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Do you still feel the same now about our middle east involvement...

Do you still feel the same now about our middle east involvement


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your opinion is that the current plan will result in a victory over IS and a stable Iraq? if not, what do you support doing, and where is the regional historical evidence that it will work? how much will it cost? are you willing to pay significantly higher taxes to fund it?

Somebody's ground forces will have to be involved. Hopefully not ours, however it was stupid for Obama to telegraph his punches and publicly rule out US ground forces. ISIS can and will be defeated. Their own brutality will be their downfall. No tax increases needed. Just restore the funding that Obama and the democrats stupidly cut from the military budget.
 
As if you were a qualified judge.

Wikipedia can be edited by the reader...the New York times is a joke. And the UPI correspondent posted a story off the rumor mill. Post it from a mainstream US news source and I will take it seriously. I could not find it on any mainstream US site. Not even the left wing CNN. I don't doubt that the CIA had connections to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. I just do not buy the fantasy that the CIA groomed Saddam or the Baath Party into power
 
Failed debate tactic is still failing.


That the CIA supported the Baath party rise to power in Iraq is almost common knowledge, especially among people older than, say, 20.

Ahh...now you are walking it back to "The CIA supported the Baath Party rise to power". Perhaps soon enough you will admit that it's nothing but internet rumor.
 
Somebody's ground forces will have to be involved. Hopefully not ours, however it was stupid for Obama to telegraph his punches and publicly rule out US ground forces. ISIS can and will be defeated. Their own brutality will be their downfall. No tax increases needed. Just restore the funding that Obama and the democrats stupidly cut from the military budget.

so you're not willing to pay more in taxes to fund this new war?

i don't support putting any more wars on the credit card. if it's worth fighting, it's worth funding. wartime tax rates should go into effect every time there is a military action, and these increases should be significant. perhaps then the public would be less complacent about endless war.
 
So are many others. Who we choose to accept as valid or not tends to fall down party lines, which, in my opinion, is asinine.

At the end of the day, we know only what we are told, unless we WORKED for the CIA in the 60s. Me? I'll believe the photo of Saddam shaking hands with american leadership..

I knew you would eventually get around to the photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. Unfortunately for you...it's meaningless. Such handshakes between leaders of the US and any nation we have diplomatic relations with, enemy or not are quite common.

All of this, this entire mess in the middle east has been going on for centuries. It sounds cruel, and maybe it makes me an empathy lacking son of a bitch, but I wish we could just take all of their oil, and forget every last one of those **** suckers, including Israel. Forget them, let them continue murdering each other in God's name. I'm sick of it. To the point of wanting Mecca AND Jerusalem destroyed, cratered, turned into a giant parking lot.

Oh my!
 
I supported Afghanistan. I felt that we had some great opportunities but dropped the ball. Now it is a mess.

I DID NOT support Iraq in any way, shape or form. Not once. Not from the beginning.

I support going in and ****ing up ISIS 100% as long as others provide at least an equal number of boots.

Like any other major war we have become involved in, Iraq enjoyed initial overall support in the US. It lost much of that support as it dragged on. Americans whether or not we support a war like quick and clean victories. Kick ass and come home except for a contingent of forces to maintain the peace as we did in Germany and Japan. We need to go back to declaring war and allowing the military to finish it. No more police actions.
 
Obama was trying to impress the warhawks, and that's the only reason he supported a surge in Afghanistan. The GOP ran a campaign against him and constantly challenged him to say a surge in Iraq worked, which it didn't. Iraq is still ****ed up, obviously. Both surges were nothing more than BS American politics.

You are wrong on both counts. Obama had no intention of impressing the warhawks. He was only concerned with mollifying his extreme leftwing base as much as he could. He worked out that he could not completely turn down the surge, so he just drastically cut the numbers that the Generals in the field and the joint chiefs requested. He did it half assed. And the surge certainly did work in Iraq. Your suggestion that it did not is nothing more then BS American politics.
 
That, and Americans that had the **** scared out of them by rhetoric like, "do we have to wait for the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud over a US city"? Which was stated when it was apparent that even with the unprecedented access Hans Blix had, he could find no WMD.

Blix had unprecedented access? Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! He was handled like a poodle. The Iraqis had the inspector's rooms bugged and knew were they were going, practically before they did.
 
The middle east has always been chaotic. There has always been war. Even before the Crusades.


The only reason we give a **** is because they're drowning in oil. No oil? We go back to ignoring them, like we had been doing for the last 300 years prior to the demand for oil.

