Why America Should Continue the War in Iraq

[ZhangXun]

As the war in Iraq drags on past its fourth year a considerable majority of Americans consider the war to be increasingly difficult and perhaps too much so for a Coalition victory to occur. The Senate Majority Leader considers the war a lost cause and said, "I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week…” Two-thirds of the American public disapprove of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war and over one-half of the members of the U.S Congress support a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq. U.S troops are dieing at a rate of 2.5 per day and 3,616 have been killed in Iraq as of today. Congressional Democrats, anti-war Republicans, and a frustrated public argue that this unnecessary war has depleted America of blood, treasure, and precious political leverage that they say could be more appropriately used in diffusing the nuclear crisis in Iran or the genocide in Sudan. To their credit they boast within their constituents experienced and knowledgeable figures such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, renowned journalist Bob Woodward, Senator Robert Byrd (longest serving senator), Senator Charles Hagel, Richard Clarke, and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. Yet even amongst the most experienced anti-war figures, the most ‘dovish’ Democrat, and the loudest protester the argument collapses under a weak base, an absence of historical knowledge or relevant comparisons, and an over reliance on ideological accusations to compensate for what the anti-war platform lacks.

In April of 2004 Senator Edward Kennedy remarked that Iraq is “George Bush’s Vietnam”. A claim that still seems relatively pervasive amongst American voters tired of a seemingly endless military mission in the Iraqi quicksand. But considering the facts behind such a comparison, as well as the man who said it (Kennedy voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964, giving President Lyndon Johnson powers to wage war similar to President Bush’s war powers today) the comparison is completely absurd. Before U.S combat troops arrived in Vietnam in 1962 various administrations had funded eighty percent of the nine year failed French war effort in Vietnam. At the Geneva Conference following the French defeat free-elections were promised for Vietnam, but the provision was abruptly withdrawn and opposed by the U.S.A (who wrote the bill, but did not sign it) as it became almost certain that Ho Chi Minh would defeat the unpopular Ngo Dinh Diem in a nationwide election. After promising not to send U.S soldiers over to job to do what “Asian boys ought to be doing” and winning election in a landslide victory, President Johnson decided to drastically escalate the war in Vietnam as to reach a ‘tipping point’ by which the NVA could simply not hold out against. Conventional tactics used in Korea and World War II were employed far more than counter-insurgency (as was recommended by former President Kennedy) and at the peak of America’s troop presence over 500,000 soldiers were scouring the countryside, guarding besieged cities, and attempting to train patchy and often unreliable South Vietnamese Security Forces modeled along Western military lines.

In 1968 Johnson decided not to run for re-election following the Tet Offensive in which forty out of forty-four South Vietnamese provinces went under severe, almost suicidal attack from the NLF (Vietcong) guerrillas. This blistering offensive all but wiped the Vietcong out of the picture and Johnson out of the Oval Office, from here the NVA took over combat operations and President Richard Nixon began to ‘Vietnamize’ the war and prepare a gradual U.S withdrawal with a pledge to fund and defend South Vietnam should it be attacked. In 1973 the last American troops left Vietnam and a Democratic Congress voted to shut down all federal funding to the unstable South Vietnamese government. Within two years the southern capital of Saigon fell to the Communists and a new bloodbath of retaliation slayings, South Vietnamese diasporas, and ‘re-education’ camps began. If Vietnam somehow compares to Iraq in anyway besides the facts that both enemies we face are guerrilla fighters and that poor intelligence or outright deceit got America involved then please let me know, as that argument could be easily applied to the Spanish Civil War or the War in the Philippines which are seldom mentioned because they are American victories. This “Vietraq” stance many anti-war Americans take is intended to relate a current event of much lesser intensity to an emotionally taxing and shameful war we fought, yet all it accomplishes is confirming the atrocious vacancy of intellectual creativity or knowledge within their ranks.

At the heart of the anti-war movement lies its ‘support the troops, oppose the war’ mantra to display patriotism and dissent hand in hand. It is argued that conservative ‘hawks’ want to send U.S troops into an Iraqi meat grinder trying desperately to clutch on to whatever faded concept of democracy that remains in Iraq. They charge that not setting a time line constitutes a war without end, or one that simply cannot be won. Yet they fail to provide one example where setting a date for withdrawal led any nation to victory in any war of serious proportions, never mind being up against a continually active enemy. One would be an utter fool to challenge the patriotism of anti-war veterans such as John Murtha, John Kerry, or Chuck Hagel yet as with any politician their judgment and line of reasoning falls into serious question.

Should one care to open an encyclopedia, or any historical reference book, one will be provided with the shocking and neglected truth that in every decade of the twentieth century a Western power has achieved victory over an insurgency. From 1899 to 1902 the British Empire fought determined guerrilla resistance in South Africa during the Second Boer War and came out the victors. From 1899 to 1902 and again in 1913 America fought a savage war in the Philippines in which 4,324 U.S soldiers, 2,000 Filipino police, 16,000 insurgents, and over 1,000,000 civilians died. The result was an American victory and colonial rule for decades more, ending in 1946 after a series of agreements relating to decolonization. From 1922 to 1933 Italy fought a determined insurgency in Libya and won after saturating Libya with troops and applying asymmetric and often brutal war methods. 1936 to 1939 the Nationalists began a bloody campaign against Republican (anti-fascist) and communist guerillas and seized control of Spain under General Francisco Franco. In the late 1930s and early 1940s insurgencies developed in Italian occupied Ethiopia and each time was crushed, in several cases through the usage of chemical weapons. From 1952 to 1960 the British systematically smashed the Mau Mau insurgency, delaying Kenyan independence and achieving a more favorable settlement than what would have resulted from defeat.

From 1954 to 1962 France fought an initially unsuccessful war in Algeria but turned the tide of battle with a switch in military tactics mounting victory after victory against the FLN until the Evian Accords were reached under the anti-colonial DeGaulle Administration. This agreement allowed for Algerian independence but allowed the French to keep a considerable military presence in Algeria, some bases used even for nuclear missile tests, and in doing this the Algerian collaborators known as harkis were spared retaliation from bitter nationalists. From 1961 to 1974 the Portuguese military took on three guerrilla wars with equipment so outdated and in such short supply that to any other Western Army would be an insult if asked to do such tasks, and they gained the upper hand in all three wars! Utilizing indigenous collaborators in occupied Guinea Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique, the Portuguese altered war tactics from simple ‘hold the cities’ strategy to classic counter-insurgency. Ironically it was the sudden Carnation Revolution in 1974 (overthrowing Antonio Salazar’s dictatorship and bringing in a social-democratic government) that spared the nationalist guerillas a sure defeat, as all troops were withdrawn following the change in government. In the 1980’s the South Africans utilized Namibian collaborators and elite South African ‘Koevet’ (special forces teams) to extinguish the SWAPO insurgency fighting for independence and retain Apartheid rule. In 1994 a South African defense firm, Executive Outcomes, was contracted by the government of Sierra Leone to defeat the powerful Revolutionary United Front insurgency that neither government troops or soon to be UN blue helmets could stop. Within a few months the firm suppressed the insurgency utilizing superior air power, and small elite soldier units.

The choice belongs to the American people. We can choose to succumb to the wishes of our enemies in Iraq and set a deadline for withdrawal, and then proceed to withdraw. We can take the easy way out, the way we took out in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. By hanging our Iraqi allies on a cross and retreating to the seclusion of our borders so that we can whine and complain about how wrong the war was and how we can focus on boring issues negligible by comparison such as gay marriage, health care, and tax rates. After all why should we Christian Americans give a **** about what happens to poverty stricken, isolated, and embattled Muslims half a world away? Who are we to finish what was indeed a noble cause in removing one of humanity's most barbarous murderers, Saddam Hussein? If hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered and a wider Middle Eastern War begins it matters not to us, because we are unaffected by it and can still watch the results through the sensationalized lens of our own media. Unfortunately this is the attitude prevalent in America now, and will ultimately dictate our feelings should a wider conflict emerge in the absence of American troops. Far be it for the lonely third of Americans to suggest that we not leave, but change tactics, for if they do suggest such things they are shrugged off as ‘out of touch with public opinion’ by politicians, ‘delusional’ by liberals, and ‘imperialists’ by those further to the left. Yet it is such a stance that can only bring about eventual victory as was achieved by so many before us, thus making it within our power to determine the fate of Iraq and all nations that will be affected by the war. This nation can bow to the demands of murderous terrorists, our can bind itself to achieving the victory vital to the well being of Iraq and democracy at large.
----------------

This is an essay I wrote for my summer project in history, I 've posted it here in the hopes of hearing more than one dissenting opinion. Let me know what you think of it. : )

[Dr Mindbender]

its well put together, but theres a lot of important points you havent addressed-

''The choice belongs to the American people.''- No it shouldnt. It should belong to the Iraqi people.

''Who are we to finish what was indeed a noble cause in removing one of humanity's most barbarous murderers, Saddam Hussein?'' -George Bush Sr and the conservative hacks were responsible for ushering him to office admist the background of the iranian revolution, when it was in their interests to do so against the ayatollah.

''Hussein? If hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered and a wider Middle Eastern War begins it matters not to us, because we are unaffected by it and can still watch the results through the sensationalized lens of our own media. Unfortunately this is the attitude prevalent in America now, and will ultimately dictate our feelings should a wider conflict emerge in the absence of American troops''- If anything, the prescense of American troops is only fuelling the arrival of more insurgents. the insurgency is invincible, because for every one that dies there will always be a new one willing to pick up his gun, and they will keep coming back as long as they have a chance of killing more americans (and british troops for that matter)

[ZhangXun]

No it shouldnt. It should belong to the Iraqi people.

Ideally a choice should rest with the people it affects most but the Iraqi people are divided into so many different political and military factions that a unanimous opinion among them seems unlikely or unwise in such times. They know what is best for their country, the Coalition knows what is best for American political interests and military strategy, in this sense both will be in constant conflict with each other until something changes in either one or one is removed from the picture all together. Iraq's Shi'a population now wields almost unchallenged control and will exact revenge against the Sunni Iraqis (as they are now) as soon as the Coalition leaves, I can't support allowing such a bloodbath to happen it is inhuman.


George Bush Sr and the conservative hacks were responsible for ushering him to office admist the background of the iranian revolution, when it was in their interests to do so against the ayatollah.

I've never been a huge fan of the Reagan Administration as a whole, but those past actions can be corrected. For instance you are an Irish citizen (your user name has Ulster in it so I would assume that) who has either heard or witnessed the tragic violence in North Ireland since the late 1960s. I can relate to that because my father is an Irish citizen too (came to America in '81) and was almost recruited into the IRA but refused. His reasoning was that he was not going to make the same violent mistakes his countrymen made before him. Practically this is a ridiculous comparison with Iraq but in the political sense of it I believe it fits. Why should something Ronald Reagan and George H.W Bush did in Iraq affect what our future leaders do?


If anything, the prescense of American troops is only fuelling the arival of more insurgents. the insurgency is invincible, because for every one that dies there will always be a new one willing to pick up his gun, and they will keep coming back as long as they have a chance of killing more americans (and british troops for that matter)

Perhaps for the present time this is the current situation, but no insurrection can last forever if it is slowly and decisively crushed as has been done many times before. Portugal had 170,000 troops fighting in three different African nations thousands of miles away during the Estado Novo, and had it not been for a change in government due to a peaceful revolution the insurgencies were doomed to lose. General Spinola adopted a sound strategy to utilize indigenous collaborators, Portuguese commandos, and outdated but still powerful weaponry to all but crush the insurgency in Angola. The issue of how moral the wars were is open to debate, but the military success of a sustained counter-insurgency war (even in an extremely hostile nation) is definite.

[R_P_A_S]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 11:48 pm
As the war in Iraq drags on past its fourth year a considerable majority of Americans consider the war to be increasingly difficult and perhaps too much so for a Coalition victory to occur. The Senate Majority Leader considers the war a lost cause and said, "I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week…” Two-thirds of the American public disapprove of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war and over one-half of the members of the U.S Congress support a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq. U.S troops are dieing at a rate of 2.5 per day and 3,616 have been killed in Iraq as of today. Congressional Democrats, anti-war Republicans, and a frustrated public argue that this unnecessary war has depleted America of blood, treasure, and precious political leverage that they say could be more appropriately used in diffusing the nuclear crisis in Iran or the genocide in Sudan. To their credit they boast within their constituents experienced and knowledgeable figures such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, renowned journalist Bob Woodward, Senator Robert Byrd (longest serving senator), Senator Charles Hagel, Richard Clarke, and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. Yet even amongst the most experienced anti-war figures, the most ‘dovish’ Democrat, and the loudest protester the argument collapses under a weak base, an absence of historical knowledge or relevant comparisons, and an over reliance on ideological accusations to compensate for what the anti-war platform lacks.

In April of 2004 Senator Edward Kennedy remarked that Iraq is “George Bush’s Vietnam”. A claim that still seems relatively pervasive amongst American voters tired of a seemingly endless military mission in the Iraqi quicksand. But considering the facts behind such a comparison, as well as the man who said it (Kennedy voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964, giving President Lyndon Johnson powers to wage war similar to President Bush’s war powers today) the comparison is completely absurd. Before U.S combat troops arrived in Vietnam in 1962 various administrations had funded eighty percent of the nine year failed French war effort in Vietnam. At the Geneva Conference following the French defeat free-elections were promised for Vietnam, but the provision was abruptly withdrawn and opposed by the U.S.A (who wrote the bill, but did not sign it) as it became almost certain that Ho Chi Minh would defeat the unpopular Ngo Dinh Diem in a nationwide election. After promising not to send U.S soldiers over to job to do what “Asian boys ought to be doing” and winning election in a landslide victory, President Johnson decided to drastically escalate the war in Vietnam as to reach a ‘tipping point’ by which the NVA could simply not hold out against. Conventional tactics used in Korea and World War II were employed far more than counter-insurgency (as was recommended by former President Kennedy) and at the peak of America’s troop presence over 500,000 soldiers were scouring the countryside, guarding besieged cities, and attempting to train patchy and often unreliable South Vietnamese Security Forces modeled along Western military lines.

In 1968 Johnson decided not to run for re-election following the Tet Offensive in which forty out of forty-four South Vietnamese provinces went under severe, almost suicidal attack from the NLF (Vietcong) guerrillas. This blistering offensive all but wiped the Vietcong out of the picture and Johnson out of the Oval Office, from here the NVA took over combat operations and President Richard Nixon began to ‘Vietnamize’ the war and prepare a gradual U.S withdrawal with a pledge to fund and defend South Vietnam should it be attacked. In 1973 the last American troops left Vietnam and a Democratic Congress voted to shut down all federal funding to the unstable South Vietnamese government. Within two years the southern capital of Saigon fell to the Communists and a new bloodbath of retaliation slayings, South Vietnamese diasporas, and ‘re-education’ camps began. If Vietnam somehow compares to Iraq in anyway besides the facts that both enemies we face are guerrilla fighters and that poor intelligence or outright deceit got America involved then please let me know, as that argument could be easily applied to the Spanish Civil War or the War in the Philippines which are seldom mentioned because they are American victories. This “Vietraq” stance many anti-war Americans take is intended to relate a current event of much lesser intensity to an emotionally taxing and shameful war we fought, yet all it accomplishes is confirming the atrocious vacancy of intellectual creativity or knowledge within their ranks.

At the heart of the anti-war movement lies its ‘support the troops, oppose the war’ mantra to display patriotism and dissent hand in hand. It is argued that conservative ‘hawks’ want to send U.S troops into an Iraqi meat grinder trying desperately to clutch on to whatever faded concept of democracy that remains in Iraq. They charge that not setting a time line constitutes a war without end, or one that simply cannot be won. Yet they fail to provide one example where setting a date for withdrawal led any nation to victory in any war of serious proportions, never mind being up against a continually active enemy. One would be an utter fool to challenge the patriotism of anti-war veterans such as John Murtha, John Kerry, or Chuck Hagel yet as with any politician their judgment and line of reasoning falls into serious question.

Should one care to open an encyclopedia, or any historical reference book, one will be provided with the shocking and neglected truth that in every decade of the twentieth century a Western power has achieved victory over an insurgency. From 1899 to 1902 the British Empire fought determined guerrilla resistance in South Africa during the Second Boer War and came out the victors. From 1899 to 1902 and again in 1913 America fought a savage war in the Philippines in which 4,324 U.S soldiers, 2,000 Filipino police, 16,000 insurgents, and over 1,000,000 civilians died. The result was an American victory and colonial rule for decades more, ending in 1946 after a series of agreements relating to decolonization. From 1922 to 1933 Italy fought a determined insurgency in Libya and won after saturating Libya with troops and applying asymmetric and often brutal war methods. 1936 to 1939 the Nationalists began a bloody campaign against Republican (anti-fascist) and communist guerillas and seized control of Spain under General Francisco Franco. In the late 1930s and early 1940s insurgencies developed in Italian occupied Ethiopia and each time was crushed, in several cases through the usage of chemical weapons. From 1952 to 1960 the British systematically smashed the Mau Mau insurgency, delaying Kenyan independence and achieving a more favorable settlement than what would have resulted from defeat.

