a war on Al Qaeda would have given us more focus.
Better yet, we could have gone after Bin Laden and his cohorts and gone home.
Is that why he built all of those mosques?Saddam Hussein was secular whereas al-Qaida was religious.
Is that why he built all of those mosques?
Many influential people world wide believed he was a serious threat, including Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. That's what we knew at the time, and that's what we went off of. Did you know at the time that we or one of our allies wouldn't get attacked with WMD's?....of course you didn't. And how do you know that he didn't bury them in the sand? Is it more important for you to hail some kind of moral victory with the advantage of hindsight rather that to say with humility that we tried our best?
I've always wondered if much of the PTSD from this war comes from our service people injuring and or killing Iraqi's for the sake of freedom and justice, only to have the case made ad nauseam that it was totally unjustified.
You would have a valid point if there were no weapons inspectors in Iraq.
But there were. And had Bush let them finish their job, we would know what we know today, but without the high cost of some 35,000 American casualties. At least a trillion dollars, probaby way more. And the moral price of at least 100,000 Iraqi deaths.
Bush did not have to deploy troops to Iraq.
Of course the response of three you listed we're a little more nuanced. Kerry for example explained his speech in the vote that Saddam's threat didn't warrant an invasion outside the UN. So the word threat is not equal to supporting Bush's actions.
Got any proof to back up that contention?
From the 90's on, most definitely religious.Saddam Hussein: Secular or Religious Ruler?
From the 90's on, most definitely religious.
The canard that Saddam Hussein was secular is just another huge lie being foisted on the ignorant by traitorous Democrat Saddam Hussein apologists in the USA. The fact of the matter is that Saddam Hussein declared jihad (holy war) against the USA, claimed to be the direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammed and institutionalized a return to faith campaign in Iraq. This included the banning of alcohol, painting huge murals of Saddam praying, religious lessons in public schools and building mosques, including one that featured a Quran written in Saddam Hussein's own blood.
Secular my ass!
Look, it's very simple:
When those directly affected by environmental degradation have NO VOICE in its authority and management, things are bad and get worse. The "education" and "awareness" comes from the fact that these people must LIVE with the degradation and are, in fact, acutely aware of it.
Simple. Logic. Reason. Fact.
I'm not gonna find the thousands of academic references to such.
Good luck and good day.
Do you have any idea how little violence was recorded under Saddam? Or has that factor completely escaped your analysis? Could someone really be that blindly committed to a position.
First you have to understand the world.
Our terrorist problem was that we were facing an exponentially growing and festering religious cess pool of radicals tat were breeding extremists between Cairo and Islamabad. This is why the hundreds of terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East held members from all countries. Your argumentative response here will be to point out that the 9/11 terrorists held no Iraqis. This is true, but it avoids the issue. Hussein did fund terrorist organizations in an attempt to call religious fanatics to his side and he did represent everything that is wrong in the Middle East. The degree of oppression and brutality that ditators like Mubarak, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Gaddafi, and Bashar al-Assad created the environment that left religious people only one avenue to effect change and bring about the social justice they have always wanted. That avenue was God. And in that avenue we know from history in every single culture on earth that fanaticism and extremism is manifested. The fact that Hussein's brand of oppression and brutality maintained good behavior within his borders is not something we should celebrate. This is, however, exactly what people do when they bring up that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Regional change menas regional change. Starting with the very dictator that constantly caused us to maintain a UN mission of starvation and a never ending escallation of troops in Saudi Arabia (among Osama's excuses for 9/11) was necessary. A better complaint was how the White House handled it and made it messier than it had to be.
This Arab Spring, where Muslims rose up against their dictators throughout the Sunni world (Iranian protests were brief and useless in Iran), hasn't cried out for a new dictator. Not a religious theocracy. They cried out for Democracy. This is exactly what needs to happen throughout the region if we are to use the word "peace" more sincerely than we did when we celebrated Saddam Husein's talent fo forcing good behavior amonst his population. What you see in Iraq today is a direct result of a people struggling between the past the inevitable future. Why else do you think fighter from Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt rushed to thwart Iraqi Democracy in those "civil war" years? Why else do you think those governments did nothing to seal their own borders to prohibit Muslims from traveling to slaughter other Muslims? This is a historical changing of a region for the better before your very eyes and you can't see nothing except a bomb in Baghdad that the American invasion is to blame?