Think about it. Most of the middle east ascribes to a religion that places very little value on human life. It is, as a culture, antiquated to the extreme, BY DESIGN. Think of them as almost being violent Amish. When you way of life dictated by tenants that are a thousand years expired, and your leaders are indoctrinated and compelled to INDOCTRINATE those very same tenants upon their populace, this is what happens.

Imagine what THIS country would look like if each individual interpretation of Christianity had the added belief that all the OTHERS were infidels who cannot be suffered to live...at least not in the same vicinity as themselves.

Ahhh..the ole blood for oil chant. If it was all about oil....why didn't we keep Kuwait or Iraq's oil?
 
so you're not willing to pay more in taxes to fund this new war?

i don't support putting any more wars on the credit card. if it's worth fighting, it's worth funding. wartime tax rates should go into effect every time there is a military action, and these increases should be significant. perhaps then the public would be less complacent about endless war.

Everything our government does these days in on the credit card. Social Security checks are on the credit card. Welfare entitlements are on the credit card. It's not military ventures that is breaking the bank. It's the runaway entitlement system. We have nearly 50 million Americans on food stamps.
 
The middle east has always been chaotic. There has always been war. Even before the Crusades.

The only reason we give a **** is because they're drowning in oil. No oil? We go back to ignoring them, like we had been doing for the last 300 years prior to the demand for oil.

Think about it. Most of the middle east ascribes to a religion that places very little value on human life. It is, as a culture, antiquated to the extreme, BY DESIGN. Think of them as almost being violent Amish. When you way of life dictated by tenants that are a thousand years expired, and your leaders are indoctrinated and compelled to INDOCTRINATE those very same tenants upon their populace, this is what happens.

Imagine what THIS country would look like if each individual interpretation of Christianity had the added belief that all the OTHERS were infidels who cannot be suffered to live...at least not in the same vicinity as themselves.
Agreed. The ME has always been relatively unstable. Western meddling only magnified that.
 
Wikipedia can be edited by the reader...the New York times is a joke. And the UPI correspondent posted a story off the rumor mill. Post it from a mainstream US news source and I will take it seriously. I could not find it on any mainstream US site. Not even the left wing CNN. I don't doubt that the CIA had connections to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. I just do not buy the fantasy that the CIA groomed Saddam or the Baath Party into power

But the NYTimes is MSM!! So is the LATimes.

In fact, Hussein's exile ended in 1963, when his Baathist colleagues seized power with covert U.S. assistance. "We rode to power on a CIA train," the party's secretary general, Ali Saleh Saadi, admitted later.

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/dec/30/opinion/oe-cockburn30
 
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so you're not willing to pay more in taxes to fund this new war?

i don't support putting any more wars on the credit card. if it's worth fighting, it's worth funding. wartime tax rates should go into effect every time there is a military action, and these increases should be significant. perhaps then the public would be less complacent about endless war.

Yep! That and the draft would go a long way to curb war.
 
But the NYTimes is MSM!! So is the LATimes.

In fact, Hussein's exile ended in 1963, when his Baathist colleagues seized power with covert U.S. assistance. "We rode to power on a CIA train," the party's secretary general, Ali Saleh Saadi, admitted later.

So long to `our' tyrant - Los Angeles Times

The New York times is considered mainstream...however it also just barely above tabloid.
 
Blix had unprecedented access? Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! He was handled like a poodle. The Iraqis had the inspector's rooms bugged and knew were they were going, practically before they did.

No links from the guy that demands MSM links from everybody else!:lamo:lamo
 
Yep! That and the draft would go a long way to curb war.

Only thing I have to say about a draft is that if such a thing ever occurred again - any form of conscription by the wealthy should be made illegal with mandatory federal max prison jail time. As well, military special treatment should be frowned upon - put them on the front lines with everyone else.
 
Only thing I have to say about a draft is that if such a thing ever occurred again - any form of conscription by the wealthy should be made illegal with mandatory federal max prison jail time. As well, military special treatment should be frowned upon - put them on the front lines with everyone else.

Amen bro!
 
Yes, my feelings haven't changed. We never should have been in the region to begin with. We shouldn't be there now. There is not one unified understanding of why went there or why we stay there. It has become such a mind numbing cluster**** that we now are engaged in a "war against war". A bit like what "your definition of is is".

Reminds of the old protect banner, "fighting for peace is like ****ing for virginity".
 
Everything our government does these days in on the credit card. Social Security checks are on the credit card. Welfare entitlements are on the credit card. It's not military ventures that is breaking the bank. It's the runaway entitlement system. We have nearly 50 million Americans on food stamps.

But are you personally willing to pay more in taxes to fund perpetual war?
 
Why is that.

Because the fight to get rid of it was long and difficult, and putting it back in place would be a huge step backwards.