From 1954 to 1962 France fought an initially unsuccessful war in Algeria but turned the tide of battle with a switch in military tactics mounting victory after victory against the FLN until the Evian Accords were reached under the anti-colonial DeGaulle Administration. This agreement allowed for Algerian independence but allowed the French to keep a considerable military presence in Algeria, some bases used even for nuclear missile tests, and in doing this the Algerian collaborators known as harkis were spared retaliation from bitter nationalists. From 1961 to 1974 the Portuguese military took on three guerrilla wars with equipment so outdated and in such short supply that to any other Western Army would be an insult if asked to do such tasks, and they gained the upper hand in all three wars! Utilizing indigenous collaborators in occupied Guinea Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique, the Portuguese altered war tactics from simple ‘hold the cities’ strategy to classic counter-insurgency. Ironically it was the sudden Carnation Revolution in 1974 (overthrowing Antonio Salazar’s dictatorship and bringing in a social-democratic government) that spared the nationalist guerillas a sure defeat, as all troops were withdrawn following the change in government. In the 1980’s the South Africans utilized Namibian collaborators and elite South African ‘Koevet’ (special forces teams) to extinguish the SWAPO insurgency fighting for independence and retain Apartheid rule. In 1994 a South African defense firm, Executive Outcomes, was contracted by the government of Sierra Leone to defeat the powerful Revolutionary United Front insurgency that neither government troops or soon to be UN blue helmets could stop. Within a few months the firm suppressed the insurgency utilizing superior air power, and small elite soldier units.

The choice belongs to the American people. We can choose to succumb to the wishes of our enemies in Iraq and set a deadline for withdrawal, and then proceed to withdraw. We can take the easy way out, the way we took out in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. By hanging our Iraqi allies on a cross and retreating to the seclusion of our borders so that we can whine and complain about how wrong the war was and how we can focus on boring issues negligible by comparison such as gay marriage, health care, and tax rates. After all why should we Christian Americans give a **** about what happens to poverty stricken, isolated, and embattled Muslims half a world away? Who are we to finish what was indeed a noble cause in removing one of humanity's most barbarous murderers, Saddam Hussein? If hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered and a wider Middle Eastern War begins it matters not to us, because we are unaffected by it and can still watch the results through the sensationalized lens of our own media. Unfortunately this is the attitude prevalent in America now, and will ultimately dictate our feelings should a wider conflict emerge in the absence of American troops. Far be it for the lonely third of Americans to suggest that we not leave, but change tactics, for if they do suggest such things they are shrugged off as ‘out of touch with public opinion’ by politicians, ‘delusional’ by liberals, and ‘imperialists’ by those further to the left. Yet it is such a stance that can only bring about eventual victory as was achieved by so many before us, thus making it within our power to determine the fate of Iraq and all nations that will be affected by the war. This nation can bow to the demands of murderous terrorists, our can bind itself to achieving the victory vital to the well being of Iraq and democracy at large.
----------------

This is an essay I wrote for my summer project in history, I 've posted it here in the hopes of hearing more than one dissenting opinion. Let me know what you think of it. : )
fucking Lil' Bush everyone! :P

[ZhangXun]

fucking Lil' Bush everyone! tongue.gif

My God that show is horribly stupid <_<

[Dean]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 12:13 am

No it shouldnt. It should belong to the Iraqi people.

Ideally a choice should rest with the people it affects most but the Iraqi people are divided into so many different political and military factions that a unanimous opinion among them seems unlikely or unwise in such times. They know what is best for their country, the Coalition knows what is best for American political interests and military strategy, in this sense both will be in constant conflict with each other until something changes in either one or one is removed from the picture all together. Iraq&#39;s Shi&#39;a population now wields almost unchallenged control and will exact revenge against the Sunni Iraqis (as they are now) as soon as the Coalition leaves, I can&#39;t support allowing such a bloodbath to happen it is inhuman.
You&#39;re right. Ignorant John Doe who just got home from a shitty day at the construction site, visited the titty bar / watched the game, and then begrudgingly voiced his uninformed, CNN/FOX/etc. - druggged opinion through a poll should have the final say over the future of the Iraqi people.

If Canada invaded the US and was occupying Virginia, I&#39;d probably be more interested in having my voice heard than the Canadian voice, even though I agree with their system of governance much more than ours&#39;.

[The-Spark]

"U.S troops are dieing at a rate of 2.5 per day and 3,616 have been killed in Iraq"
Yet 500,000 Iraqis have died, and for what?

"this unnecessary war has depleted America of blood, treasure"
Yet isnt that why the U.S was there in the first place, the blood of innocent iraqis and their oil?

"fucking Lil&#39; Bush everyone&#33; :P "
Yeah he seems like the gullible patriot ***** doesnt he?

[Dr Mindbender]

Originally posted by ZhangXun+--> (ZhangXun)Ideally a choice should rest with the people it affects most but the Iraqi people are divided into so many different political and military factions that a unanimous opinion among them seems unlikely or unwise in such times. They know what is best for their country, the Coalition knows what is best for American political interests and military strategy, in this sense both will be in constant conflict with each other until something changes in either one or one is removed from the picture all together. Iraq&#39;s Shi&#39;a population now wields almost unchallenged control and will exact revenge against the Sunni Iraqis (as they are now) as soon as the Coalition leaves, I can&#39;t support allowing such a bloodbath to happen it is inhuman.[/b]
First things first- Allowing Western troops to stay is the stupid solution as they are just acting as insurgent magnets. A smarter alternative would be to replace them with a less provocative coalition of troops from moderate muslim nations such as Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt etc. They would be far more sensitive towards local religious issues, and would blend in more easily into the local populace.
Regarding your point on &#39;allowing bloodbaths to continue&#39;- there is already state sponsored genocide happening in places like Zimbabwe, yet i dont see the American government interested, IMO because these places arent oil producers.

Originally posted by [email protected]

I&#39;ve never been a huge fan of the Reagan Administration as a whole, but those past actions can be corrected. For instance you are an Irish citizen (your user name has Ulster in it so I would assume that) who has either heard or witnessed the tragic violence in North Ireland since the late 1960s. I can relate to that because my father is an Irish citizen too (came to America in &#39;81) and was almost recruited into the IRA but refused. His reasoning was that he was not going to make the same violent mistakes his countrymen made before him. Practically this is a ridiculous comparison with Iraq but in the political sense of it I believe it fits. Why should something Ronald Reagan and George H.W Bush did in Iraq affect what our future leaders do?
the Irish analogy is counterproductive to your point, IRA recruitment was largely driven as a result of 1972 massacre in Derry by British paratroopers, another inditement of the UK&#39;s flawed policy. My point about Saddam was that as long as they hold on to the belief that the pretext for invasion was &#39;removing saddam whichwas the right thing to do&#39; was hypocritical, when you bear in mind they were responsible for putting him there in the first place. I dont see them jumping in to remove other despots like Robert Mugabe or Kim Il Sung.

ZhangXun

Perhaps for the present time this is the current situation, but no insurrection can last forever if it is slowly and decisively crushed as has been done many times before. Portugal had 170,000 troops fighting in three different African nations thousands of miles away during the Estado Novo, and had it not been for a change in government due to a peaceful revolution the insurgencies were doomed to lose. General Spinola adopted a sound strategy to utilize indigenous collaborators, Portuguese commandos, and outdated but still powerful weaponry to all but crush the insurgency in Angola. The issue of how moral the wars were is open to debate, but the military success of a sustained counter-insurgency war (even in an extremely hostile nation) is definite.
Countries like Portugal have never provoked the sort of animosity against itself that the US/UK axis have. It isnt just Iraq either, its also the bungled operation in Afghanistan where Bin Laden is still at large, and the unflinching support to Israel which is the next biggest cause of hatred against America. Ive seen documentaries on UK tv, even the US troops on the ground dont understand why there are there and there morale is at tenderhooks. The longer US troops stay there, it increases the &#39;them and us&#39; mentality in young muslims around the world which is leading to their radicalisation. The insurgents know exactly why they are there, and believe they are acting with the &#39;divine will of Allah&#39;. not only that they have potentially millions more on their way to join in. The American war machine simply cant compete with that kind of conviction or drive.

[Dimentio]

Yes,if you are ready to do atrocities, such a war is possible to win. The only question is how the world will react in that matter.

[The New Left]

There is no war to be won, Once the US had Saddam what else was to be done? They have put up a government (which I think is not competent), they have tried to remove all terrorists, but impossible to do.

The US should with drawl troops to as little as possible, it makes not sense for a government to send in more troops for a war that has no other outcome other than "We need more troops".

"The war is not meant to be won, its meant to be continuous" - George Orwell.

[ECD Hollis]

Originally posted by Dean+July 17, 2007 06:29 am--> (Dean @ July 17, 2007 06:29 am)
[email protected] 17, 2007 12:13 am

No it shouldnt. It should belong to the Iraqi people.

Ideally a choice should rest with the people it affects most but the Iraqi people are divided into so many different political and military factions that a unanimous opinion among them seems unlikely or unwise in such times. They know what is best for their country, the Coalition knows what is best for American political interests and military strategy, in this sense both will be in constant conflict with each other until something changes in either one or one is removed from the picture all together. Iraq&#39;s Shi&#39;a population now wields almost unchallenged control and will exact revenge against the Sunni Iraqis (as they are now) as soon as the Coalition leaves, I can&#39;t support allowing such a bloodbath to happen it is inhuman.
You&#39;re right. Ignorant John Doe who just got home from a shitty day at the construction site, visited the titty bar / watched the game, and then begrudgingly voiced his uninformed, CNN/FOX/etc. - druggged opinion through a poll should have the final say over the future of the Iraqi people.

If Canada invaded the US and was occupying Virginia, I&#39;d probably be more interested in having my voice heard than the Canadian voice, even though I agree with their system of governance much more than ours&#39;. [/b]
Your ignorance compels me.......

[Capitalist Lawyer]

Did the USA have justification for going into Afghanistan?

Or was that just another imperialist war that serves "no purpose other than to perpetuate our own ruling class over the world"?

(To speak in terms that you all are familiar with.)

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by Capitalist [email protected] 17, 2007 09:18 pm
Did the USA have justification for going into Afghanistan?

Or was that just another imperialist war that serves "no purpose other than to perpetuate our own ruling class over the world"?

(To speak in terms that you all are familiar with.)
No it didn&#39;t. THough I am almost inclined to say it was less about imperialism (directly) and more aboutinvading the country out of public relations necessity. They were after Iraq from the beginning, but to attack it would not have been accepted then when Bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. So they had to invade Afghanistan first.

Of course it ended up a complete disaster too. We just don&#39;t hear so uch about it, because for some reason it is still a polular war.

[Pawn Power]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 07:13 pm

Ideally a choice should rest with the people it affects most but the Iraqi people are divided into so many different political and military factions that a unanimous opinion among them seems unlikely or unwise in such times.
Well one thing they do seem to be united on is their desire for the US to get the fuck out of their country...in fact most Americans want the same thing as well.

A World Public Opinion poll take in september found that 74% of Shiites and 91% of Sunnis in Iraq want us to leave within a year. In Bagdad the figure is jumps to 80% for Shites.

All these politicos and politicos wannabes should get the fuck over themselves. People don&#39;t want their country occupied by imperilist powers, you can&#39;t spin it so they do.

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by Capitalist [email protected] 17, 2007 09:18 pm
Did the USA have justification for going into Afghanistan?
No, both times.


Or was that just another imperialist war that serves "no purpose other than to perpetuate our own ruling class over the world"?

Yes, it certainly was.


(To speak in terms that you all are familiar with.)

Don&#39;t be a condescending ****.

[Publius]

No it didn&#39;t.

Being attacked by a terror cell they supported is not a valid reason?


THough I am almost inclined to say it was less about imperialism (directly) and more uaboutinvading the country out of pblic relations necessity.

Why was it a PR necessity? Because the terrorists that attacked us lived in that country? Are you admitting that? If so, you are saying we shouldn&#39;t be allowed to defend ourselves against terroristic theocrats, which as un-Leftist a position as you can imagine.

And if you&#39;re saying that bin Laden didn&#39;t really do it, that the PR was made up, then why didn&#39;t we just make up the fact that Saddam did it and just invade Iraq in the first place?

This makes no sense, none at all.



They were after Iraq from the beginning, but to attack it would not have been accepted then when Bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. So they had to invade Afghanistan first.

Yeah, and?



Of course it ended up a complete disaster too. We just don&#39;t hear so uch about it, because for some reason it is still a polular war.

I agree that it&#39;s been a total fuck-up, but I place the blame for that on the invasion of Iraq. We should have focused on actually ridding Afghanistan of al Qaeda.

EDIT: Under what circumstances WOULD the US (or any other country, for that matter) be justified in attacking another country? And please try to answer without resorting to the juvenile nihilism so common around here.

[Publius]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 11:01 pm






No, both times.

What masochism.



Yes, it certainly was.

Yeah, what ever would have done without Afghanistan&#39;s rich supplies of opium and misery?



Don&#39;t be a condescending ****.

Can I keep this card for later use?

EDIT: Under what circumstances WOULD the US (or any other country, for that matter) be justified in attacking another country? And please try to answer without resorting to the juvenile nihilism so common around here.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 11:30 pm
Being attacked by a terror cell they supported is not a valid reason?

Why was it a PR necessity? Because the terrorists that attacked us lived in that country? Are you admitting that? If so, you are saying we shouldn&#39;t be allowed to defend ourselves against terroristic theocrats, which as un-Leftist a position as you can imagine.

And if you&#39;re saying that bin Laden didn&#39;t really do it, that the PR was made up, then why didn&#39;t we just make up the fact that Saddam did it and just invade Iraq in the first place?

This makes no sense, none at all.

Come on, you can do better than this. War is not some nice little police action when you go and get the baddies ad everyone lives hapoily ever after. The victims of a war will not primarily be the leaders of any given country, but the people in that country. For a war to be justified you have to be justified in attacking the civilians.

And given the civilias of Afghanistan did not attack America, America had no business attacking the civilians of Afghanistan.

I certainly did not say Bin Laden didn&#39;t really do it. As far as I know it is pretty incontravertible that he did. What I said was that Afghanistan was never really on the list of planned targets It is not a particularly significant country and despite being invaded many tims, nobody has ever come off well from trying it. They always wanted to invade Iraq. When they got the excuse to start this war in a particularly dramatic fashion, they knew they couldn&#39;t straight away invade Iraq. Nobody would accept that. Bin ladenw as known to be in Afghanistan. Or believed to be anyway. People would have asked why they had invaded Iraq rather than Afghanistan and they would have had no answer. So Afghanistan had to be dealt with first for anyone to support the invasion of IRaq.

[Publius]

Come on, you can do better than this.

Probably, but for the occasion I didn&#39;t see the need to tax myself.


War is not some nice little police action when you go and get the baddies ad everyone lives hapoily ever after. The victims of a war will not primarily be the leaders of any given country, but the people in that country.

Ah, yes because everything in Afghanistan was going just fucking swimmingly before we smashed our way through...


For a war to be justified you have to be justified in attacking the civilians.

And given the civilias of Afghanistan did not attack America, America had no business attacking the civilians of Afghanistan.

And the leaders of Afghanistan had no business attacking our civilians, or rather, supporting and abiding those who did.

And look who you&#39;re criticizing. Look who&#39;s side your on.



I certainly did not say Bin Laden didn&#39;t really do it.

Good, because some people on your side make the idiotic point that it wasn&#39;t him.


As far as I know it is pretty incontravertible that he did. What I said was that Afghanistan was never really on the list of planned targets It is not a particularly significant country and despite being invaded many tims, nobody has ever come off well from trying it. They always wanted to invade Iraq. When they got the excuse to start this war in a particularly dramatic fashion, they knew they couldn&#39;t straight away invade Iraq. Nobody would accept that. Bin ladenw as known to be in Afghanistan. Or believed to be anyway. People would have asked why they had invaded Iraq rather than Afghanistan and they would have had no answer. So Afghanistan had to be dealt with first for anyone to support the invasion of IRaq.

But that doesn&#39;t change the fact that we were justified because we were attacked.

If you want to talk about how wrong it is to start a war that kills civilians, you take up with people who started the war with the sole, malicious intent of killing civilians.

Don&#39;t hate America so much that you end up hating yourself by proxy.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 11:46 pm
Ah, yes because everything in Afghanistan was going just fucking swimmingly before we smashed our way through...
Hardly, but if we are going to take that kind of justification for war, we could be justified in invading half the earth.

