America is "guilty" for the Shah.
Yes we are, along with the UK. We did in fact provide critical assistance to him in establishing his rule and maintaining it the manner in which he did. This is no secret.
It is "guilty" for supporting the House of Saud.
Of course we are, because we do. And when we do we give them a pass on their conduct.
It is "guilty" for supporting Israel at all costs.
Do we support Israel at all costs? Yes we do. That would in fact make us guilty.
It is "guilty" for those few dictators in South America.
Beyond dispute, we absolutely are.
But when it came to pushing Saddam Hussein back into Iraq and preserving him (containing him) for oil stability....we look away?
Who looks away? When you say "we" you really need to be more specific. The ambiguous nature of your comment leaves far more questions than answers. It's far too broad. Once I know who exactly it is you're talking about I'll be more equipped to actually debate you on this point. As far as the term guilty goes, I don't know what to tell you. We did all those things, regardless of the reason. But I will tell you this, an examination of a decent cross section of history will show you that our reasons were less than benevolent. Nasty medicine, I know.
The entire mission of the Cold War was about beating the Soviets at their own game and denying them the resources needed to make militaries powerful.
Absolutely.
After this it was all about regional stability no matter the cost. This is where the dictators came in. And why was Saddam HUssein preserved after the Gulf War for twelve years?
No, this is where we will disagree. It was not about "regional stability no matter the cost." It was about a western friendly economic and political sphere of influence no matter the cost. Had communism provided regional stability we wouldn't have been in there supporting that cause.
And how many of those are doing so while we maintain his existence under UN demands? How many of those dictators have history with us making them "our" dictator? How many of those can affect an entire world's oil supply by misbehaving?
What difference does this even make? We never felt compelled to act against them for any of those reasons. You're talking about making excuses now, nothing more.
How many of them were made a personal mission for America?
I don't even know what you mean by this Gunny.
There are many reasons to go to war.
You mean there are many reasons people will use to go to war, but not all of them are justified.
You have just convinced yourself that it takes a 9/11 or a Pearl Harbor to conduct one.
Patently false. Nothing I've ever posted suggests this.
By reducing the situation to the simple, "there are lots of dictators," you are doing exactly what my post called out. You are denying our personal history in this just to deny responsibility.
Nonsense. I have never, ever, not one time denied our history in world affairs. In fact, I'd venture a guess that I'm probably one of the biggest proponents of critical examination of our nations foreign policies. I'd venture a guess I've probably typed more lines of text detailing the need to embrace our past history in this regard, take responsibility for it, and change things for the future.
Do not sit here an pretend that we invaded Iraq because "we were stepping up and taking responsibility for the mess we created with him all those years ago." That is bull****. We invaded Iraq because we had a propaganda windfall dropped in our lap with 9/11. Otherwise we would have had no support regarding invading Iraq and taking Saddam out. Why? Because as a threat to the world and even the region he was toothless, caged tiger. The "poor starving Iraqi's" is a blatant fall back excuse after we failed to make a link to 9/11 and didn't find any WMD's.
But like it or not, we did it. And like it or not, we will do it again when necessary.
It wasn't "necessary"
this time.
Who cares about a threat?
And here is the disconnect. Who cares about the threat? Reasonable, rational, responsible people "care about the threat." When you "care about the threat" you don't throw thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of other nations lives on a burn pile.
Again with the "mission" reference. This sounds like a bunch of myopic pro-militarist rhetoric to me. There is no sound logic behind using this as an excuse to invade a country that was no threat to anyone but itself.
Our mission? Come on man, this isn't right wing talk radio hour.
Was Germany a threat after we reached the German border? Yet we went on. Was Japan a threat after we attackd into the Pacific? Yet we moved on.
Let's be clear about something. Either you're being very disingenuous here or you really don't understand the differences between the situations. How can you sit here and try to compare World War 2 to OIF in terms of necessity and threat? This isn't amusing, in fact it's quite disappointing.
The Gulf War never ended.
Neither did the Korean War. What's your point? We accomplished our mission with Desert Storm, which was to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
Are you aware that Clinton attacked Iraq no less than 4 separate times in his presedency and it all revolved around his game playing? That everytime Hussein mobilized his troops to the Kuwaiti border, we did the same and sent more and more troops into the region because of it? The Gulf War was simply paused with the expectations that he fullfill his part of the bargain. He refused enough times and we looked away enough times. In 2003, we finished the job. But like I stated, had we simply finished the job in 1991, there would not have been a 9/11. No "starving children of Iraq" to point out and no "escallation of troops" to bring attention to.