If you think it will result in the elite waging war more carefully, you're wrong. They will still be able to keep their kids away from the front lines, draft or no.

Perhaps we should return to the model in which the king and his noblemen led the troops into battle. I bet Congress and the executive branch would become absolute peaceniks if that was the case.
 
Because the fight to get rid of it was long and difficult, and putting it back in place would be a huge step backwards.

If you think it will result in the elite waging war more carefully, you're wrong. They will still be able to keep their kids away from the front lines, draft or no.

Perhaps we should return to the model in which the king and his noblemen led the troops into battle. I bet Congress and the executive branch would become absolute peaceniks if that was the case.

Oh yes of course the "elite" would still keep their kids away from the front lines, but the rest, those Americans that are so quick to jump on the band wagon in support of war, wouldn't. Therefore we might find less support. Last summer, 70% of Americans were opposed to any military action in Syria! this summer 70% support military action in Syria. Dear lord, it's cynical I know, but Americans never are going to learn what politicians really do. IMO, Jack taxes to the ceiling every time we roll out our military and pay for it in real time, and reinstate that damn draft and let's see how much Americans can be scared into conflict.
 
The middle east has always been chaotic. There has always been war. Even before the Crusades.


The only reason we give a **** is because they're drowning in oil. No oil? We go back to ignoring them, like we had been doing for the last 300 years prior to the demand for oil.

Think about it. Most of the middle east ascribes to a religion that places very little value on human life. It is, as a culture, antiquated to the extreme, BY DESIGN. Think of them as almost being violent Amish. When you way of life dictated by tenants that are a thousand years expired, and your leaders are indoctrinated and compelled to INDOCTRINATE those very same tenants upon their populace, this is what happens.

Imagine what THIS country would look like if each individual interpretation of Christianity had the added belief that all the OTHERS were infidels who cannot be suffered to live...at least not in the same vicinity as themselves.

I would agree, and it speaks to my point on having to go with a confusing, changing, and hypocritical foreign policy. If there is something in it for the US (or our "allies") then there is behavior we will overlook. This is very true of Saudi Arabia and how they handle discrimination, oppression and persecution of Christians. Now, are the chopping heads off and putting the video on the internet? No, but that does not negate that we overlook their behavior because there is something in it for us. So we overlook that generally speaking Christians enter Saudi Arabia as foreign and temporary workers that cannot practice their faith openly. Bibles, crucifixes, statues, items with Christian religious symbols are still not publicly allowed forcing those who are Christian to worship within the confines of their residences. Yet, we do business with these jackals.

You are correct in that this region of the world has been in some degree of conflict that predates even the concept of monotheism, let alone Islam that by design does not want or allow for ideological competition. Even with the splintering of that faith the result is more of the same, pockets of ideology that cannot get along with one another. It explains well everything from Libya to Egypt to Syria to Iraq and so many others that cannot function with groups of competition ideology trying to negotiate. It is all based upon a faith that does not allow for negotiation. That then makes good sense as to why western governmental and sociological philosophies do not work over there in any long term. Note what was put in place in Iraq and how quickly that resulted in failure. I suspect Afghanistan is not that far behind in experiencing some degree of set back in dealing with what all is left of their competition ideologies (and there are many, it is not just the Taliban.) Representative governments tend to fail over there, and what seems to be the norm suggest aptitude for military and/or religious dictatorships. Seriously, they are all reading a book with a baked into the text mechanism of societal control and "religious authority."

So, rather hypocritically we support those dictatorships that benefit us in some way then point the finger at others spending lives and dollars in a confusing effort to tell everyone over there how they should live and under what system of government. We can then tell from history all the way to current, that it tends to fail in spectacular manner. What is bred, and rather well, is contempt for Western governments in interference in everyone else's lives. And speak of, more often than not we worked with people we later determine are problems. We tried to work openly with Saddam before calling him a problem, and don't get me started on our position during the Iran / Iraq war. Similar story with those that made up the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan when fighting the Russians, and what they later became under terrorist organization names.

It has always been a mess over there but I would argue more often than not our interventionism has made matters worse, and as such placed us in even more danger the further we go along. It is an odd position for us to be in but we seemed to have upset (or at least are not trusted) by a good 1/2 the planet as of today. How can that possibly be defined as good policy?
 
The New York times is considered mainstream...however it also just barely above tabloid.
Mr Fail,

So, in other words, if it conveys a message you don't want, it's unworthy of being a historical document.

I'll be honest. I can't argue against that. It's just so utterly duplicitous as to be bat-scheit crazy. One cannot argue against bat-scheit crazy.
 
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