And the leaders of Afghanistan had no business attacking our civilians.Not that they did, that was Al Quaeda, but no, Al Quaeda had no business attacking your civilians. I am glad you accept that. I am struggling to see why you think some civilian deaths justify more civilian deaths, but oh well I am sure you have your reasons.
And look who you&#39;re criticizing. Look who&#39;s side your on. Whose side are you under the impression I am on?

If you want to talk about how wrong it is to start a war that kills civilians, you take up with people who started the war with the sole, malicious intent of killing civilians.
If I am going to take it up with the people who started the cycle of constant coflicts involving Afghanistan, I am going to have to go back to at leas Britain&#39;s involvement in the nineteenth century, probably further. Not very profitable. But then again, neither is each side thinking it is perfectly justified in striking another blow because they have been attacked previously.
Don&#39;t hate America so much that you end up hating yourself by proxy.I do not hate America, and I certainly do not hate myself, thugh I am not sure how the too are related.

This is not particularly about America anyway, it is far more complicated than that, there has been a cycle of war and violence in Afghanistan for generations which both America and Al Quaeda blundered into in the eighties and are now seeing the upshot of. I am not even comfortable putting it down to imperialism, though that certainly started it off, but these days it is just plain tragedy that is benefitting nobody, except maybe Bush&#39;s lot in the 2002 elections though that is long past and perhaps Bin Laden and his cronies as well. Certainly for the wider ruling classes on both sides, this has not been a profitable conflict, but as long as they still feel they have to respond to the previous attack in exactly the same way as has been tried and failed for the last God knows how long, this is not going to be resolved.

Certainly don&#39;t think it began with September the Eleventh

[Publius]

Hardly, but if we are going to take that kind of justification for war, we could be justified in invading half the earth.

That&#39;s not a justification, that&#39;s just a fact.

Saying we made their lives hell doesn&#39;t hold much weight when their lives already were hell.



Not that they did, that was Al Quaeda,

I edited my post to reflect that, but I don&#39;t think the division is particularly meaningful in this situation.


but no, Al Quaeda had no business attacking your civilians. I am glad you accept that. I am struggling to see why you think some civilian deaths justify more civilian deaths, but oh well I am sure you have your reasons.

No civilian deaths justify any others, but this was a preventive measure (or at least it was supposed to be.)

How could you rightly allow Al Qaeda, which had just attacked over 3,000 innocents, to continue attacking unabated?

What if they killed 30,000 people, or 300,000? Then, please, pretty please, could we stop them?

The deal is, and always has been, if you attack, you get attacked. Now it so happens that a painful consequence of this is that civilians die in the process, but ultimately, that&#39;s bound to happen because if we don&#39;t stop terrorism, they&#39;ll continue killing civilians at the fastest pace they can manage. And who wants that?

The choice is either kill civilians now and stop religious fundemanalist terror, or allow them to kill civilians later.



Whose side are you under the impression I am on?

Not on the Wests.

The invasion of Afghanistan had broad Western approval.



If I am going to take it up with the people who started the cycle of constant coflicts involving Afghanistan, I am going to have to go back to at leas Britain&#39;s involvement in the nineteenth century, probably further. Not very profitable. But then again, neither is each side thinking it is perfectly justified in striking another blow because they have been attacked previously.

Oh, I&#39;d love for you to explain to me how Britain&#39;s transgressions in the regions justify 9/11. I&#39;m dying to hear that explanation.

And really, most of the people who took part in 9/11 weren&#39;t even Afghani. Bin Laden is Saudi, most of the hijackers were Saudi.

Hell, we even HELPED them fend off the Soviets. I guess that makes us anti-Imperialists then, huh?

:lol:



I do not hate America, and I certainly do not hate myself, thugh I am not sure how the too are related.

This is not particularly about America anyway, it is far more complicated than that, there has been a cycle of war and violence in Afghanistan for generations which both America and Al Quaeda blundered into in the eighties and are now seeing the upshot of. I am not even comfortable putting it down to imperialism, though that certainly started it off, but these days it is just plain tragedy that is benefitting nobody, except maybe Bush&#39;s lot in the 2002 elections though that is long past and perhaps Bin Laden and his cronies as well. Certainly for the wider ruling classes on both sides, this has not been a profitable conflict, but as long as they still feel they have to respond to the previous attack in exactly the same way as has been tried and failed for the last God knows how long, this is not going to be resolved.

Certainly don&#39;t think it began with September the Eleventh

Actually, I agree with most of this, certainly with your sentiments.

But I still can see no way that we could justifiably ignore over 3,000 deaths.

[Revolution Until Victory]

lol, for the moment I was gonna protest how this pro-imperialist isn&#39;t restricted, until I saw he was under his name ^_^

what a piece of trash is that&#33;


Who are we to finish what was indeed a noble cause in removing one of humanity&#39;s most barbarous murderers, Saddam Hussein

1- who the FUCK are you to "help" the Iraqi people? don&#39;t you think this is getting a little too old? "we invaded them coz we wanna help them". sorry, this racist disgusting shit about the "white man&#39;s burden" is too much traditional and out dated (maybe not for the imperialist trash). The similarites between the traditional 19th colonial aggressions and the 21st century colonial aggressions are simply shocking. the Iraqi people are responsible for their own disteny. they have the right of self-determination. let them do their own mistakes. the "white man" had no burden or bussniss middling in the affairs of the "brown people". According to this retarded "logic", every nation can invade the other coz they have an "opressive leader". the world would be a mad-house. get it in your thick skull. it&#39;s non of the bussiness of ANYONE to middle in the affairs of other people. can I now invade the US claiming I want to "liberate" them coz they live under an opressive system (capitalism). It is up for the IRAQI masses to free themselves. No forgiener ever got a right to be imposing on them and preaching to them what to do.

2- Gandhi once said "[No] people exists that would not think itself happier even under its own bad government than it might really be under the good governance of an alien power" (The Essential Gandhi P.116)
there is no people on this entire earth that would be happier under the "good" governance of an alien power rather than the "opressive" governance of its own people. no matter how "good" this alien power is. no matter how bad the X governemtn of a poeple is, it is still a thousand times better than the "good" governance of an alien Y power. this is common sense.
thus, no matter how bad, evil, and a child-eating monster Saddam was, the Iraqi people would be much happier under the governance of their OWN people, rather under the rule of a forgein imperialist power. No matter how much Americans hate Bush, they would STILL choose him over the forgien domination of say, China.
this argument, that we "got rid of Saddam for you", practicly gets the shit beaten out of every time its mentioned by a colonial apologist like yourself. No matter how bad Saddam was, the forgien domination of the US is a thousand times worse.
I&#39;m sure all Chielines during Penochet would defenatly still favor him, no matter how opressive, over the "good" forgien domination of the US, if it happned to invade Chile.

3- Saddam isn&#39;t "one of humanity&#39;s most barbarous murderers".


Should one care to open an encyclopedia, or any historical reference book, one will be provided with the shocking and neglected truth that in every decade of the twentieth century a Western power has achieved victory over an insurgency. From 1899 to 1902 the British Empire fought determined guerrilla resistance in South Africa during the Second Boer War and came out the victors. From 1899 to 1902 and again in 1913 America fought a savage war in the Philippines in which 4,324 U.S soldiers, 2,000 Filipino police, 16,000 insurgents, and over 1,000,000 civilians died. The result was an American victory and colonial rule for decades more, ending in 1946 after a series of agreements relating to decolonization. From 1922 to 1933 Italy fought a determined insurgency in Libya and won after saturating Libya with troops and applying asymmetric and often brutal war methods. 1936 to 1939 the Nationalists began a bloody campaign against Republican (anti-fascist) and communist guerillas and seized control of Spain under General Francisco Franco. In the late 1930s and early 1940s insurgencies developed in Italian occupied Ethiopia and each time was crushed, in several cases through the usage of chemical weapons. From 1952 to 1960 the British systematically smashed the Mau Mau insurgency, delaying Kenyan independence and achieving a more favorable settlement than what would have resulted from defeat.

From 1954 to 1962 France fought an initially unsuccessful war in Algeria but turned the tide of battle with a switch in military tactics mounting victory after victory against the FLN until the Evian Accords were reached under the anti-colonial DeGaulle Administration. This agreement allowed for Algerian independence but allowed the French to keep a considerable military presence in Algeria, some bases used even for nuclear missile tests, and in doing this the Algerian collaborators known as harkis were spared retaliation from bitter nationalists. From 1961 to 1974 the Portuguese military took on three guerrilla wars with equipment so outdated and in such short supply that to any other Western Army would be an insult if asked to do such tasks, and they gained the upper hand in all three wars&#33; Utilizing indigenous collaborators in occupied Guinea Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique, the Portuguese altered war tactics from simple ‘hold the cities’ strategy to classic counter-insurgency. Ironically it was the sudden Carnation Revolution in 1974 (overthrowing Antonio Salazar’s dictatorship and bringing in a social-democratic government) that spared the nationalist guerillas a sure defeat, as all troops were withdrawn following the change in government. In the 1980’s the South Africans utilized Namibian collaborators and elite South African ‘Koevet’ (special forces teams) to extinguish the SWAPO insurgency fighting for independence and retain Apartheid rule. In 1994 a South African defense firm, Executive Outcomes, was contracted by the government of Sierra Leone to defeat the powerful Revolutionary United Front insurgency that neither government troops or soon to be UN blue helmets could stop. Within a few months the firm suppressed the insurgency utilizing superior air power, and small elite soldier units.

makes me wonder, did you even think before writting such crap? what are you like 5?
as long a their is injustice and opression, there is resistance. end of story.
No justice = No peace.
the only way you can end the resistance is when:

1- end the opression.

2- genocide the people you are opressing.

other than this, the RESISTANCE WILL NOT DIE.
you can&#39;t have it both ways. you can&#39;t have a population that you opress, and then expect to end thier resistance. that&#39;s simply childish. you want to end the resistance, you got to go for the root cause: opression.
you can kill 1, 1000, or even a million and an entire liberation movment, but in its place, thousands more will spring up, coz the root cause that made the first resistance which you distoryed to spring up still exists: opression.
the US imperialists in Iraq are loosing and will continue to loose. the only way the reistance ends is:

1- end of occupation

2- end of almost all of the Iraqi people.

the second choice is imposible, especially in our current times coz of International law and stuff (that 2nd choice was much eaiser some 200 years ago).
in other words, the ONLY choice you got to end the resistance is to end the opression and occupation, end the root cause. or you can simply exterminate almost the enitre Iraqi population if you can. (since no people that are alive would accept to be opressed. you got to kill them to make them accept opression) have a good time trying.


Iraq&#39;s Shi&#39;a population now wields almost unchallenged control and will exact revenge against the Sunni Iraqis (as they are now) as soon as the Coalition leaves, I can&#39;t support allowing such a bloodbath to happen it is inhuman.

ending imperialist opression is NECESSARY, but not SUFFIECENT. surely, the US got a lot to do to correct and compensate for its mistakes. it can&#39;t run away, but at the same time, it got to end its occupation NOW. the no.1 problem for the Iraqis ( and any people on earth for that matter) is forgien domination. it got to end. immediatly. the US shoud fix the problem it created WITHOUT keeping its occupation.


Portugal had 170,000 troops fighting in three different African nations thousands of miles away during the Estado Novo, and had it not been for a change in government due to a peaceful revolution the insurgencies were doomed to lose

haaahaa. bullshit. the resistance will not die. the resistance will end when Portugese colonialism ends. period.


Saying we made their lives hell doesn&#39;t hold much weight when their lives already were hell.

a typical dipshit.
not all "hells" are equal. some are more of a "hell" than the other. as I said, no people would chose the "good" fogrein domination over their own "opressieve" system/leader.
If I was a Chilein during Penochets times, I would defenatly favor Pinochet, no matter how opressive, over the forgien domination of, for instance, USSR, no matter how "good".
according to this crap, I can invade the US and say "we didn&#39;t do their life hell, it was already hell under capitalism". but of course, the life of Americans would STILL be MUCH better under their OWN opressive system, rathern than the "good" forgien domination.
the Taliban system was bad, US foreign domination is worse. too complicated for your 5 yrs old mind?

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 12:32 am
The deal is, and always has been, if you attack, you get attacked. Now it so happens that a painful consequence of this is that civilians die in the process, but ultimately, that&#39;s bound to happen because if we don&#39;t stop terrorism, they&#39;ll continue killing civilians at the fastest pace they can manage. And who wants that?
This is the same logic that can be used to justify september the eleventh. No doubt they told themselves, maybe even believed, that they were making a justified strike back against America.

And of course that brought the conflict to a close didn&#39;t it? An attack on America was all it took for America to decide not to fight any more :lol: If that sounds absurd, it should do. Attacking people won&#39;t stop them fighting any more than september the eleventh stopped America from fighting
The choice is either kill civilians now and stop religious fundemanalist terror, or allow them to kill civilians later.Killing civilians to stop religious fundamentalism strikes me as somewhat akin to trying to put out a fire by pouring petrol on it.

Not on the Wests.

The invasion of Afghanistan had broad Western approval.If by "The West" you mean western governments then no I am not. I am on the side of the working people all over the world. I believe someone killed in NEw York and somebody killed in Kabul over this horrendous geo-political conflict is equally tragic and equally wrong. You would do well to consider that too.
Oh, I&#39;d love for you to explain to me how Britain&#39;s transgressions in the regions justify 9/11. I&#39;m dying to hear that explanation.

And really, most of the people who took part in 9/11 weren&#39;t even Afghani. Bin Laden is Saudi, most of the hijackers were Saudi.

Hell, we even HELPED them fend off the Soviets. I guess that makes us anti-Imperialists then, huh?Your determination to ignore what I wrote and engage in ridiculous straw men does not befit you. I bring up Britain&#39;s transgressions of the nineteenth century because you asked me to take it up with who starteed the conflict in Afghanistan. Of course it may have started earlier than that. I am not entirely sure. Does Britain&#39;s actions back then justify septemebr the eleventh? Of course it doesn&#39;t. Does Britain take blame for it? That would be absurd. And that is the point. If you are going to play the playground game of blaming the person who started it you are going to have to go back a long long time. Maybe it is time for leaders on both sides to try taking responsibility for their behaviour for a change rather than blaming their actions on the other side and saying it was just retaliation. Maybe hell will freeze over.

And of course you bring up the fact that most people involved in attacking America weren&#39;t even Afghani, well yeah, which puts your assertion that Afghanistan deserved to be attacked on thin ice. It was very tied to Afghanistan though, Al Quaeda has the capacity to do this kind of thing because of what happened in the eighties. Yet another reason I believe what has happened there to be utterly tragic.

Now if we are going to look at Bin Laden seperately from Afghanistan, which we can, because he is not really a product of it, can we blame him for 9/11? Of course we can. It is his fault. Or rather it is Al Quaeda&#39;s fault, and him being in charge puts a lot of the blame on him. Did he do it for no reason? Of course not, but that doesn&#39;t jsutify it. Some of what he was responding to was pretty horrific in of itself, but we don&#39;t run around saying 9/11 is all okay because of that. So it would be the height of double standards to say that 9/11 then justified Afghanistan (or alternatively to say that 9/11 was justified but the invasion of Afghanistan not).

Also I suppose for the record I should point out that there was another motivation involved in 9/11. Bin Laden apparently made quite a lot of money through short selling stock in airline companies. Nice. Oh and for the sake of symmitry, America was hoping for an iol pipeline through Afghanistan.

How I love capitalism.

[RGacky3]

No civilian deaths justify any others, but this was a preventive measure (or at least it was supposed to be.)

How could you rightly allow Al Qaeda, which had just attacked over 3,000 innocents, to continue attacking unabated?

What if they killed 30,000 people, or 300,000? Then, please, pretty please, could we stop them?

The deal is, and always has been, if you attack, you get attacked. Now it so happens that a painful consequence of this is that civilians die in the process, but ultimately, that&#39;s bound to happen because if we don&#39;t stop terrorism, they&#39;ll continue killing civilians at the fastest pace they can manage. And who wants that?

The choice is either kill civilians now and stop religious fundemanalist terror, or allow them to kill civilians later.

Turn the tables a little, the United States and regiems and organisations it has supported, how many have been killed by those, death squads, starvation caused by governments subservience to the united states, united states backed dictators killing people, initiating anti-communist witch hunts, assasinations, coups, out and out bombings, invasions, and so on and so forth, Al Qaeda has a bad reputation, but the United States government does much better, how can one allow what the United states has done to continue unabated.

Every one talks about stopping terrorism, first thing to do is stop practising it, second stop the conditions for it, i.e. imperialism (Al Qaeda&#39;s goal was to take the Americans out of The holy land, the military and the such). Thats how you stop terrorism, the reason we are hated is because we step on and steal from their countries. Even if the United States killed all the "terrorists" terrorism would still continue because the United States practises it.

