Why are we in Iraq?

GS,
You make some valid points, I believe we agree in concept just not application. I will definitely agree that our border isn't as secure as it should be, I don't believe the military is who should be securing it though. IMO it would cause more internal strife than it would help. The military is designed to break and kill; not police and enforce U.S. immigration laws. U.S. citizens from what I've seen/read/heard don't want to see the U.S. military armed and patrolling their cities. Border security should be left to the Border Patrol/Customs & Border Protection, if not, that organization should be disbanded. No, I don't want the borer patrol disbanded, I want them expanded so they can do their job properly.
There is already news reporting of finding middle eastern clothing items along the southern border. I don't think it's impossible for them to get in, I don't even think it's improbable they will sneak in, I do believe the easiest route to kill Americans right now is to drive across the desert to ambush them. The average fighter doesn't have a lot of money and moving large amounts of men and weapons costs money. They can fit 40-60 men in a jingle truck and drive it across Iran or Syria, they can't do that across the ocean or across the U.S.. They are doing a good job of setting Americans against each other and tearing the country apart and they don't have to lay out a lot of cash or put themselves in danger of traveling through foreign lands where they don't "fit in".

All in all, I think we agree just not completely.
I also apologize for the intensity of my previous response, it had just struck a nerve.
 
Because so many of the crap-weasel liberals who are against our involvement now were screaming the Bush was a bad guy then because he wasn't doing anything about the 'weapons of mass destruction'. Now it is different day, different tune.

May they all rot in their own special....
 
obxned

I wonder where you're getting that...

I don't recall anybody who's now against the war (on the Left, anyway) who was screaming for Bush to do something about Iraq's (non-existent) weapons programs prior to the invasion. There were a bunch of spineless Democratic legislators who were so afraid of what Rove and Mehlman would do to them in campaign ads that they voted for it, and now that the GOP machine's teeth have been pulled, they're telling us that they were mislead, or whatever. They were right about what the GOP was going to do to them (just ask Max Cleland), but that doesn't make their votes any more forgivable.

On the Right? Yep. There were a bunch of 'em. Agitating for war with Iraq for 10 years. Happy as clams at high tide when it finally happened. When all their pretty academic theses and theories about what would happen turned out to be as wrong as phlogiston chemistry, they turned on Bush for failing to make their wishful thinking into reality. Francis Fukuyama leaps immediately to mind.

I'm going to have a very hard time supporting any Presidential candidate who supported or voted for this fiasco. They either knew that it was a bad idea, and voted for it anyway, which makes them spineless careerist twits, or they really thought that it would go down the way Perle, Wolfie et al were saying that it would. If that's the case, they're too stupid to be President.

The situation in Iraq is an unmitigated, unsalvageable disaster. They're going to have their civil war no matter what we do or don't do, the winners will be who the winners will be (Iranian-alligned Shi'ites, at least by the numbers), and we'll have to deal with whoever that is. There's nothing we can do anymore to prevent that, nor even to influence the outcome. It's time to get out of the way. The Kurds might be OK with our being there, especially if we offered our support for the independence that everybody already knows is coming. But the Sunni / Shi'ite fight is beyond our control now, if we ever had any at all. They're gonna fight until one side wins.

--Shannon
 
Don,
I've got a really excellent book for you to check out, written by a guy who worked undercover to infiltrate terrorist cells.

It's called "Thinking Like a Terrorist" by Mike German

It really highlights the arguments I'm trying to make (and failing miserably :D).
This is one point of contention between me and my favorite candidate; it's not only possible to understand our enemy's mindset, goals, fears, and motivations....it's child's play. And absolutely critical to our effort.
As SunTzu said, "If you know your enemy and yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles".

Now...I haven't thought like a terrorist as part of my job, but I haven't found it difficult to do. Many people shy away from this exercise because they don't want to "sympathise" with the enemy, not understanding the critical difference between sympathy and empathy.
Knowing what you know, from what you've seen, it's fairly simple to see things from the perspective of every group involved in this, and how our policies are actually counter-productive to our own efforts.

Terrorism isn't new. Terrorists aren't a stranger to us. We've beaten them before and lost to them before. We know what works and what doesn't.
What we're doing now has a track record of losing, and as seen from the perspective of the terrorist...it's no wonder why.

Anyway, I highly recommend the book if they have it in your area.
 
Two Birds With One Stone

I have an idea. Amnesty and Iraq seem to be the hot issues lately. Why don't we offer the illegals amnesty in exchange for their service in Iraq. There are at least 10 million, maybe close to 20 million illegals here. There is no doubt that more troops over in Iraq would help. Imagine if only a fraction of the aliens accepted this deal. Imagine what a couple of million more soldiers could do to stabilize Iraq.
 
I think we should have been in Iraq a lot earlier, but it took awhile to give the UN a chance to be effective and to wait for Clinton to get out of the way. The UN failed. I never thought the US belonged there alone, and we aren't, although obviously taking the lead in every way.

