Do you support the war in Iraq?

Do you support the war in Iraq?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 166 65.1%

  • No.

    Votes: 84 32.9%

  • Undecided/Don't Know/Don't care.

    Votes: 5 2.0%
  • Total voters
    255
We leave when we clean up OUR mess.

If we can't handle that, we have no place lecturing our children or other countries about their responsibilities. Walk away, and we leave the moral high ground behind. We withdraw from the middle east, leave the N. Korea talks, drop any form of support we give anyone, dissolve all treaties and hunker down. That's the only suitable behavior for a bunch of children that can't handle their mistakes or live up to their debts.
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Our mess? I don't believe it is our mess. I don't believe it was our mess to clean up to begin with (removing Saddam), and it isn't our mess now. It is a mess that belongs to the Middle East, not us. If we are hell bent on cleaning up messes, lets start in our own hemisphere and clean up a few messes closer to home. As I have said before, spend the money to arm every man woman and child over the age of 16 and then let them sort it out for themselves - we have given them the head start - now let them do with it what they will.

Compounding an error has never fixed the error. The difference of opinion between us is basically that I don't believe that the Iraqi's will ever be able to stand on their own and that soon after we do leave they will fall; and you apparently believe that they will stand on their own and maintain a free democracy.

Let me ask you one simple question Handy - Please put a precise number on how many soldiers we have to lose before you are personally willing to concede that we need to pull out?
 
"Our mess?"

Three years ago Iraq was a stable country with working infrastructure, normal employment rates, little internal violence and effective defense from its regional enemies.

Would you consider any of those things to be true, today?



How many soldiers? As many as it takes. If you write a check for $100, how many dollars do you expect to honor?
 
How many soldiers? As many as it takes. If you write a check for $100, how many dollars do you expect to honor?
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You don't have any point at all when you say too much? Not even 50,000 American Soldiers dead?
 
My answer is partially based on the idea that the number will not be as extreme as you propose. And, as I've said previously, I don't think the answer is necessarily military in nature.

But your answer, pull out immediately, just makes the previous 2 years pointless, and may lead directly to a future war that will involve alot more than 50,000 dead Americans.


Like it or not, our lives are directly linked to the oil producing Middle East. An undefended Iraq is a timebomb. We either diffuse it, or deal with much greater consequenses than we currently are.
 
We leave when we clean up OUR mess.

I understand what you are saying but our staying costs American lives, not just dollars. No known treaty requires it, only at the end of WWII did we "clean-up" our mess and that was ONLY done to prevent the Soviet Union from moving into Germany and Japan (becoming socialistic). The terms of the Treaty of Paris (Vietnam again :rolleyes: ) required America to "clean-up" our mess in Vietnam, we NEVER honored those terms. Why should we do so now in Iraq without a treaty? What check? I know of no "understanding", do you?
 
Invading involved losing lives, too. In fact, every time we use the military someone's going to be killed.


What were our reasons for going into Iraq? If we had no precise reason in the first place, and we don't care about those people or regional stability, what was the invasion? Vandalism?


Do you want to be part of a country that sacks other nations? Are you comfortable doing to Iraq what Germany did to Poland?
 
Butch, you're just being absurd, now.

Back at you: If the Chinese were invading the US, how many soldier's lives before we surrendered?

None?


No it isn't quite the same thing, but they're related. We are risking US lives to gain a measure of stability and security for us and the people over there. Sometimes, we risk US lives for nothing more than helping foreigners whose fate won't affect ours. How many lives is that worth?


If you keep answering "zero", then I already posted a response: We all need to stay home, shut up and never pass judgement on the outside world. You can't have it both ways.
 
Three years ago Iraq was a stable country with working infrastructure, normal employment rates, little internal violence and effective defense from its regional enemies.
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Compared to what? The Sudan?

The "little internal violence" bit kills me.

I can post pictures/movies of the atrocities, but I won't as most of you have seen them. When you hear about what Sadaam's regime did to the people of Iraq, and you still have a, "there’s us and there’s them" attitude, - I wonder... Are you not one of those people that would intervene with your CCW if you saw someone about to be killed? Or, would you simply skip away thinking it's none of your business?

All civilized nations should band together to stop any government from killing and torturing it's own people. In this day and age there is no excuse for this type of behavior. Period.

How many lives is it worth? To fight for someone else? Well, for some reason people answer these questions with the same tone you'd hear back when racism was accepted in this country, only it was a skin-color issue, not a geographical one as it is today.

When "it" happens in the next room, next door, down the block, on the other side of town, in the neighboring city, in the next state, across the country, across the oceans.... Where is it exactly that we cross the line and start thinking, "nope, that's their problem"...?

I'm sure this is far from a popular opinion, but oh well.
 
Handy, it is a legitimate question, it is a reasonable question, it is a fair question and you are avoiding answering it. Why won't you take a stand, declare yourself openly, and say just how many American lives Iraq is worth to you?
 