[Publius]

a typical dipshit.

Wrong way to start off a post, jackass.



not all "hells" are equal. some are more of a "hell" than the other. as I said, no people would chose the "good" fogrein domination over their own "opressieve" system/leader.

I like how put quotes around "oppressive", as if you take issue with the use of the word when applied to the Taliban.

You probably do, because you&#39;re probably just that fucking stupid.



If I was a Chilein during Penochets times, I would defenatly favor Pinochet, no matter how opressive, over the forgien domination of, for instance, USSR, no matter how "good".

Would you now?

I guess this means you prefer Pinochet&#39;s Chile to Castro&#39;s Cuba, which was very obviously "dominated" by the USSR, the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, was not Fidel&#39;s idea.

So what you&#39;re telling me is that you prefer Pinochet&#39;s Chile to Castro&#39;s Cuba, which makes you less of a leftist than me.

Well, I take the opposing view. If I lived in, say Fascist Italy, or Nazi Germany, I would have been praying for "foreign domination", wouldn&#39;t you? If I were woman and had to live as a second class citizen in Afghanistan, I would be praying for "foreign influence", wouldn&#39;t you? You can&#39;t possibly mean that you would prefer to live under Nazi Germany than US-Occupied Germany? And yet that&#39;s exactly what you just told me, in so many words. God damn, that&#39;s fucking stupid.

My point remains: war is a better alternative than some fates. There are some fates worse than death.



according to this crap, I can invade the US and say "we didn&#39;t do their life hell, it was already hell under capitalism".

Interestingly enough, the logical conclusion of this point seems to rule out even Communist revolution.

He&#39;s saying that the fact that the current quality of life is low is no justification to unleash violence on a country as a means to change it. But of course that&#39;s exactly what a revolution does. Ouch, ensnared. And badly.



but of course, the life of Americans would STILL be MUCH better under their OWN opressive system, rathern than the "good" forgien domination.

Yeah, please tell me how the lives of the women of Afghanistan would be better under a theocratic regime like the Taliban?



the Taliban system was bad, US foreign domination is worse.

One, you can&#39;t demonstrate this.

Two, it&#39;s actually irrelevent; the mere fact that the Taliban is a regime that cannot be suffered to live due to its support of terror is a fact enough to warrant its destruction.

Three, this seems pointlessly subjective.



too complicated for your 5 yrs old mind?

No, not since I had perfect understanding of your post.

[Publius]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 01:14 am






This is the same logic that can be used to justify september the eleventh. No doubt they told themselves, maybe even believed, that they were making a justified strike back against America.

I&#39;m sure they did. And I&#39;m sure that almost anyone who&#39;s engaged in any war, right or wrong, has thought themselves morally superior.



And of course that brought the conflict to a close didn&#39;t it? An attack on America was all it took for America to decide not to fight any more :lol: If that sounds absurd, it should do. Attacking people won&#39;t stop them fighting any more than september the eleventh stopped America from fighting

No, but killing them will, and if there&#39;s one thing the US is good at, it&#39;s killing people.

We didn&#39;t fly over there to have a chat about geopoltics.



Killing civilians to stop religious fundamentalism strikes me as somewhat akin to trying to put out a fire by pouring petrol on it.

We&#39;re not killing them to stop it, they&#39;re just dying as a result of the fighting, which ultimately comes back to the terrorists.



If by "The West" you mean western governments then no I am not. I am on the side of the working people all over the world. I believe someone killed in NEw York and somebody killed in Kabul over this horrendous geo-political conflict is equally tragic and equally wrong. You would do well to consider that too.

I do. That&#39;s why I think it unconscionable that 3000 deaths should just be ignored.



Your determination to ignore what I wrote and engage in ridiculous straw men does not befit you. I bring up Britain&#39;s transgressions of the nineteenth century because you asked me to take it up with who starteed the conflict in Afghanistan.

It wasn&#39;t Britain.


Of course it may have started earlier than that. I am not entirely sure.

Well, we can go back to Darius if you want, but it doesn&#39;t change anything.


Does Britain&#39;s actions back then justify septemebr the eleventh? Of course it doesn&#39;t. Does Britain take blame for it? That would be absurd. And that is the point. If you are going to play the playground game of blaming the person who started it you are going to have to go back a long long time.

Who do you blame for September 11th?



Maybe it is time for leaders on both sides to try taking responsibility for their behaviour for a change rather than blaming their actions on the other side and saying it was just retaliation. Maybe hell will freeze over.

This is so ridiculous I can hardly even put it into words.

You want Osama bin Laden, who INTENDS TO KILL CIVILIANS AS A STATED GOAL, to "take responsibility" for killing civilians? He already has&#33; He brags about it&#33; He&#39;s proud of the fact that his group is killing civilians. That is the enemy in this situation.



And of course you bring up the fact that most people involved in attacking America weren&#39;t even Afghani, well yeah, which puts your assertion that Afghanistan deserved to be attacked on thin ice.

No it doesn&#39;t.

Afghanistan was harboring them, indeed aiding them. We actually put forth an offer to the Taliban to hand over Osama and his organization in order to prevent an invasion. They refused.

This entire could have been avoided had the just handed him over or allowed us to capture him.

But they wouldn&#39;t allow it.



It was very tied to Afghanistan though, Al Quaeda has the capacity to do this kind of thing because of what happened in the eighties. Yet another reason I believe what has happened there to be utterly tragic.


Blame the Soviets. Why didn&#39;t they attack Russia?



Now if we are going to look at Bin Laden seperately from Afghanistan, which we can, because he is not really a product of it, can we blame him for 9/11? Of course we can. It is his fault. Or rather it is Al Quaeda&#39;s fault, and him being in charge puts a lot of the blame on him. Did he do it for no reason? Of course not, but that doesn&#39;t jsutify it. Some of what he was responding to was pretty horrific in of itself, but we don&#39;t run around saying 9/11 is all okay because of that. So it would be the height of double standards to say that 9/11 then justified Afghanistan (or alternatively to say that 9/11 was justified but the invasion of Afghanistan not).

Nothing justified or could have justified an unprovoked attack on a civilian target.

But some did justify invading a country that harbored the gangsters who carried out that attack.

There&#39;s an obvious difference here.



Also I suppose for the record I should point out that there was another motivation involved in 9/11. Bin Laden apparently made quite a lot of money through short selling stock in airline companies. Nice. Oh and for the sake of symmitry, America was hoping for an iol pipeline through Afghanistan.

How I love capitalism.

Life is funny like that.

[Publius]

Turn the tables a little, the United States and regiems and organisations it has supported, how many have been killed by those, death squads, starvation caused by governments subservience to the united states, united states backed dictators killing people, initiating anti-communist witch hunts, assasinations, coups, out and out bombings, invasions, and so on and so forth, Al Qaeda has a bad reputation, but the United States government does much better, how can one allow what the United states has done to continue unabated.

These are all fair points, but again, none of it justifies a 9/11, just as 9/11 did not justify, say, invading Iraq.

Or the USS Cole did not justify bombing the Pharma plant in Sudan (I think I got those details right.)



Every one talks about stopping terrorism, first thing to do is stop practising it,

I fully agree.


second stop the conditions for it, i.e. imperialism (Al Qaeda&#39;s goal was to take the Americans out of The holy land, the military and the such).

Yes, and we see how well they went about acheiving THAT goal.


Thats how you stop terrorism, the reason we are hated is because we step on and steal from their countries. Even if the United States killed all the "terrorists" terrorism would still continue because the United States practises it.

Can&#39;t disagree.

[RNK]

He&#39;s saying that the fact that the current quality of life is low is no justification to unleash violence on a country as a means to change it. But of course that&#39;s exactly what a revolution does. Ouch, ensnared. And badly.

No. he&#39;s saying that the current quality of life is no justification for a foreign imperialist power to unleash violence on another country, slick.


Yeah, please tell me how the lives of the women of Afghanistan would be better under a theocratic regime like the Taliban?

Only a right-wing idiot would say (and probably believe) that leftists are "pro-Taliban". The reason "we" are against the invasion of Afghanistan is not because we like to see women covered in hijabs. It is because the invasion was not a liberation; it was a death sentence. Unless you honestly expect us to believe that the United States enjoys liberating people from oppression, and that that was it&#39;s only aim. Just like when it liberated Somalia, or Rwanda, or Palestine, or Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, or Nepal.. oh wait, those last three are US Allies. Can&#39;t liberate an ally I suppose...


One, you can&#39;t demonstrate this.

Two, it&#39;s actually irrelevent; the mere fact that the Taliban is a regime that cannot be suffered to live due to its support of terror is a fact enough to warrant its destruction.

One, yes, we can:

Pre-Revolutionary Iran
Pre-Revolutionary Cuba
Chile
Nicaragua
The Congo
Nepal
Uzbekistan
Kazakhstan
Russia
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Afghanistan

Two, considering the US created Al Qaeda; supported Pinochet and Saddam; currently props up the dictatorships in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan; and, last but certainly not least, obliterated Iraq... I&#39;d say that the US should be the first in line when it comes to regimes deserving of destruction.

[Revolution Until Victory]

Wrong way to start off a post, jackass.

not with an idiot like you though


I like how put quotes around "oppressive", as if you take issue with the use of the word when applied to the Taliban.

You probably do, because you&#39;re probably just that fucking stupid.

I meant many times when there are basless allegations by the colonizer and imperialist against the governemnt of the targeted people. I wasn&#39;t necessarly talking of the Taliban.


I guess this means you prefer Pinochet&#39;s Chile to Castro&#39;s Cuba, which was very obviously "dominated" by the USSR, the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, was not Fidel&#39;s idea.

that got nothing to do with this. I (and anyone for that matter) would prefer Pinochets Chile over US or Cuban occupied and invaded Chile. the "domination" you are talking about is a total different issue.


So what you&#39;re telling me is that you prefer Pinochet&#39;s Chile to Castro&#39;s Cuba, which makes you less of a leftist than me.

no I didn&#39;t. your just an utter r-tard who can&#39;t even draw a legitamite anology.


Well, I take the opposing view. If I lived in, say Fascist Italy, or Nazi Germany, I would have been praying for "foreign domination", wouldn&#39;t you?

again, that&#39;s a different issue. Nazi Germany and Facist Italy were opressive in a massive scale. they were an exeption.


Interestingly enough, the logical conclusion of this point seems to rule out even Communist revolution.

1- don&#39;t change the subject and ignore the point

2- Communist Revolution got NOTHING to do with "communist" states invading other people and occupying them.


He&#39;s saying that the fact that the current quality of life is low is no justification to unleash violence on a country as a means to change it. But of course that&#39;s exactly what a revolution does. Ouch, ensnared. And badly.

again, what would I expect from a sack of shit like you??
that&#39;s got nothing to do with what I said. the fact that the captialist system in some country is oppresive doesn&#39;t give any state the right to invade this country and occupy it.


Yeah, please tell me how the lives of the women of Afghanistan would be better under a theocratic regime like the Taliban?

as Gandhi said, the life of ALL people would be better under thier own government, no matter how "opressive&#39; than the "good" government of the forgien domination.
now, both the Afghan women and men are under US-European domination. they lack independece (from frogien powers) and the right to determine thier future (as a people as a whole against forgien imperialists). the problems they were facing before were between their own people. that&#39;s simply a natural feeling shared by all people across the globe. the Afghan women got the right to fight for thier rights by themselves. nothing is worse than loosing freedom of ones homeland. As I said, I&#39;m sure no American would want to live under Chinese occupation instead of Bush whom he/she happnes to can&#39;t even stand.


One, you can&#39;t demonstrate this

one, it&#39;s common sense and natural that forgien imperial domination is worse than your own "opressive" governemnt.

I know of Afghani men and women who clearly preffer Taliban over US forgien domination. I might also say, even though I didn&#39;t hear their opnion, that all of the Afghani people would prefer the Taliban over forgien imperial domination. Both cases was Hell. But under taliban, the people got thier national freedom (freedom of thier homeland). now, under US occupation, thier homeland is occupied, which is worse than being opressed by your own people. no matter how much you denie it, YOU and all Americans would preffer Bush (no matter how they hate him) over Chinese or any other forgien occupation. Opression by your own people exists in all societies across the world all of the timie. it&#39;s even natural. foreing imperailist domination threatens a more important thing: your homeland.


Two, it&#39;s actually irrelevent; the mere fact that the Taliban is a regime that cannot be suffered to live due to its support of terror is a fact enough to warrant its destruction.

again, that got nothing to do with the issue.

[Le People]

I&#39;ve only one question for the moron who started this thread; are you a member of the United States military? If you are, and you are in fact going to Iraq soon, then I can at least respect your positon from the standpoint that at least you are willing to stick your neck out to maintain. If not, then you are a jackass for toting a rhetoric you refuse to actively backup. Either way, you are a fucking dumbass in the majority of the world&#39;s eyes.

[freedumb]

As the war in Iraq drags on past its fourth year

There is no war in Iraq, there is a conflict between foreign occupiers and an indigenous resistance movement. The US is not so much fighting a war as defending it&#39;s presence in a foreign country.

As such, &#39;victory&#39; can only be achieved by coercing the Iraqi population into accepting the US prescence in their own country. Given that the majority of Iraqis would prefer the US to fully withdraw, the US has no choice but to enforce it&#39;s presence with military power, not the consent of the population.


U.S troops are dieing at a rate of 2.5 per day and 3,616 have been killed in Iraq as of today.

Symptomatic of the colonial mentality, that it&#39;s these figures you find most concerning. US troops will continue to die, so long as bigwigs in Washington see fit to keep them there, as nothing will change the fact that US troops in Iraq are occupiers, and therefore legitimate targets for the resistance. The real victims in this criminal invasion and occupation are Iraqi men, women and children, of whom tens of thousands, possibly more, have died since the invasion.


In the 1980’s the South Africans utilized Namibian collaborators and elite South African ‘Koevet’ (special forces teams) to extinguish the SWAPO insurgency fighting for independence and retain Apartheid rule. In 1994 a South African defense firm, Executive Outcomes, was contracted by the government of Sierra Leone to defeat the powerful Revolutionary United Front insurgency that neither government troops or soon to be UN blue helmets could stop. Within a few months the firm suppressed the insurgency utilizing superior air power, and small elite soldier units.

The question is not whether suppressing an insurgency (or resistance) is possible, but whether it is desirable, or humane to do so. If you believe it is desirable that the Iraqi resistance be crushed, then you are saying a few things:

- The Iraqis should not have the right to self-determination
- You are willing to support efforts to violently quell an indigenous resistance, actions that will result in the deaths of many more thousands of people.

And we should know what happens with &#39;small elite soldier units&#39;. Usually people are too psychologically crippled to contemplate resistance after they have just seen a family member tortured to death in front of their eyes. Nicaragua, El Salvador, anyone?


The choice belongs to the American people. We can choose to succumb to the wishes of our enemies in Iraq and set a deadline for withdrawal, and then proceed to withdraw. We can take the easy way out, the way we took out in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia.

Are you serious? The primary &#39;wishes&#39; of your enemy in Iraq is that you get out and stay out so they can manage their own affairs. If the US govt did choose to withdraw it would be acting in the interests of both the US citizens (less dead soldiers, and less danger of a terrorist attack) and Iraqi citizens (who want the US out, for their own reasons).

It would be nice to remember that the US only &#39;withdrew&#39; from Vietnam once it had economically and environmentally destroyed most of Indochina, leaving 2-3 million dead Vietnamese in it&#39;s wake. Does this matter to you? You should never have been in Vietnam, and the same goes with Iraq.


By hanging our Iraqi allies on a cross and retreating to the seclusion of our borders so that we can whine and complain about how wrong the war was and how we can focus on boring issues negligible by comparison such as gay marriage, health care, and tax rates.

Oh, don&#39;t worry about hanging Iraqis on a cross, you have done that already, with a shocking regularity. The Iraqis want you out, polls have shown this. The fact is, you&#39;re fellow citizens who whine and complain about how wrong the Iraq &#39;war&#39; is are absolutely correct. It was and is wrong, inhumane, murderous, criminal and unjustified on any humane criteria.


After all why should we Christian Americans give a **** about what happens to poverty stricken, isolated, and embattled Muslims half a world away? Who are we to finish what was indeed a noble cause in removing one of humanity&#39;s most barbarous murderers, Saddam Hussein?

Don&#39;t make me vomit.

Many Americans didn&#39;t give a fuck about muslims half a world away, which is why they went along with the invasion in the first place. Now that their own Christian, white brothers and sisters are coming home in bodybags they are starting to complain, with some honourable exceptions. The US never has given a fu*k about anybody else, which is why it backed and armed dictators like Saddam in the first place.