While I appreciate your references to Clinton's use of force in Iraq I want you to be aware this in no way validates the invasion and occupation of Iraq. What it means is that Clinton used air power to compel Saddam's compliance. Just because a president chooses air strikes as punishment doesn't mean that the threat is sufficient to warrant full scale invasion and occupation. It simply means that specific action was taken in order to bring about compliance. Had invasion been necessary then invasion would have been the solution of choice. The games Saddam played weren't countered with air power, and that was enough.
Now, I make it a point to make these issues a matter of personal and professional study of mine. I happen to know that Osama Bin Laden's "want" was to provoke America into a war against "Muslims," which he was already waging against our military since 1993.
I assumed you understood what I was after when I said OBL got the response he wanted. He wasn't trying to provoke us to attack Greece after all. He wanted us to go to war with the world perception being that we were attacking Islam. I understand this.
I also know that him being disgusted over who Saddam Hussein was had nothing to do with his 9/11, yet he used it to justify dead Americans. What he had hoped for was an American response into Afghanistan and hoped that the entire Middle East would rise up to fight.
Agreed.
When Iraq occurred, he sought to run America out and establish another base of operations in the heartland of Islam.
Agreed, but let's be honest. Iraq was a gift that GWB gave OBL complete with a pretty bow.
....This did not happen. The people of the Middle East largely proved that he was just one of about tens of thousands who made the entire Middle East pay for a stupid act of terrorism. Instead of "rallying the troops," his minions have been slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the Phillipines and in Africa and instead of two Muslim nations that center on Sharia he made possible two western style democracies, one right smack in the center of Islam heaven.
Osama Bin Laden got what he wanted? Hardly.
What? He absolutely did get what he wanted with regard to the U.S. response. In fact he got more than he could have imagined. That the rest of Islam didn't rise up to his call is a testament to his delusion. And is a good counter to the whole "the middle east is cancerous" argument. The mere fact that this uprising didn't occur proves that the vast majority of Muslims don't want conflict with the west or with the infidels.
We went to war against the government. The large majority of the population had spent the last three decades being abused by the standing Sunni military.
You're heading down the path of setting up a false dichotomy here Gunny.
Are you actually still attached to the aqrgument that would see us maintain the Nazi government after taking down Berlin?
There is a difference in removing the hierarchy and many high level bureaucrats completely dismantling the ability to govern a nation. Which is what we did in Iraq.
Or expect the Jews of Germany to accept that their abusers still remain in power?
That wasn't even remotely the case, I never suggested that. You are extrapolating in order to make your argument.
Our first act of occupation should have been martial law. But that wouldn't look good would it?
Well except for the little fact that we didn't the resources on the ground to sufficiently guard the massive weapons cache's we found. Martial law would have been impossible. You know this. And it would have backfired miserably because the only way we could have enforced it was to gun down people in droves.
Somehow it was far more humane to watch them organize at night and slaughter each other in what the media mistakenly dubbed a "civil war."
Melodramatic rhetoric. You don't need to go here. Nobody ever said it was "humane." The civil war was a result of our dismantling of the control devices that had previously been in place. We created a power vacuum and then uncorked a bottle of decades long tribal and sectarian strife. Again, testament to the fact that we had no intelligent plan for occupation going in.
...By the way, your ciritcisms of the war should be more towards how screwed up they conducted it, not that they did it.
My criticisms are towards both equally. In fact I've written literally hundreds, possibly thousands, of lines of text on these criticisms on this forum.
None of this should have cost this much and none of this should have been so bloody. But this is what happens when civilians seek to preach to the military about how they are supposed to accomplish a mission.
This all started with the Bush administration ignoring Colin Powell and putting that moron Tommy Franks in charge. Follow that with Paul Bremer and there you go.
Well, you never will because you are determined to look away form what we were doing for the twelve years prior that instigated 9/11. For you and plenty of others, it is far simpler to pretend that our beef is with a lone bearded man that may or may not be still alive (he's dead by the way) in a cave sdomewhere in Afghanistan.
And that's where I'll stop reading and responding. Because your assessment of me is so patently false it's insulting. Nothing I've ever posted could validate your opinion of me. In fact, the assertion that I am determined to "look away" is ****ing comical.