Are you not one of those people that would intervene with your CCW if you saw someone about to be killed? Or, would you simply skip away thinking it's none of your business?
When "it" happens in the next room, next door, down the block, on the other side of town, in the neighboring city, in the next state, across the country, across the oceans.... Where is it exactly that we cross the line and start thinking, "nope, that's their problem"...?
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To use your analogy - would you drive all the way across town to help someone out before you took care of the problems on your street? If your next door neighbor was in need, would you ignore him in favor of someone in another State?

If we are going to become the worlds do-gooders, then OK, let's do that - but lets start here at home. Cuba is less than 100 miles from us, it is populated by a Christian people who share our values, their culture is very much like ours and did I mention that they are less than 100 miles away? They are under the thumb of a dictator who has ignored human rights for 40 some odd years. We have a base on their island. We could liberate the Cubans in weeks at probably far less cost than Iraq which is on the other side of the world.

Lets use some logic here - if we are going to go around liberating people because we think it is the right thing to do, then why start on the other side of the world?
 
Trip,

Have more people died per year in Iraq under Saddam, or us?


Curing the disease by killing the patient.




Butch, I'll come up with a number when you do. How few lives is our defense worth? How few for the defense of others?
 
just how many American lives Iraq is worth to you?
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8,742

It's a danged silly thing to try to precisely quantify, but there you are.

I expect you to provide a mind-shattering revelation now that you have a precise number to play with.
 
Butch, "zero" is no longer an option. Do I get a make believe answer too?


There is no real number. I can think no responsible society comes up with that kind of math. Maybe Nazi Germany.
 
The number of people who do not support any war grows in direct proportion to the amount of time the media has had to tell everyone what a crock it is.

That's why Saddam skated in the first Gulf War. The administration realized that if they didn't bail out quick public opinion was going to swing enough to leave them high-centered.

There are a few who form their own opinions, but there aren't enough of those people to influence the polls.

Thus it is, thus it shall ever be.
 
How Many American Lives is Iraq Worth?

In HitchHiker's Guide To The Galaxy, after thousands of years of calculating by the biggest computer in the Galaxy, the answer to the question of "Life, the universe, and everything" was 44. Point was to gently prod humanity to understand that some questions do not and never will have any exact answers.

The present attitude is sounding just like it did when Afghanistan began stretching out, when Somalia was not an instant success, when Iraq war #1 had a couple of US casualties, etc. etc. Kind of like the outcry to stop the shuttle program when Challenger went down. My Dad used to talk about the 4f's and the C.O.'s and to use his words, all the other "chicken---- cowards" who only wanted to run and hide from the draft in WWII.

To some folks no cause is ever worth ripping a fingernail, if its theirs, and they will ever and always be right behind the lines, where its perfectly safe, trying to convince everyone to be like them, and quit at the first sound of distant gunfire.

What is Iraq worth? Don't know. What was saving England and France and the rest of Europe worth when we did that? What did quitting early in Vietnam actually cost? Maybe another 20 years of Cold War and the rise of a few Asian and Muslim dictatorships here and there.

Would it have been worth another 50,000 US soldiers' lives if we had defeated the VC and maybe scared China into backing off their plans for world domination BEFORE Clinton's Department of Commerce got to ship them the equipment to perfect the guidance systems on their ICBMs? Wonder what that answer will turn out to be, 20 years from now?

Guess the only theory I can advance is wars we fight need to be "worth" whatever number of lives or dollars it takes for OUR COUNTRY to come out the other end having won the damned things, not to have just run into the shallow end of the pool long enough to get a little wet but not enough to finish the job. Baltimore and Washington DC still have a higher casualty rate amongst their citizens than our Iraq intervention is costing us. So how come no one is asking "How many American Lives must be lost" to save 2 small cities in Maryland? All I know for 100% sure is whenever we quit, we lose, and the rest of the world loses too. :eek:
 
Butch, "zero" is no longer an option. Do I get a make believe answer too?


There is no real number. I can think no responsible society comes up with that kind of math. Maybe Nazi Germany.
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Handy, you simply don't have the courage of your convictions. You duck and dodge and bob and weave but won't answer a simple direct question.
 
Guess the only theory I can advance is wars we fight need to be "worth" whatever number of lives or dollars it takes for OUR COUNTRY to come out the other end having won the damned things, not to have just run into the shallow end of the pool long enough to get a little wet but not enough to finish the job.
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My point is that if you don't know what a war is worth, you have no business supporting it. If you have not given it a simple basic thought process of what is the value of this war, then why are you supporting it? Do you just repeat the sound bites that the other un-thinking supporters shout and let that suffice?

You don't do anything else important in your life without first evaluating what it is going to cost you, why would you enter an open ended war and say - Whatever it takes? At least one person said 8,742, facetiiously of course. But, now he has a number in the back of his mind that if/when we reach it he will start to question this war.

At what point will you start to question this war? Never?

My opinion on this war, and on Desert Storm, was that we should never have gone into the middle east. That was my position before those wars were launched, and I believe that time has proven me out. There are wars worth fighting, Afghanistan for instance even though it was created by Desert Storm and it's aftermath. This one in Iraq, isn't.
 
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