Saddam was no longer compliant to US interests, so he had to go. Simple as that. And fuck however many Iraqi civilians die in the proccess. Don&#39;t trot out the noble intentions line because it has no credibility, it&#39;s a slap in the face to reality.


If hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered and a wider Middle Eastern War begins it matters not to us, because we are unaffected by it and can still watch the results through the sensationalized lens of our own media. Unfortunately this is the attitude prevalent in America now, and will ultimately dictate our feelings should a wider conflict emerge in the absence of American troops.

Again, don&#39;t pretend that the interests behind US foreign policy care that hundreds of thousands of people die. Because history shows they don&#39;t. 500 000 Iraqi children died from the sanctions, and it&#39;s like so what.

How do you know that a complete US withdrawal will result in violence? It&#39;s pretty condescending to suggest Iraqis cannot handle their own affairs without a sword hanging over the heads. Without intreference, Iraqis might choose to nationalise their oil, and do many other things hostile to US interests. This is why the US will never refrain from interfereing, even in the event that they leave.


Far be it for the lonely third of Americans to suggest that we not leave, but change tactics, for if they do suggest such things they are shrugged off as ‘out of touch with public opinion’ by politicians, ‘delusional’ by liberals, and ‘imperialists’ by those further to the left.

In any debate as to whether the US should withdraw, it is of only secondary concern what US citizens think. What is most important is what Iraqis think. They would like you to leave, now.


This nation can bow to the demands of murderous terrorists, our can bind itself to achieving the victory vital to the well being of Iraq and democracy at large.

You can bow to the demands of the Iraqi people too, if you prefer, and leave. Or are they murderous terrorists? Is anyone who opposes the occupation a &#39;murderous terrorist&#39;.

This invasion was waged in the interests of US Capital, not the general population. When you say &#39;victory&#39;, you mean a compliant Iraqi population and control over the oilfields, which is only &#39;vital&#39; to the &#39;well-being&#39; of military-contractors and oil companies.

And FFS, a murderous occupation does not serve &#39;democracy at large&#39; in any way shape or form. The invasion was &#39;undemocratic&#39;, as is the occupation.

This is intellectual claptrap. A poor attempt to justify the unjustifiable. Your musings, if applied, have very real consequences for very real people. If you are so enarmoured to the cause of the occupation then do the honbourable thing and put your life on the line, instead of somebody else&#39;s, for what you believe in.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 03:18 am

No, but killing them will, and if there&#39;s one thing the US is good at, it&#39;s killing people.

We didn&#39;t fly over there to have a chat about geopoltics.

Because of course killing them will stop their friends and families from wanting to retaliate. Just like killing those people on 9/11 had Americs giving up on ever fighting back
We&#39;re not killing them to stop it, they&#39;re just dying as a result of the fighting, which ultimately comes back to the terrorists.Because of course the terrorists bear sole responsibility. Remind me, who invaded Afghanistan, knowing full well what would happen to the civilians there?

I do. That&#39;s why I think it unconscionable that 3000 deaths should just be ignored.It is an unfortunate outlook to claim that anything other than killing more people is ignoring deaths.

At any rate though, let&#39;s presume that it is necessary to retalliate for people being killed like that. In that case what is the appropriate retaliation America should suffer for what it has done in Iraq?

This is a deeply unhelpful attitude
Who do you blame for September 11th? A whole host of groups. Bin Laden and his organisation for committing it. America for allowing the group to reach that kind of strength not to mention all it has done to the middle east, The Soviet Union for really sparking this latest round of the Afghan tragedy in the eighties. The various lines of Afghan Governments who have allowed this to go on and acomodated Al Quaeda, Pakistan for its interference in Afghanistan and backing the worst of these groups. I could go on forever.
This is so ridiculous I can hardly even put it into words.

You want Osama bin Laden, who INTENDS TO KILL CIVILIANS AS A STATED GOAL, to "take responsibility" for killing civilians? He already has&#33; He brags about it&#33; He&#39;s proud of the fact that his group is killing civilians. That is the enemy in this situation.Bin Laden takes responsibility? I do not recall him flying to The Hague and turning himself in. That is taking responsibility to me.

At any rate, Bin laden is not a cartoon super villain. His actual goal is probably to make money, but his stated goal is to attack the west and particularly America in retaliation as he sees it for the various ills AMerica has inflicted o the Muslim world. He believes AMerica takes responsibility for things like 9/11. That he was simply retaliating. That is not taking responsibility. Similarly America&#39;s position that it was simply retaliating in Afghanistan is not taking responsibility either. At best it is making things worse in an effort to being seen to "do something" when there are no good options. At worst it is an atrocity on a greater level than 9/11, with the blame being shifted to others.
No it doesn&#39;t.

Afghanistan was harboring them, indeed aiding them. We actually put forth an offer to the Taliban to hand over Osama and his organization in order to prevent an invasion. They refused.

This entire could have been avoided had the just handed him over or allowed us to capture him.

But they wouldn&#39;t allow it. Because of course Afghanistan had to do exactly as America said. The ultimatum ws made knowing they would refuse. Indeed hoping they would refuse.

Let&#39;s piut it in another perspective. Does the fact America refuses to hand Kissenger over to Spain (who want him for conspiring to kill Spanish civilians in operation Condor) mean that Spain would be justified in attacking America? It amounts to much the same thing
Blame the Soviets. Why didn&#39;t they attack Russia?
They spent most of the eighties fghtingwith The Soviets. The reason they don&#39;t attack Russia now (too often) is that the Soviet Union is gone and they believe that to be God&#39;s punishment.
Nothing justified or could have justified an unprovoked attack on a civilian target.
What precisely do we mean by unprovoked. If we look at 9/11 as an attack on American (and foreign) civilians then it was certainly unprovoked. If we look at it as a generic attack on America it was provoked (though still unjustified), I obviously look at it as an attack on civilians, just as I look at the attack on Afghanistan as an attack on Civilians. The civilians there never provoked any attack. No more than the people killed in 9/11

[Dr Mindbender]

Originally posted by Demogorgo
A whole host of groups. Bin Laden and his organisation for committing it. America for allowing the group to reach that kind of strength not to mention all it has done to the middle east, The Soviet Union for really sparking this latest round of the Afghan tragedy in the eighties. The various lines of Afghan Governments who have allowed this to go on and acomodated Al Quaeda, Pakistan for its interference in Afghanistan and backing the worst of these groups. I could go on forever.
Personally i thought the main pre-cursor for 9/11 was the USA in its unflinching support for Israel.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by Ulster Socialist+July 18, 2007 11:00 am--> (Ulster Socialist @ July 18, 2007 11:00 am)
Demogorgo
A whole host of groups. Bin Laden and his organisation for committing it. America for allowing the group to reach that kind of strength not to mention all it has done to the middle east, The Soviet Union for really sparking this latest round of the Afghan tragedy in the eighties. The various lines of Afghan Governments who have allowed this to go on and acomodated Al Quaeda, Pakistan for its interference in Afghanistan and backing the worst of these groups. I could go on forever.
Personally i thought the main pre-cursor for 9/11 was the USA in its unflinching support for Israel. [/b]
Yeah, that too. And the first gulf war. There is a whole host of stuff at play there.

[Intifada]

If attacking a country which hosts people who attacked the United States is legitimate, then it is also legitimate for Sudan, Cuba, Iran, Palestinians and a whole host of other countries to attack the United States in a similar fashion.

9/11 was simply the response to US complicity in the murder of many innocent Muslims from Iraq to Occupied Palestine.

The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have created a generation of people who will grow up hating America.

[Publius]

that got nothing to do with this. I (and anyone for that matter) would prefer Pinochets Chile over US or Cuban occupied and invaded Chile. the "domination" you are talking about is a total different issue.


Please remember Victor Jara /
in the Santiago Stadium

This is really rich because the US backed Pinochet.



no I didn&#39;t. your just an utter r-tard who can&#39;t even draw a legitamite anology.

Just because I&#39;m quick on the draw with the reduction ad absurdum doesn&#39;t mean you have to hate me for it.



again, that&#39;s a different issue.

No it isn&#39;t.


Nazi Germany and Facist Italy were opressive in a massive scale. they were an exeption.

So what you&#39;re telling me is that local oppression is better than foreign control, except in the cases when it isn&#39;t.

What a brilliant deduction on your part.



1- don&#39;t change the subject and ignore the point

Drawing a logical conclusion from your premises is not "ignoring the point."



2- Communist Revolution got NOTHING to do with "communist" states invading other people and occupying them.

Quite right.



again, what would I expect from a sack of shit like you??
that&#39;s got nothing to do with what I said. the fact that the captialist system in some country is oppresive doesn&#39;t give any state the right to invade this country and occupy it.

Maybe. But that&#39;s beside the point, because the government of Afghanistan could have prevented the war had they not harbored terrorists.



as Gandhi said, the life of ALL people would be better under thier own government, no matter how "opressive&#39; than the "good" government of the forgien domination.

Yeah, well Gandhi wasn&#39;t a woman living under the Taliban.

Gandhi wasn&#39;t a Jew in Nazi Germany.



now, both the Afghan women and men are under US-European domination.

Most of the country isn&#39;t even CONTROLLED by the US anymore, it&#39;s controlled by various tribal warlords.

But please, do tell me, how have the US troops been subjugating Afghan citizens recently?



they lack independece (from frogien powers) and the right to determine thier future (as a people as a whole against forgien imperialists).

So what you&#39;re telling me now is that an unDemocratic theocracy is really more democratic than a democratic country, like Afghanistan is now.

That&#39;s rich.


the problems they were facing before were between their own people. that&#39;s simply a natural feeling shared by all people across the globe. the Afghan women got the right to fight for thier rights by themselves.

:lol:

You are so full shit that it borders on ridiculous.

Do you know what happened to women under the Taliban when they disobeyed?



nothing is worse than loosing freedom of ones homeland.

They never had freedom under the Taliban. What is so hard to understand about that?


As I said, I&#39;um sure no American wold want to live under Chinese occupation instead of Bush whom he/she happnes to can&#39;t even stand.

If Chinese occupation were better, then I would no problem at all living under it.



one, it&#39;s common sense and natural that forgien imperial domination is worse than your own "opressive" governemnt.

Don&#39;t demonstrate this or anything.



I know of Afghani men and women who clearly preffer Taliban over US forgien domination.

Yeah, so do I. And I now of people who preferred Nazi Germany to free Germany. I guess that means we never should have occupied Germany. Oh, I forgot, that&#39;s an exception, because it&#39;s a case that makes your idiotic rule look ridiculous.

"Any case that makes me look like a dumbass is automatically an exception."



I might also say, even though I didn&#39;t hear their opnion, that all of the Afghani people would prefer the Taliban over forgien imperial domination.

I have no idea how active the US is anymore in controlling the government of Afghanistan. Do you?


Both cases was Hell. But under taliban, the people got thier national freedom (freedom of thier homeland).

There&#39;s no such thing as "freedom of their homeland." First of all, that&#39;s nationalism, something you&#39;re supposed to be opposed to. Second, they have that now, because we haven&#39;t split up their country.



now, under US occupation, thier homeland is occupied, which is worse than being opressed by your own people.

Just go on, keep stating that over and over again without demonstrating it.


no matter how much you denie it, YOU and all Americans would preffer Bush (no matter how they hate him) over Chinese or any other forgien occupation.

No, I wouldn&#39;t. If the Chinese occupation resulted in a better quality of life than Bush administration, I would perfectly happy with it.


Opression by your own people exists in all societies across the world all of the timie. it&#39;s even natural.

Do you even know what you&#39;re arguing anymore?


foreing imperailist domination threatens a more important thing: your homeland.

Newsflash: there&#39;s no such thing as a "homeland." That&#39;s nationalist nonsense, propaganda that every single internationalist and leftist should rightfully denounce. Nationalism is a disease and you seem to think it&#39;s a virtue. And you call yourself a leftist? I&#39;m more leftist than you are, at least I can figure out how wrong nationalism is.

I never thought I&#39;d see the day where a leftist was lecturing me on how much better Afghanistan was under a nationalist, theocratic regime compared to a democratic one.

[Revolution Until Victory]

So what you&#39;re telling me is that local oppression is better than foreign control, except in the cases when it isn&#39;t.

What a brilliant deduction on your part.

no, what I&#39;m telling you is that what Gandhi said doesn&#39;t apply to the case of Nazi Germany. the genocide of the Nazis was the first mass-slaughter at an industilalized scale. nearly half of the entire European jewish population was exterminated. few other cases, if any, can come close to such opressivness. I defenatly knew you would use the example of Nazi Germany.


Yeah, well Gandhi wasn&#39;t a woman living under the Taliban.

Gandhi wasn&#39;t a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Gandhi is simply drawing a philisophical conclusion. Besides, he was an Indian in British colonized India.


Most of the country isn&#39;t even CONTROLLED by the US anymore, it&#39;s controlled by various tribal warlords.

But please, do tell me, how have the US troops been subjugating Afghan citizens recently?

lol, the US and its allies are occupying Afghanistan. fortunatly, they are not able to fully control it.

and what kind of stupid question is that? "how US troops are subjecating Afghan citezens"??
doesn&#39;t occupation seem enough for you? not to mention the murder of innocnet Afghani women and children.


So what you&#39;re telling me now is that an unDemocratic theocracy is really more democratic than a democratic country, like Afghanistan is now.

That&#39;s rich.

again, what would I expect from an idiot?

first of all, Afghanistan isn&#39;t a democracy

second of all, the people are under forgien imperialist occupation. they defenatly weren&#39;t during the times of the Taliban.


You are so full shit that it borders on ridiculous.

Do you know what happened to women under the Taliban when they disobeyed?

unbelievable. all people got the right to fight for thier freedom by themselves. no state in the world got the right to invade them "in order to free them".


They never had freedom under the Taliban. What is so hard to understand about that?

as individuals, they didn&#39;t have the freedom to say, dress, watch tv, and some other individual issues. now, the Afghani people as a whole, are being occupied by US imperialists. what is so hard to understand about that?


If Chinese occupation were better, then I would no problem at all living under it.

bullshit


Don&#39;t demonstrate this or anything.

I said its a matter of common sense. As Gandhi put it, no people would "feel happier" under the "good" forgien rule, rather than their own "bad" governemnt.


Oh, I forgot, that&#39;s an exception, because it&#39;s a case that makes your idiotic rule look ridiculous.

"Any case that makes me look like a dumbass is automatically an exception."

Pathetic.

Every rule got its exceptions. genocidal regiem of Hitler can&#39;t almost be compared to any other.


There&#39;s no such thing as "freedom of their homeland." First of all, that&#39;s nationalism, something you&#39;re supposed to be opposed to. Second, they have that now, because we haven&#39;t split up their country.

yes, there is "freedom of thier homeland", according to the world we live in now, the temproray stage.
I&#39;m opposed to nationalism, but that doesn&#39;t mean I would suppor the invasion by imperialists of other countries and nations.
and no, their homeland isn&#39;t free.


Just go on, keep stating that over and over again without demonstrating it.

it&#39;s impposible to know what the people as a whole really feel or want, but as I said, it&#39;s a matter of common sense. it&#39;s natural.
one way this could be demonstrated is through the socres of times when the people would chose thier own "oppresive" government, over the "good" governance of the imperialist invaders.


No, I wouldn&#39;t. If the Chinese occupation resulted in a better quality of life than Bush administration, I would perfectly happy with it.

total bullshit.


Do you even know what you&#39;re arguing anymore?

way to ignore my point.


Newsflash: there&#39;s no such thing as a "homeland."

Newsflash: there is such a thing as a "homeland": 1- according to the non-perfect world we live in, 2- according to how millions of people around the world probably view the issue.


Nationalism is a disease and you seem to think it&#39;s a virtue

lol


And you call yourself a leftist? I&#39;m more leftist than you are, at least I can figure out how wrong nationalism is.

I wasn&#39;t giving my opnion of nationalism. I was simply stating the facts: how our world operates today and how millions of occupied people probably feel toward thier homeland. Huge difference between the two.


I never thought I&#39;d see the day where a leftist was lecturing me on how much better Afghanistan was under a nationalist, theocratic regime compared to a democratic one.

the regime in Afghanistan today isn&#39;t "democratic". no "democracy" under imperialist occupation.

[Capitalist Lawyer]

No, both times.

What would have been the most appropriate response to 9/11? Diplomacy? We tried that, but the Taliban refused to give up bin Laden.

(Feel free to argue that we deserved it. It won&#39;t offend me.)


Yes, it certainly was.

I thought our ruling class already had a mainstay on the global stage? The USA has been the supreme super power since the 1940s. Was this really necessary?

Fighting wars doesn&#39;t come cheap.


Don&#39;t be a condescending ****.

Dobbuh dooo.

[Dr Mindbender]

Originally posted by Capitalist Lawyer
What would have been the most appropriate response to 9/11? Diplomacy? We tried that, but the Taliban refused to give up bin Laden.