If things didn't go as expected or could have been better planned in hindsight, the question is then how to adjust while honoring all that went before. Leaving like we never belonged there is not going to happen, as long as the interests of international commerce and control of inflation are paramount (free trade). What is best for the people of Iraq is a high minded purpose and noble sounding facade, but the US has its natural interests in being willing to help.
 
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on being in Iraq a lot earlier....

What make you think that had we done what we've done 5 years earlier, that the results would be any different than we've seen?

You'd still have the same groups, with the same hatreds, contending for power and control of the country. We'd have been in the middle, then, as we are now.

Lots of people with a lot more knowledge than I have saw this coming. Even I knew, before the first APC rolled across the Kuwaiti border, that the country was going to fly apart, with dozens of different factions trying to slice off what they thought they could take and hold. And I'm just an ex-Squid engineer with a history hobby.

Back in 1991, some very smart people, who had been in the real world of international affairs for longer than I've been alive, advised Bush 41 not to press on to Baghdad, for this exact reason. Come around 10 years later, and a bunch of (also very smart) academics managed to convince themselves and then the President that all those realists back in '91 had been wrong, and that if they'd only had the strength of will to act, all would have been wine and roses. The President, to his shame and our sorrow, believed them. FOr whatever reasons, and we'll probably never know, he took the advice of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Francis Fukuyama over Richard Clarke, Brent Scowcroft, and his father. Not to mention a bunch of senior Generals at the Pentagon... A group that is not noted for telling their bosses anything they don't want to hear, as anyone who has worn the uniform can attest.

"We'll be greeted as liberators." "Oil revenues will pay for it." "We're in the last throes of the insurgency." What world are these people living in? It's as if they think they've put on the ruby slippers, and they can just click their heels three times, and whatever they wish for will be. I'm sorry, but the real world doesn't work that way. Wish in one hand, and... you know the rest.

Guess what our hands are filled with.

--Shannon
 
Because so many of the crap-weasel liberals who are against our involvement now were screaming the Bush was a bad guy then because he wasn't doing anything about the 'weapons of mass destruction'. Now it is different day, different tune.
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Aren't we forgetting about another group. I am a Republican that voted for Bush. I thought it was a dumb idea to go into Iraq before he even started the war. I thought standing on a aircraft carrier and declaring mission accomplished was even dumber. Like many I served in the military. I always supported (and still do) our troops. But I do no support Bush wasting their lives for a country that is embroiled in a thousand years religious war that we cannot win.

Don't think that everyone against Bush is a weasel liberal!

The main WMD's to worry about are nuclear devices in the back of a rental truck, and Bush has done nothing to deter that risk.

(weasel liberal...remember I was not the one to use that term first)

Any agreement with any liberal is purely accidental.
 
I most certainly agree...

For all the chest beating uber-Bushies who are trying to defend this war by saying, "Being President is a tough job" I say that is an invalid excuse, if you can't bear the responsibility then don't run. As for the idea of "How else should we fight it?" Well it certainly doesn't help when you shove a system of government and economics on a group of unwilling people. Also if you have NO plan and run blindly into a perpetual war you put your nation at further and protracted risk. Let's think about this, a few years back a number of high ranking military officers resigned because of Bush, I wonder why? If your own high ranking officials back out, something must be wrong. If you plan to fight against an enemy, not knowing how they work and refusing to understanding them is like shooting yourself in the foot. Forgetting that your enemy is as human as you is just as barbaric as cutting off heads and kidnapping, it gives the excuse to spread propaganda that it's okay to hate without understanding your enemy. It further gives the indirect pretext for being prejudiced and hateful of anyone even remotely connected to that enemy be it by race or religion.


Epyon

EDIT: Real Gun sorry my mistake, they were retired non-military officials.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politi...ident/2004-06-15-retired-officials-bush_x.htm

This is one on military officials who wanted Rumsfeld to resign.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092500731.html
 
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"Oppressing the Iraqi people"???

You've got to be kidding me. They've never had it so good. The average Iraqi loves us, and why not?

The question is, what are we doing pouring hundreds of billions of dollars of our money into a country with rich oil deposits? Why are thousands of Americans dying in a country that has no shortage of angry young men with AK-47s? When do we say enough is enough, and let Iraqis work out Iraqi problems, and let our soldiers come home? We're being invaded ourselves, and we have a border that could use 165,000 combat-hardened troops to hold back waves of millions of people coming here to loot our country.
 
The average Iraqi loves us, and why not?
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I hope you have some first hand polling done by yourself in Iraq to corroborate that bold statement, or perhaps a massive poll of millions of Iraqis to back it up. Cause, you know; I could technically say that America haste George W. Bush, and why not?


We're being invaded ourselves, and we have a border that could use 165,000 combat-hardened troops to hold back waves of millions of people coming here to loot our country.
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Wow :rolleyes:
 
We're being invaded ourselves, and we have a border that could use 165,000 combat-hardened troops to hold back waves of millions of people coming here to loot our country.
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Wow
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What are you wowing about? I think its a good idea......at least our troops would be stateside and much MUCH safer.
 
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