The Iraq War retrospective Thread

[--Pete]

Hi,

. . . The pencil pushers couldn't keep up with the tanks.

Indeed. And the failing here is that the 'pencil pushers' should have been finished before the first tank started rolling. Incompetence is not a mitigating factor.

If you don't believe that Saddam's regime made actions that brought about the need for war, then we will never agree on any of the smaller points either.

A nation has the right to wage war only to protect itself or its allies. Anything else is a crime. That is one of the basis of the UN. What you are completely overlooking here is that the USA has no jurisdiction in the international arena except as a member of the UN. What we did was outside the rules of law, and that makes it criminal. If the world at large, as represented by the UN, thought that "Saddam's regime made actions that brought about the need for war", then by all means. We had neither the necessity, nor the justification, nor the right to do so unilaterally.

On a more pragmatic side; given the large number of nations ruled by bastards or committees thereof, do you propose that we invade all such nations? Or only the oil rich ones? Or only those whose military, even if large, is a joke? And should possession of nuclear weapons exempt a nation from our 'fixing' it?

Or is a president trying to outdo daddy a necessary and sufficient condition?

It was the Democrats who didn't believe in it, that voted for it anyway you should be most upset with.

Don't much care for any of them. Do you remember the mood of the time? "If you're not with us, you're against us." Shrub and Gang rode that wave about as far as it could be ridden. The nation, Dem and Rep both, mostly bought it. To be outspoken against anything having to do with bringing pain on "rag-heads" was a politically dangerous thing to do at that time -- the nation wanted blood. It is surprising that *anyone* voted against.

Who started the one in 1991?

Have you moved to the Balkans? Because it is that type of thinking that keeps multi-century conflicts going. The 1991 war was fought, won, and settled under UN auspices. As far as the US should have been concerned, Iraq was a UN problem, to be settled (or ignored) by the UN. Only if Iraq posed a clear and present danger to the USA or its allies would we have had a right to invade. Thus the fairy tale of WMD. And thus the need for the fairy tale of 'liberating' Iraq from Hussein when the first fairy tale was exposed as the lie it was.

Ok, so you leave Saddam in power, and then what happens? We lift sanctions? We allow him to rebuild his military industrial capabilities. Then, what happens?

Yeah, right. So it is your contention that any government that has the potential under some set of circumstances or other sometime in the future to be perceived as a threat is a valid target for invasion. To misquote Roy Scheider, "We're going to need a bigger army."

But you are right. As long as you believe might makes right and the sole surviving super-power can do anything it wants to and I believe that we should all (Texans included, even if they are the CPS or Shrub son of Bush) be under the rule of law, then we have little else to debate.

--Pete