(Feel free to argue that we deserved it. It won&#39;t offend me.)
The &#39;appropriate response&#39; to 9/11 isnt the debate. What the revlefters are saying, had it not been for USA support for Israel, and other abominations like the assault on Libya and the Gulf war 1 its arguable, if not unlikely that 9/11 would ever have taken place.

[RNK]

Also, if the US hadn&#39;t unquestioningly supported places like Saudi Arabia and it&#39;s royal family (and aristocrats), and had infact stopped their corrupt and authoritative rule (which it claims to want to do around the world), then bin Laden certainly wouldn&#39;t have had the logistical resources to create al Q.

Frankly, the US government did deserve 9/11; unfortunately, the American people did not deserve it (hell, if bin Laden had sent all of the hijacked jets into the Pentagon, or some other strictly military or government target, I would support the action completely), and it&#39;s utterly shameful that most Americans give their unilateral support to the terrorist organism that created their misery in the first place.

The appropriate response to 9/11 would have been to find and kill bin Laden (which they seem to have refused to do) in an operation that would involve the least amount of innocent casualties as possible. Not send 150,000 US troops into Iraq in the largest act of aggression since the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Seriously, I still haven&#39;t been told what Iraq has to do with 9/11. Other than turn that entire country into one gigantic terrorist training camp where the next three or four generations of 9/11ers are going to pop their cherry.

[Glory to Bethune]

Rebellion against Amerikkka is justified. It is a basic matter of survival for nations like Iraq that are being attacked by the U&#036;.

9/11 is just one form of struggle by the oppressed against their Amerikkkan oppressor.
Ward Churchill was right to refer to the Amerikkkan administrators, stockbrokers, managers, and other labor aristocrats in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns." That is exactly what they were, and what Amerikkkans today are. Most Amerikkkans do not directly preside over the oppression of the Third World, but they tacitly support imperialism and certainly do nothing to oppose it. Why would they oppose imperialism? They BENEFIT from it through grossly inflated "wages" that are composed for the most part of superprofits stolen from the Third World. That&#39;s why we say that the U&#036; "working" class is part of the GLOBAL bourgeoisie.

[MarcX]

Originally posted by Revolution Until [email protected] 18, 2007 01:04 am


2- Gandhi once said "[No] people exists that would not think itself happier even under its own bad government than it might really be under the good governance of an alien power" (The Essential Gandhi P.116)
there is no people on this entire earth that would be happier under the "good" governance of an alien power rather than the "opressive" governance of its own people. no matter how "good" this alien power is. no matter how bad the X governemtn of a poeple is, it is still a thousand times better than the "good" governance of an alien Y power. this is common sense.
thus, no matter how bad, evil, and a child-eating monster Saddam was, the Iraqi people would be much happier under the governance of their OWN people, rather under the rule of a forgein imperialist power. No matter how much Americans hate Bush, they would STILL choose him over the forgien domination of say, China.
this argument, that we "got rid of Saddam for you", practicly gets the shit beaten out of every time its mentioned by a colonial apologist like yourself. No matter how bad Saddam was, the forgien domination of the US is a thousand times worse.
I&#39;m sure all Chielines during Penochet would defenatly still favor him, no matter how opressive, over the "good" forgien domination of the US, if it happned to invade Chile.

yeah im pretty sure the jews would have been happier under Hitler

[Labor Shall Rule]

It&#39;s not a matter of whether the invasion was justified, or a question of the atrocities or casualties; we do not have a moral code, though we are compelled to act or answer the former with how a military action is not justified whatsoever by moral principles. We oppose the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq because it sustains a social system; the oil transnationals have untapped resources in their hands through their securing of these markets, it also grants low-cost regions for industries to employ cheaper labor, therefore, it expands imperialist capital, and with that, more bribes can be thrown to union leadership and to white workers which decreases their militancy, and ultimately divides the working class by restricting the expansion of socialist consciousness. It furthers us from our objective.

But anyway, Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, was a lawyer that represented an oil firm that was interested in constructing a pipeline that would go from the Caspain Sea to the Indian Ocean, which would basically utilize the untapped resources there and give these transnationals access to the crude oil there. He was elected during a time in which he was accused of corruption, and the voter turnout, naturally, was low. Before the invasion, the United States was supporting the Taliban; the International Herald Tribunal reports that in the summer of 1998, "the Clinton administration was talking with the Taliban about potential pipeline routes to carry oil and natural gas out of Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean by crossing Afghanistan and Pakistan", and Peter Stobdan reported that "Afghanistan figures importantly in the context of American energy security politics. Unocal’s project to build oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan for the export of oil and gas to the Indian subcontinent, viewed as the most audacious gambit of the 1990s Central Asian oil rush had generated great euphoria. The US government fully backed the route as a useful option to free the Central Asian states from Russian clutches and prevent them getting close to Iran. The project was also perceived as the quickest and cheapest way to bring out Turkmen gas to the fast growing energy market in South Asia. To help it canvass for the project, Unocol hired the prominent former diplomat and secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and a former US ambassador to Pakistan, Robert Oakley, as well as an expert on the Caucasus, John Maresca… The president of Unocol even speculated that the cost of the construction would be reduced by half with the success of the Taliban movement and formation of a single government." Even before the attacks, Taliban was noted for their inability to manage with instability of the region they governed. According to Dana Rohrabacher, a Special Assistant Ronald Reagan, and a Senior Member of the International Relations Committee,


"I am making the claim that there is and has been a covert policy by this administration to support the Taliban movement’s control of Afghanistan… [T]his amoral or immoral policy is based on the assumption that the Taliban would bring stability to Afghanistan and permit the building of oil pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan… I believe the administration has maintained this covert goal and kept the Congress in the dark about its policy of supporting the Taliban, the most anti-Western, anti-female, anti-human rights regime in the world. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that this policy would outrage the American people, especially America’s women. Perhaps the most glaring evidence of our government’s covert policy to favor the Taliban is that the administration is currently engaged in a major effort to obstruct the Congress from determining the details behind this policy. Last year in August, after several unofficial requests were made of the State Department, I made an official request for all diplomatic documents concerning US policy toward the Taliban, especially those cables and documents from our embassies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. As a senior Member of the House International Relations Committee I have oversight responsibility in this area. In November, after months of stonewalling, the Secretary of State herself promised before the International Relations Committee that the documents would be forthcoming. She reconfirmed that promise in February when she testified before our Committee on the State Department budget. The Chairman of the Committee, Ben Gilman, added his voice to the record in support of my document request. To this time, we have received nothing. There can only be two explanations. Either the State Department is totally incompetent, or there is an ongoing cover-up of the State Department’s true fundamental policy toward Afghanistan. You probably didn’t expect me to praise the State Department at the end of this scathing testimony. But I will. I don’t think the State Department is incompetent. They should be held responsible for their policies and the American people should know, through documented proof, what they are doing."

When the Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over in 1999, we denied their offer. There was also several opportunities to strike him, but we once again, did not strike because of our relation to the Taliban at that moment. Frederick Starr, Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, sent a report that stated that there should be a joint Russian-American project to undermine the Taliban and institute a new regime that "suited better [to] to our mutual interests", and soon there were meetings between American, Russian and Indian government officials that had the intended purpose "to discuss what kind of government should replace the Taliban... [T]he United States is now talking about the overthrow of a regime that controls nearly the entire country, in the hope it can be replaced with a hypothetical government that does not exist even on paper." This was all, of course, after natural disasters and factional battles ignited, and was not after the several human rights abuses or the attacks on the World Trade Center.

[Revolution Until Victory]

yeah im pretty sure the jews would have been happier under Hitler

I said before, this is an extreme case. how would the jews be happy under Hitler when he had massacred almost half of thier population all over Europe???
the genocide of Nazi Germany is something almost impposible to compare to others. Besides, it wasn&#39;t me who made that rule, it was Gandhi.

[ZhangXun]

You&#39;re right. Ignorant John Doe who just got home from a shitty day at the construction site, visited the titty bar / watched the game, and then begrudgingly voiced his uninformed, CNN/FOX/etc. - druggged opinion through a poll should have the final say over the future of the Iraqi people.

If Canada invaded the US and was occupying Virginia, I&#39;d probably be more interested in having my voice heard than the Canadian voice, even though I agree with their system of governance much more than ours&#39;.

That is the problem with any freely elected government (in our case Representative Democracy), the average citizen controls who is in power and the average American citizen does not know much or does not care about the world at large so they fall easy to bumper sticker promises and commercials sponsored by special interest groups. But the Iraqi people are not unified politically the way Westerners are (as much as we like to pretend we truly disagree) and refuse to stop fighting amongst themselves as groups make military bids for complete or provincial power in Iraq. It is not as simple as taking a survey of Iraqi opinion and making policy, because we are not dealing with one nation in Iraq, we are dealing with a weak government with only half of its capital under control and fragmented areas of autonomy depending on location.


Yet 500,000 Iraqis have died, and for what?

As debating on the casualty count will only sway us from the original point (Iraqi Ministry of Health reported 150,000 dead) I will say that Iraqis are dying because of Coalition misfires in the broader war against armed resistance in Iraq and because of foreign terrorists (namely AQI) who are trying to make a political statement to the world of how they can defeat a superpower by murdering civilians on a daily basis.


Yet isnt that why the U.S was there in the first place, the blood of innocent iraqis and their oil?

Iraqis who raise a gun against the Coalition put their own lives as well as those around them at risk, they have the choice to obey but some chose to fight and make life unbearable for their own people and all other participants in this war. As for the oil, I agree that was the motive to invade Iraq (open up a sanctioned oil producer to international trade).


Yeah he seems like the gullible patriot ***** doesnt he?

No but you can assume anything you wish about me, you will be wrong. :)


First things first- Allowing Western troops to stay is the stupid solution as they are just acting as insurgent magnets. A smarter alternative would be to replace them with a less provocative coalition of troops from moderate muslim nations such as Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt etc. They would be far more sensitive towards local religious issues, and would blend in more easily into the local populace.

Pakistan has already refused to get involved in the Iraq War, as they have their own militant problem to deal with in Waziristan and Wana. Turkey would alienate the Kurds and likely promote an expanded insurgency in the north involving the already active PKK. Egypt has modern American weaponry and is a nation sponsored by the U.S and viewed as in cahoots with the American government. On top of that Egypt is an almost exclusively Sunni Muslim nation, most Iraqis are Shi&#39;a Muslim and many Shi&#39;a groups are attempting to exterminate or chase out Iraqi Sunnis in an effort to consolidate control. Look at what happened when the OAU (Uganda namely) sent troops into Somalia to serve with the Ethiopians, an insurgency gets worse. U.S troops are highly trained, experienced, and well equipped to handle a mission like Iraq if they have the time and resources to accomplish it. What I agree with you on is an emphasis on cultural sensitivity (Riccardo Sanchez the former chief of operations alienated many Iraqis with his offensive operations) and humane behavior but withdrawing U.S troops would not attract other nations to fill the gap it would bring about more violence.


Regarding your point on &#39;allowing bloodbaths to continue&#39;- there is already state sponsored genocide happening in places like Zimbabwe, yet i dont see the American government interested, IMO because these places arent oil producers.

I believe the government started this war to open up Iraqi oil to international trade, in other words I agree with you on the real motives behind the war.


the Irish analogy is counterproductive to your point, IRA recruitment was largely driven as a result of 1972 massacre in Derry by British paratroopers, another inditement of the UK&#39;s flawed policy. My point about Saddam was that as long as they hold on to the belief that the pretext for invasion was &#39;removing saddam whichwas the right thing to do&#39; was hypocritical, when you bear in mind they were responsible for putting him there in the first place. I dont see them jumping in to remove other despots like Robert Mugabe or Kim Il Sung.

But we are not dealing with the same U.S government, it has changed once at least every eight years since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 and with it methods of implementing U.S foreign policy. Under the Johnson Administration the CIA masterminded a coup in Iraq, the Military overthrew a dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, and the U.S Military escalated the war in Vietnam. Under the Nixon Administration the war in Vietnam was gradually brought to an end, China became a diplomatic partner, Pakistan became a U.S ally, the U.S officially supported Israel in the October War, and the CIA helped Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile when he deposed Salvadore Allende. One government could have aided Saddam in his bid for power but a different one may decide to do the opposite. Saddam in 1979 was viewed as a bulwark against Iranian expansion and exportation of radical Islam, Saddam in 1991 was viewed as an aggressive genocidal dictator, Saddam in 2003 was viewed as a thorn in the side of U.S policy and was removed. Zimbabwe&#39;s ZANU led regime is not a perpetrator of genocide so far as I know, just political and military repression of opponents. Kim Il-Sung is dead, you must be talking about his son, in which case North Korea has nuclear weapons that could hit our allies in Seoul or Tokyo. But I agree Mugabe should be assassinated and a revolution should be promoted in Zimbabwe. In short the U.S has always had a hypocritical foreign policy, simply because (as with most nations) its policy is geared to serve its interests first and those of others possibly later.


Countries like Portugal have never provoked the sort of animosity against itself that the US/UK axis have. It isnt just Iraq either, its also the bungled operation in Afghanistan where Bin Laden is still at large, and the unflinching support to Israel which is the next biggest cause of hatred against America. Ive seen documentaries on UK tv, even the US troops on the ground dont understand why there are there and there morale is at tenderhooks. The longer US troops stay there, it increases the &#39;them and us&#39; mentality in young muslims around the world which is leading to their radicalisation. The insurgents know exactly why they are there, and believe they are acting with the &#39;divine will of Allah&#39;. not only that they have potentially millions more on their way to join in. The American war machine simply cant compete with that kind of conviction or drive.

Well said, but there is no way around this problem of radicalization of young Muslims. Should we retreat from Iraq the truly determined and skilled guerrillas will go to Afghanistan (just cross Iran and you are there) to continue the fight against NATO and restore Taliban style rule in Afghanistan, and as most have been saying Iraq will become the scene of horrible violence on a larger scale than it already is at the present time. On the issue of soldiers, they are average citizens of respective nations like you and I, the only difference is that there job is to kill, secure, or supply those who do the previous two jobs. They can have the same shortcomings as the average citizen, and many do not care why they are there in Afghanistan/Iraq and are there to serve their tour of duty, return home and collect their money (or pay for college education). On the issue of Portugal I disagree, Portugal had been in Angola for close to 400 years and established itself as one of the most brutal and cruel colonial powers in Europe, both the communist MPLA and the anti-communist UNITA fought the Portuguese in their war. On the issue of the shortcomings of the U.S Military I also agree with you, we do not have the political will to emerge victorious as much as our enemies do. Our enemies will gladly die for victory, most of us won&#39;t.

[ZhangXun]

Yes,if you are ready to do atrocities, such a war is possible to win. The only question is how the world will react in that matter.

The world, and the population victim to the atrocities, will react negatively for the simple reason that military force always alienates those affected against you regardless of the outcome. The better question is whether or not the participants in the Coalition should take a gamble and crack down even harder on their enemies, my opinion is yes but I am not a general or someone in a position of credibility.


There is no war to be won, Once the US had Saddam what else was to be done? They have put up a government (which I think is not competent), they have tried to remove all terrorists, but impossible to do.

The conventional war was won in 2003, the new war is to defeat or weaken the insurgent groups to the point where they can pose no serious threat to a centralized government that will assume responsibility for its nation&#39;s security. I agree with you on the competence of the Iraqi Government, they cater to their own interests as well as those of the militia groups they may be involved with. Even for a freely elected government they display the ability of the former South Vietnamese government in Saigon, of remaining intensely corrupt and inefficient. Only time and citizen action will change the leadership to a more qualified one but it important to remember that this Iraqi Government has only existed for a year or so, it took America&#39;s government a decade to resolve its disputes and the Congo is still fighting over a new government ten years after Mobutu Sese Seko died.


The US should with drawl troops to as little as possible, it makes not sense for a government to send in more troops for a war that has no other outcome other than "We need more troops".

You&#39;re right that we shouldn&#39;t send troops off to war without a clear set objective or one without instructions on how to accomplish it. But I recommend that you check out the results of General Petraeus&#39;s troop surge in al-Anbar province, once the base of the insurgency, now 27 out of the 31 tribes there are fighting with the Coalition against al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups, many former insurgents have turned coat themselves in an effort to defeat an enemy that will remain long after U.S troops leave.


Well one thing they do seem to be united on is their desire for the US to get the fuck out of their country...in fact most Americans want the same thing as well.

A World Public Opinion poll take in september found that 74% of Shiites and 91% of Sunnis in Iraq want us to leave within a year. In Bagdad the figure is jumps to 80% for Shites.