If you shake up a can of soda for a few minutes and then pop the top, what do you think will happen? This regin has been shaken from colonization to dictator for so long that popping the top caused the inevitable explosion that was always going to happen. Focusing on Iraq as if it is some floating island where "our" dictator was doing his job apart from the region does not help to understand the world.
This Middle Eastern issue will settle down eventually. However, the sooner peope accept that this has always been generational the better. This isn't as simple as having Japan and Germany fall to their kees in surrender. This is bigger, yet we treat it like its a small inconvenience and only about a single country. Even Afghanistan has proven to be about more than a single country. See what Pakistan's feelings are on the matter, where Al-Queda found support. This region reeks of confusion because of bad European made borders that carved up tribes or forced tribes together. With nuclear power on the way and finding its way into religious hands, how much time did you think we had to address this escallating problem?
The events since the Iraqi invasion througout the region (women driving in Saudi, Arab Spring, Syrians rebelling, etc) shows that the world is headed to a better place. It was the one region on earth left unhealthy after World War II. It also happens to be the one region on earth where religious fanaticism was becoming an art form.
No...no. That is not what happened. Most of the Iraqi army didn't even see an American tank when we took down Baghdad. This was yet another Rumsfeld blunder who insisted that we avoid cities. Upon reaching Baghdad, the immediate American forces (1st Marine Division) witnessed an orgy of violence from the citizenry. There was great celebration for a couple weeks as people pulled down statues of Hussein, walked on paintings of him in the sidewalks, and even had cars run over artful reminders of Hussein in the highways. At the same time, people were burning every single building that had anything to do with the former government (to include the Olympic training Building). Amongst these people were former criminals that Hussein released before we got to Baghdad. There was looting, rapes, and murders for which the military was ill equiped or trained to deal with. Once again, the military found itself in a situation it was not prepared for (Bosnia, Somalia, Cuba). There was no plan from the Rumsfeld coven after taking Baghdad apart. Shortly after the Marines left. The Army rolled in with an extreme minimum of numbers (as permitted by Rumsfeld). Within months Islamic warriors from all over the region began swarming in on a mission to support the Al-Queda's mission to disrupt any sense of peace and democracy as they ignited the tribal hatred between the Sunni and the Shia. This was inevitable without Al-Queda's and the rest of the region's support. They merely sped it up. Baghdad was a caliphate seat of Sunni power for over six hundred years in the past and seeing it fall to the majority of voters (Shia) was unnacceptable then as it is now. The reason the tribes are so screwed up in these countries (Iraq being the worst because of the distinct separation between Sunni/Shia/Kurd) is historical and is another post - thank Europe though.
The simple fact of this region is that religious fanaticism and extremism cannot find salvation in an enviroment where people have a choice. Without oppression, brutality, economic disaster, and a lack of social justice, religious fanaticism cannot take root. It cannot grow into a festering reality where hundreds of thousands of people now see violence as their only means to an end as they blame the Jews in their midst, the foriegn devils in the West, or the Muslim in a different tribe instead of looking in the mirror. This is why Al-Queda (to name one organization) has shifted from Sudan to Afghanistan to Iraq (where the lack of Hussein's brand of brutality offered opportnuity) to Pakistan to Yemen and finally to Mali until it finds a new home when chased out of there.
Anyway, this is what happened to Iraq. It wasn't as simple as some Iraqis missing their beloved dictator. The only thing local Sunni Iraqis miss was the power they held over the majority (which democracy exposed). The overwhelming rest of the violence was and is from foreign Muslims frou around the region that see Iraq as the pivotal point between the past they want and the future they are going to get.
No one is disregarding the suffering. Acknowledging that there will be suffering after war is not disregarding the suffering. Your statements make no sense.