350,000 Iraqis serve in the Security Forces, 27 out of 31 tribes in the turbulent al-Anbar Province are fighting alongside the Coalition against al-Qaeda, and most Kurds wish for America to stay. They are not united on any opinion, most Sunni and Shi&#39;a Iraqis may wish for America to leave but unfortunately that would pose a security risk to our own country and the NATO force in Afghanistan. Also a quote from Winston Churchill may serve best at this time: "Nothing is more dangerous...than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one&#39;s pulse and taking one&#39;s temperature."

Here is a poll saying that 56% of Iraqi&#39;s feel life is better now than under Saddam:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/GoodM...oll_040314.html (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/GoodMorningAmerica/Iraq_anniversary_poll_040314.html)


All these politicos and politicos wannabes should get the fuck over themselves. People don&#39;t want their country occupied by imperilist powers, you can&#39;t spin it so they do.

I never spun it in such a way, I said leaving Iraq would pose a security risk to America and NATO in Afghanistan.


lol, for the moment I was gonna protest how this pro-imperialist isn&#39;t restricted, until I saw he was under his name happy.gif

what a piece of trash is that&#33;

My guess as to why some of you are being so condescending towards someone of a different political persuasion, my apologies for thinking revolutionaries were tolerant of other ideas. I am no imperialist, I believe in American troops leaving Iraq the moment the government in Iraq can defend its own nation, I do not support exploiting Iraqi resources or ruling a puppet state. Just to clear up your impression of me.


makes me wonder, did you even think before writting such crap? what are you like 5?

No I&#39;m 17 and going into the military next year to serve in Iraq. Yes I thought before referencing well established fact.


as long a their is injustice and opression, there is resistance. end of story.

Far be it for me to say you are simplifying a complicated subject but I will. There is oppression in Zimbabwe, Iran, China, Belarus, Cuba, Russia, and Ethiopia, I do not see resistance as you are suggesting.


No justice = No peace.

Sounds like a sound bite from Al Sharpton to me, and you are telling me I am writing like a five year old.


the only way you can end the resistance is when:

1- end the opression.

And you define oppression as...capitalist exploitation of the working class? Subjugation of the weak by imperialist nations? Social and economic stratification from unfair trade practices? Please do enlighten me, because from the way you speak I am inclined to believe that you think that when an insurgent detonates a bomb in a marketplace that they are dealing out &#39;justice&#39;.


2- genocide the people you are opressing.

No it is quite possible to quell resistance in other ways. Pay collaborators, base troops amongst the civilian population, form a biometric database of every civilian you can convince to give their fingerprint and identity, clear and hold buildings and entire neighborhoods, remain on a constant offensive, utilize superior firepower and technology to defeat your enemy and eliminate the effects of their attacks, and arm your planned ally government while you are doing all of the above.


other than this, the RESISTANCE WILL NOT DIE.

...but it can die, it&#39;s been done before.


you can&#39;t have it both ways. you can&#39;t have a population that you opress, and then expect to end thier resistance. that&#39;s simply childish. you want to end the resistance, you got to go for the root cause: opression.

How is America oppressing the Iraqi population? Our soldiers would not kill civilians (accidentally or deliberately) if there was no resistance to fight. Our government would withdraw our troops if the situation was calm enough to rebuild what we destroyed, make the necessary corrupt deals with the government for oil trade, and ensure that there would be no rebellion when U.S troops departed.


you can kill 1, 1000, or even a million and an entire liberation movment, but in its place, thousands more will spring up, coz the root cause that made the first resistance which you distoryed to spring up still exists: opression.
the US imperialists in Iraq are loosing and will continue to loose.

The U.S Military is taking more and more of the Iraqi countryside as the campaigns in Diyala, Anbar, Babil, and Salahuddin provinces goes on, we will only lose as a result of political actions in Washington. Militarily it is not impossible to defeat an insurgency, America did just that in the Philippines, Britain did that in South Africa, Burma, Malaysia, and Kenya, and South Africa did that in Namibia.


the only way the reistance ends is:

1- end of occupation

If you believe the &#39;resistance&#39; will end when we depart Iraq you are in for quite a surprise. The same men you called heroes now will continue their gruesome trade of bombing, shooting, looting, and decapitating innocent people.


2- end of almost all of the Iraqi people.

the second choice is imposible, especially in our current times coz of International law and stuff (that 2nd choice was much eaiser some 200 years ago).
in other words, the ONLY choice you got to end the resistance is to end the opression and occupation, end the root cause. or you can simply exterminate almost the enitre Iraqi population if you can. (since no people that are alive would accept to be opressed. you got to kill them to make them accept opression) have a good time trying.

1.4% of the Iraqi population serves in the Security Forces, making them collaborators. Thousands more are unofficially paid by the U.S Military to kill insurgents, man checkpoints, and secure buildings. We would have to eliminate the insurgency and begin a concentrated reconstruction effort and push for a socialist Iraqi economy to get the oil money down to the poorest citizen. The insurgency can be defeated, the question is whether or not America will be able to politically, which I believe the answer is no

[ZhangXun]

ending imperialist opression is NECESSARY, but not SUFFIECENT. surely, the US got a lot to do to correct and compensate for its mistakes. it can&#39;t run away, but at the same time, it got to end its occupation NOW. the no.1 problem for the Iraqis ( and any people on earth for that matter) is forgien domination. it got to end. immediatly. the US shoud fix the problem it created WITHOUT keeping its occupation.

haaahaa. bullshit. the resistance will not die. the resistance will end when Portugese colonialism ends. period.

Portuguese colonialism ended in 1975 when the last troops withdrew from any of the three nations they fought in due to a political revolution which overthrew the Fascist government that had been in power since 1928. But you were right the &#39;resistance&#39; did not die, in fact they loved killing so much that in two out of the three nations (Mozambique and Angola) the Portuguese left civil wars broke out that left millions dead. In fact a counter-insurgency war grew out of the civil war, where Fidel Castro&#39;s Cuban troops fought UNITA in the jungles of Angola from 1975 to 1991 and lost over 4,000 troops in a successful push against the anti-communist insurgency and once they left the civil war continued because remnants of Jonas Savimbi&#39;s group still remained to fight the MPLA led government. In short, you are wrong about what happens when rebel groups defeat occupying forces, please read a history book.


I&#39;ve only one question for the moron who started this thread; are you a member of the United States military? If you are, and you are in fact going to Iraq soon, then I can at least respect your positon from the standpoint that at least you are willing to stick your neck out to maintain. If not, then you are a jackass for toting a rhetoric you refuse to actively backup. Either way, you are a fucking dumbass in the majority of the world&#39;s eyes.

I&#39;m 17 right now and I&#39;ve already met with the U.S Marine Corps to enlist in 2008 when I graduate from high school, so no the chicken hawk label does not apply to me.


There is no war in Iraq, there is a conflict between foreign occupiers and an indigenous resistance movement. The US is not so much fighting a war as defending it&#39;s presence in a foreign country.

This indigenous resistance movement seems more than willing to slaughter its own people on a daily basis in order to make politicians in Washington push harder for a troop withdrawal. Could it be that there are thousands of foreign fighters in Iraq as well as an indigenous resistance movement? Evidently there is, and maybe it isn&#39;t as simple as the oppressed versus the oppressor in this conflict. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis readily collaborate with the Coalition and fighters from as far away as Morocco go to Iraq to fight and die, perhaps it isn&#39;t as simple as an imperial war. Marx evidently left something out on revolutionaries who murder their own comrades and fellow countrymen.


As such, &#39;victory&#39; can only be achieved by coercing the Iraqi population into accepting the US prescence in their own country. Given that the majority of Iraqis would prefer the US to fully withdraw, the US has no choice but to enforce it&#39;s presence with military power, not the consent of the population.

Most victorious counter-insurgency wars have been waged against the wishes of the majority of citizens effected. Malaysia was the only true example of this, but that was because the Malaysian Communist Party insurgency was comprised almost entirely of ethnic Chinese-Malaysians, giving the British a tempting means to gain support from the majority. Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, Burma, Namibia, Libya, South Africa, and the Philippines were all sites of unpopular guerrilla wars in which the occupier emerged victorious.


Symptomatic of the colonial mentality, that it&#39;s these figures you find most concerning. US troops will continue to die, so long as bigwigs in Washington see fit to keep them there, as nothing will change the fact that US troops in Iraq are occupiers, and therefore legitimate targets for the resistance. The real victims in this criminal invasion and occupation are Iraqi men, women and children, of whom tens of thousands, possibly more, have died since the invasion.

I&#39;m not a follower of this colonial mentality like you assume, I wrote this essay to persuade other Americans who do not give a shit about the deaths of Iraqis. Also consider that most Iraqis have been killed by insurgents, militias, and death squads, not Coalition troops. Our presence there has been to build up a government which was elected by the Iraqi people and since fallen out of favor because of the crippling violence caused by the insurgency. Sure the Coalition force is an occupation force, but if there is no force there to prevent Iraq from descending into a genuine civil war (by historical standards) in which perhaps millions will be killed by the same men many here call heroes.


The question is not whether suppressing an insurgency (or resistance) is possible, but whether it is desirable, or humane to do so.

Nothing involving killing other humans is humane, but in this case it most definitely is desirable.


If you believe it is desirable that the Iraqi resistance be crushed, then you are saying a few things:

- The Iraqis should not have the right to self-determination
- You are willing to support efforts to violently quell an indigenous resistance, actions that will result in the deaths of many more thousands of people.

At the moment they should not have the right to self-determination as they are killing each other in scores every day and will proceed to commit even more brutal attacks if there is no semblance of security anywhere in the country. And yes I am willing to support a military crackdown across Iraq to end this violence and uproot organizations affiliated with the resistance.


And we should know what happens with &#39;small elite soldier units&#39;. Usually people are too psychologically crippled to contemplate resistance after they have just seen a family member tortured to death in front of their eyes. Nicaragua, El Salvador, anyone?

In Sierra Leone the RUF was not politically motivated except to overthrow the government, but the only torture done there was by the RUF who made several thousand citizens amputees, research them if you don&#39;t believe what I am saying. Executive Outcomes did its job well and earned the support of the people because of the enemy it fought. Nicaragua was fought by a rebel group, and El Salvador was a military junta fighting an insurgency, not a private military firm fighting principally.


Are you serious? The primary &#39;wishes&#39; of your enemy in Iraq is that you get out and stay out so they can manage their own affairs. If the US govt did choose to withdraw it would be acting in the interests of both the US citizens (less dead soldiers, and less danger of a terrorist attack) and Iraqi citizens (who want the US out, for their own reasons).

Manage their own affairs? With what might I ask? Their "unified and united resistance" that has such groups like the Fedayeen Saddam, al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic Army in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, the Mahdi Army, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the Badr Brigades, and the rest of the minor insurgent groups among its ranks in perpetual conflict with each other? Are you telling me that when American troops leave the Shi&#39;a death squads will cease to exist, al-Qaeda will leave Iraq, and the Iraqis will "manage their own affairs" as the Vietnamese (who had one unified insurrection movement) did after the war? You must be out of you mind, the nation will be carved up by respective powers unofficially and a regional conflict will grow even larger. The KSA has already pledged military intervention to protect Iraqi Sunnis if the US leaves, Iran is already omnipresent in Shi&#39;a sectors, and the Turkish Army waits right on the border to strike the PKK if rebel activity resumes. Your idealist argument simplifies a conflict that involves multiple groups who hate each other and look to serve their own interests, you act as if Iraq will unite when we leave, you could not be more mistaken.


It would be nice to remember that the US only &#39;withdrew&#39; from Vietnam once it had economically and environmentally destroyed most of Indochina, leaving 2-3 million dead Vietnamese in it&#39;s wake. Does this matter to you? You should never have been in Vietnam, and the same goes with Iraq.

It matters plenty to me, a member of my family was imprisoned by the communists for thirteen years because he &#39;collaborated&#39; with the police in Saigon, two of my relatives served in combat in Vietnam and they tell me of how horribly the Vietnamese were treated by both the SEATO forces and the communist guerrillas (let&#39;s not forget the massacre at Hue). And to counter your assumption I would not have supported America fighting in Vietnam and do not knowing what I do now. Iraq however, is a comparison unmatchable to the conflict in Vietnam.


Oh, don&#39;t worry about hanging Iraqis on a cross, you have done that already, with a shocking regularity. The Iraqis want you out, polls have shown this. The fact is, you&#39;re fellow citizens who whine and complain about how wrong the Iraq &#39;war&#39; is are absolutely correct. It was and is wrong, inhumane, murderous, criminal and unjustified on any humane criteria.

I really could not give a shit what the polls say, leaving Iraq poses a direct threat to NATO in Afghanistan and our nation itself. The people who oppose the war here are largely just pissed off voters who care only for American lives, not Iraqis. If you or they cared about what happened to the Iraqis you would not label there resistance as just or indigenous and you would not blindly assume that there will be no intensified civil war when U.S troops leave. The murderers are the cowards who hide amongst civilians while fighting and bombing crowded marketplaces to make head lines and prompt a U.S withdrawal. Our invasion was just, our occupation of Iraq is just, but the notion that U.S troops are the cause of all problems in Iraq is absurd.


Don&#39;t make me vomit.

Many Americans didn&#39;t give a fuck about muslims half a world away, which is why they went along with the invasion in the first place. Now that their own Christian, white brothers and sisters are coming home in bodybags they are starting to complain, with some honourable exceptions. The US never has given a fu*k about anybody else, which is why it backed and armed dictators like Saddam in the first place.

Everything you just stated I said I agreed with before, why would it make you vomit?


Saddam was no longer compliant to US interests, so he had to go. Simple as that. And fuck however many Iraqi civilians die in the proccess. Don&#39;t trot out the noble intentions line because it has no credibility, it&#39;s a slap in the face to reality.

I stated before what I believed the reason for the invasion was, to open up Iraqi oil to international trade. I said the obvious fact that we removed one of humanities worst perpetrators of genocide, war, and tyranny in human history. I did not say that our government invaded for that reason, I said the notion of overthrowing him was a noble cause.


Again, don&#39;t pretend that the interests behind US foreign policy care that hundreds of thousands of people die. Because history shows they don&#39;t. 500 000 Iraqi children died from the sanctions, and it&#39;s like so what.

I didn&#39;t pretend to believe such things. You seem to think I am some lard ass Johnny Flagwaver who believes everything America does is right, I don&#39;t. I support finishing this war, that&#39;s it


How do you know that a complete US withdrawal will result in violence? It&#39;s pretty condescending to suggest Iraqis cannot handle their own affairs without a sword hanging over the heads. Without intreference, Iraqis might choose to nationalise their oil, and do many other things hostile to US interests. This is why the US will never refrain from interfereing, even in the event that they leave.

Because of the groups already established in Iraq, they do not look out for the welfare of their own people they look out for their group first, their ideological cause second, and the people they effect last. Compare al-Qaeda in Iraq or the Islamic Army to say Hezbollah, Hezbollah has struck legitimate military targets and some civilian targets but do they load trucks up with explosives and bomb markets, neighborhoods, or places of worship? No. They kill those who are enemies in uniform (I don&#39;t support them as an American but they at least resist occupation in a practical way) and provide social welfare to gain support from those they rule. The Mahdi Army in Iraq has several rogue death squads (some in the police force) who murder Sunnis wherever they can find them. al-Qaeda in Iraq kills anyone who does not submit to their strict interpretation of Islamic law and kills civilians to make the news and cause Americans to turn against the war. The Iraqi people will not unify, they will fragment and fight again, I am willing to bet any amount of money possible that this will happen.


In any debate as to whether the US should withdraw, it is of only secondary concern what US citizens think. What is most important is what Iraqis think. They would like you to leave, now.

They will have to wait, the U.S and NATO in Afghanistan is threatened by active al-Qaeda controlled regions in Iraq.


You can bow to the demands of the Iraqi people too, if you prefer, and leave. Or are they murderous terrorists? Is anyone who opposes the occupation a &#39;murderous terrorist&#39;.

No, many insurgents are men who lost loved ones due to U.S sanctions or due to the present occupation and are justifiably opposed to that particular nation marching in and demanding a new democratic order. But I do not apply this generalization to most of them.


This invasion was waged in the interests of US Capital, not the general population. When you say &#39;victory&#39;, you mean a compliant Iraqi population and control over the oilfields, which is only &#39;vital&#39; to the &#39;well-being&#39; of military-contractors and oil companies.

It is beneficial to both the corrupt politicians and executives and the Iraqi people, for if there is stability and the ability to elect their own politicians Iraq will not be under the boot of domestic tyrants or foreign occupiers if they can maintain that stability. Their politicians could take (like you said) Nasserist stances and nationalize Iraqi oil like Chavez has also done in Venezuela and no amount of presidential pandering would draw Americans to support another war against Iraq.


And FFS, a murderous occupation does not serve &#39;democracy at large&#39; in any way shape or form. The invasion was &#39;undemocratic&#39;, as is the occupation.

It was murderous, but it certainly was democratic.


This is intellectual claptrap. A poor attempt to justify the unjustifiable. Your musings, if applied, have very real consequences for very real people. If you are so enarmoured to the cause of the occupation then do the honbourable thing and put your life on the line, instead of somebody else&#39;s, for what you believe in.

I am, in 2008 when I graduate I am joining the Marines.

[freedumb]

350,000 Iraqis serve in the Security Forces, 27 out of 31 tribes in the turbulent al-Anbar Province are fighting alongside the Coalition against al-Qaeda, and most Kurds wish for America to stay. They are not united on any opinion, most Sunni and Shi&#39;a Iraqis may wish for America to leave but unfortunately that would pose a security risk to our own country and the NATO force in Afghanistan. Also a quote from Winston Churchill may serve best at this time: "Nothing is more dangerous...than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one&#39;s pulse and taking one&#39;s temperature."

Here is a poll saying that 56% of Iraqi&#39;s feel life is better now than under Saddam:

That doesn&#39;t change the fact the vast majority of Iraqis want the Coalition forces out of their country. You can quote Churchill, and point out that Iraqis feel life is better without Saddam (which may have something to do with the lifting of sanctions under the new post-invasion regime), but it&#39;s irrelevant. The consent of the population is the only thing that can justify US/UK troop prescence, and that consent has never existed. The occupation is UNDEMOCRATIC.


I never spun it in such a way, I said leaving Iraq would pose a security risk to America and NATO in Afghanistan.

Quite simply irrelevant. If leaving Iraq causes problems for the agressors and occupiers, then that is a function of their own actions - not something the Iraqis should have to shoulder. The only thing that is relevant with the presence of foreign troops in any given country is the consent of the population. If consent does not exist the presence is illegitimate and therefore a military occupation.



My guess as to why some of you are being so condescending towards someone of a different political persuasion, my apologies for thinking revolutionaries were tolerant of other ideas. I am no imperialist, I believe in American troops leaving Iraq the moment the government in Iraq can defend its own nation, I do not support exploiting Iraqi resources or ruling a puppet state. Just to clear up your impression of me.

The insurgency is an indigenous one. Thus we can interpret what you have said as &#39;I support the US leaving at the moment the Iraqi Govt are strong enough to subdue the resistance from within their own population.&#39; Because that is what it is. You can say you don&#39;t support imperialsim, but your insistence on the presence of US troops in Iraq, against the will of the population, is exactly that. The US presence is all about securing strategic power in the region, mostly due to the considerable leverage thay have gained over Iraqi oil.

Exploiting (or at the least) Iraqi resources is what the whole thing is about. The US is now trying to get the Iraqi parliament to sign a bill allowing foreign (read: US) access to the oil industry, and are using their prospective withdrawal as an incentive for it to pass.

Nah, you&#39;re right, nothing to do with oil. Nothing to do with power and control. Nothing at all.


No I&#39;m 17 and going into the military next year to serve in Iraq. Yes I thought before referencing well established fact.

At least you&#39;re not a chickenhawk. Still wrong though.

[/QUOTE]Far be it for me to say you are simplifying a complicated subject but I will. There is oppression in Zimbabwe, Iran, China, Belarus, Cuba, Russia, and Ethiopia, I do not see resistance as you are suggesting.


None of those countries are enduring a foreign military occupation.

And you define oppression as...capitalist exploitation of the working class? Subjugation of the weak by imperialist nations? Social and economic stratification from unfair trade practices? Please do enlighten me, because from the way you speak I am inclined to believe that you think that when an insurgent detonates a bomb in a marketplace that they are dealing out &#39;justice&#39;.


Oppression is....

1. Foistering, without consent or popular support, neo-liberal economic policies onto the Iraqi population

2. Invading and Occupying Iraq against the will of the population, resulting in the deaths of tens/hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Just two examples. For a simple, easy to remember summary: the occupation is oppression.

Start with your own country first, otherwise it&#39;s more than a little bit hypocritical.

No it is quite possible to quell resistance in other ways. Pay collaborators, base troops amongst the civilian population, form a biometric database of every civilian you can convince to give their fingerprint and identity, clear and hold buildings and entire neighborhoods, remain on a constant offensive, utilize superior firepower and technology to defeat your enemy and eliminate the effects of their attacks, and arm your planned ally government while you are doing all of the above.


That&#39;s all very swell, but the resistance is a legitimate response to a foreign military occupation. The occupation is unjust. The complete withdrawal of troops would correct the injustice, doing away with the need for the resistance. This is the proverbial elephant in the room of your arguments.

...but it can die, it&#39;s been done before.


Whether resistance has been crushed before is irrelevant. The resistance is neccesitated by a foreign military occupation. The occupation has to justify it&#39;s continued existence, which it cannot, because Iraqis do not consent to their continued presence. The resistance is legitimate, so you&#39;re missing the point.

How is America oppressing the Iraqi population? Our soldiers would not kill civilians (accidentally or deliberately) if there was no resistance to fight. Our government would withdraw our troops if the situation was calm enough to rebuild what we destroyed, make the necessary corrupt deals with the government for oil trade, and ensure that there would be no rebellion when U.S troops departed. [QUOTE]

This is getting more than a little tedious...

The US is oppressing Iraqis by refusing to leave. It oppressed Iraqis in it&#39;s decision to bomb and invade the country, without just cause.

And your troops wouldn&#39;t have to fight the resistance if.... the troops weren&#39;t there in there in the first place&#33; You&#39;ve got the causation wrong here.

The resistance is a RESPONSE to the occupation. Once the occupation ends, which Iraqis want it to, there will be no need for them. No need for your fellow americans to get blown up everyday.

What you need to understand is that while the resistance is legitimate, the occupation is not. You&#39;ve got it the wrong way around.

The problem, is that you are not the Iraqi population. You have no right to decide what is good for them. They know quite well themselves. They want you out, so you should leave. If you, in your stubbornness, stay on, then prepare for indefenite killing.

[rebel_lord]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 11:48 pm
As the war in Iraq drags on past its fourth year a considerable majority of Americans consider the war to be increasingly difficult and perhaps too much so for a Coalition victory to occur. The Senate Majority Leader considers the war a lost cause and said, "I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week…” Two-thirds of the American public disapprove of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war and over one-half of the members of the U.S Congress support a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq. U.S troops are dieing at a rate of 2.5 per day and 3,616 have been killed in Iraq as of today. Congressional Democrats, anti-war Republicans, and a frustrated public argue that this unnecessary war has depleted America of blood, treasure, and precious political leverage that they say could be more appropriately used in diffusing the nuclear crisis in Iran or the genocide in Sudan. To their credit they boast within their constituents experienced and knowledgeable figures such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, renowned journalist Bob Woodward, Senator Robert Byrd (longest serving senator), Senator Charles Hagel, Richard Clarke, and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. Yet even amongst the most experienced anti-war figures, the most ‘dovish’ Democrat, and the loudest protester the argument collapses under a weak base, an absence of historical knowledge or relevant comparisons, and an over reliance on ideological accusations to compensate for what the anti-war platform lacks.

In April of 2004 Senator Edward Kennedy remarked that Iraq is “George Bush’s Vietnam”. A claim that still seems relatively pervasive amongst American voters tired of a seemingly endless military mission in the Iraqi quicksand. But considering the facts behind such a comparison, as well as the man who said it (Kennedy voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964, giving President Lyndon Johnson powers to wage war similar to President Bush’s war powers today) the comparison is completely absurd. Before U.S combat troops arrived in Vietnam in 1962 various administrations had funded eighty percent of the nine year failed French war effort in Vietnam. At the Geneva Conference following the French defeat free-elections were promised for Vietnam, but the provision was abruptly withdrawn and opposed by the U.S.A (who wrote the bill, but did not sign it) as it became almost certain that Ho Chi Minh would defeat the unpopular Ngo Dinh Diem in a nationwide election. After promising not to send U.S soldiers over to job to do what “Asian boys ought to be doing” and winning election in a landslide victory, President Johnson decided to drastically escalate the war in Vietnam as to reach a ‘tipping point’ by which the NVA could simply not hold out against. Conventional tactics used in Korea and World War II were employed far more than counter-insurgency (as was recommended by former President Kennedy) and at the peak of America’s troop presence over 500,000 soldiers were scouring the countryside, guarding besieged cities, and attempting to train patchy and often unreliable South Vietnamese Security Forces modeled along Western military lines.

In 1968 Johnson decided not to run for re-election following the Tet Offensive in which forty out of forty-four South Vietnamese provinces went under severe, almost suicidal attack from the NLF (Vietcong) guerrillas. This blistering offensive all but wiped the Vietcong out of the picture and Johnson out of the Oval Office, from here the NVA took over combat operations and President Richard Nixon began to ‘Vietnamize’ the war and prepare a gradual U.S withdrawal with a pledge to fund and defend South Vietnam should it be attacked. In 1973 the last American troops left Vietnam and a Democratic Congress voted to shut down all federal funding to the unstable South Vietnamese government. Within two years the southern capital of Saigon fell to the Communists and a new bloodbath of retaliation slayings, South Vietnamese diasporas, and ‘re-education’ camps began. If Vietnam somehow compares to Iraq in anyway besides the facts that both enemies we face are guerrilla fighters and that poor intelligence or outright deceit got America involved then please let me know, as that argument could be easily applied to the Spanish Civil War or the War in the Philippines which are seldom mentioned because they are American victories. This “Vietraq” stance many anti-war Americans take is intended to relate a current event of much lesser intensity to an emotionally taxing and shameful war we fought, yet all it accomplishes is confirming the atrocious vacancy of intellectual creativity or knowledge within their ranks.

At the heart of the anti-war movement lies its ‘support the troops, oppose the war’ mantra to display patriotism and dissent hand in hand. It is argued that conservative ‘hawks’ want to send U.S troops into an Iraqi meat grinder trying desperately to clutch on to whatever faded concept of democracy that remains in Iraq. They charge that not setting a time line constitutes a war without end, or one that simply cannot be won. Yet they fail to provide one example where setting a date for withdrawal led any nation to victory in any war of serious proportions, never mind being up against a continually active enemy. One would be an utter fool to challenge the patriotism of anti-war veterans such as John Murtha, John Kerry, or Chuck Hagel yet as with any politician their judgment and line of reasoning falls into serious question.

Should one care to open an encyclopedia, or any historical reference book, one will be provided with the shocking and neglected truth that in every decade of the twentieth century a Western power has achieved victory over an insurgency. From 1899 to 1902 the British Empire fought determined guerrilla resistance in South Africa during the Second Boer War and came out the victors. From 1899 to 1902 and again in 1913 America fought a savage war in the Philippines in which 4,324 U.S soldiers, 2,000 Filipino police, 16,000 insurgents, and over 1,000,000 civilians died. The result was an American victory and colonial rule for decades more, ending in 1946 after a series of agreements relating to decolonization. From 1922 to 1933 Italy fought a determined insurgency in Libya and won after saturating Libya with troops and applying asymmetric and often brutal war methods. 1936 to 1939 the Nationalists began a bloody campaign against Republican (anti-fascist) and communist guerillas and seized control of Spain under General Francisco Franco. In the late 1930s and early 1940s insurgencies developed in Italian occupied Ethiopia and each time was crushed, in several cases through the usage of chemical weapons. From 1952 to 1960 the British systematically smashed the Mau Mau insurgency, delaying Kenyan independence and achieving a more favorable settlement than what would have resulted from defeat.

From 1954 to 1962 France fought an initially unsuccessful war in Algeria but turned the tide of battle with a switch in military tactics mounting victory after victory against the FLN until the Evian Accords were reached under the anti-colonial DeGaulle Administration. This agreement allowed for Algerian independence but allowed the French to keep a considerable military presence in Algeria, some bases used even for nuclear missile tests, and in doing this the Algerian collaborators known as harkis were spared retaliation from bitter nationalists. From 1961 to 1974 the Portuguese military took on three guerrilla wars with equipment so outdated and in such short supply that to any other Western Army would be an insult if asked to do such tasks, and they gained the upper hand in all three wars&#33; Utilizing indigenous collaborators in occupied Guinea Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique, the Portuguese altered war tactics from simple ‘hold the cities’ strategy to classic counter-insurgency. Ironically it was the sudden Carnation Revolution in 1974 (overthrowing Antonio Salazar’s dictatorship and bringing in a social-democratic government) that spared the nationalist guerillas a sure defeat, as all troops were withdrawn following the change in government. In the 1980’s the South Africans utilized Namibian collaborators and elite South African ‘Koevet’ (special forces teams) to extinguish the SWAPO insurgency fighting for independence and retain Apartheid rule. In 1994 a South African defense firm, Executive Outcomes, was contracted by the government of Sierra Leone to defeat the powerful Revolutionary United Front insurgency that neither government troops or soon to be UN blue helmets could stop. Within a few months the firm suppressed the insurgency utilizing superior air power, and small elite soldier units.

The choice belongs to the American people. We can choose to succumb to the wishes of our enemies in Iraq and set a deadline for withdrawal, and then proceed to withdraw. We can take the easy way out, the way we took out in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. By hanging our Iraqi allies on a cross and retreating to the seclusion of our borders so that we can whine and complain about how wrong the war was and how we can focus on boring issues negligible by comparison such as gay marriage, health care, and tax rates. After all why should we Christian Americans give a **** about what happens to poverty stricken, isolated, and embattled Muslims half a world away? Who are we to finish what was indeed a noble cause in removing one of humanity&#39;s most barbarous murderers, Saddam Hussein? If hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered and a wider Middle Eastern War begins it matters not to us, because we are unaffected by it and can still watch the results through the sensationalized lens of our own media. Unfortunately this is the attitude prevalent in America now, and will ultimately dictate our feelings should a wider conflict emerge in the absence of American troops. Far be it for the lonely third of Americans to suggest that we not leave, but change tactics, for if they do suggest such things they are shrugged off as ‘out of touch with public opinion’ by politicians, ‘delusional’ by liberals, and ‘imperialists’ by those further to the left. Yet it is such a stance that can only bring about eventual victory as was achieved by so many before us, thus making it within our power to determine the fate of Iraq and all nations that will be affected by the war. This nation can bow to the demands of murderous terrorists, our can bind itself to achieving the victory vital to the well being of Iraq and democracy at large.
----------------

This is an essay I wrote for my summer project in history, I &#39;ve posted it here in the hopes of hearing more than one dissenting opinion. Let me know what you think of it. : )

All USA wants is oil. That&#39;s why USA is in the middle east

wake up from your slumber


rebel_lord

[Revolution Until Victory]

I am no imperialist, I believe in American troops leaving Iraq the moment the government in Iraq can defend its own nation

it&#39;s a pupet regime, like Imperialists always do, setting up US collaboraters and call it "democracy". If you support it then you are a pro-imperilaist. any rational human being should believe in ending occupation NOW, not when "those brown poeple are able to rule themselves after we teach them to".


...but it can die, it&#39;s been done before

no it cannot. it never happned before and will never happnen. many times, the resistance would cease, preparing for achieveing its goals (independece) as was the case many times before. but it never dies. to claim that a resistance against opression will end before opression end is simply childish. this is as stupid as claiming you can cut a grass from the top with out taking out the root, yet expect it to never grow again&#33; would this ever happen? hardly.
as long as the reason the first wave of resistance grew is still available (opression), more and more resistance will spring in the place of the destroyed one.


How is America oppressing the Iraqi population?

oh please, enough of this crap. it seems that occupying their land and denying them thier independece is alright for you. (not to mention torture in jails among many other issues).


Our soldiers would not kill civilians (accidentally or deliberately) if there was no resistance to fight

what kind of bullshit is that??


Our government would withdraw our troops if the situation was calm enough to rebuild what we destroyed

a stupid imperialist excuse that doens&#39;t even deserve to be refuted.


If you believe the &#39;resistance&#39; will end when we depart Iraq you are in for quite a surprise. The same men you called heroes now will continue their gruesome trade of bombing, shooting, looting, and decapitating innocent people.

it ain&#39;t my problem if you, and I might add deliberatly, confuse the resistance with the secterian militans who bomb civlians. The resistance, naturaly, will end when there is no reason for it to exist. why did the resistance spring up? to fight the occupation. the occupation ends, no need for the resistance. doesn&#39;t get any more logical.


No I&#39;m 17 and going into the military next year to serve in Iraq. Yes I thought before referencing well established fact.

I wasn&#39;t talking about the facts, but about what you were implying. you are going to particpate in the occupation of another people next year? hmmm...and you said you are not imperialist?
fine with me, I will then join the army of a "communist" state, invade the US, and "help those people rule themselves" and "liberate" them from the capitlaist oppresive system. that&#39;s, of course, according to your logic.
hopefully, the Iraqi National Resistance will get rid of you and your ilk as soon as possible, and regain their independece.


far be it for me to say you are simplifying a complicated subject but I will

no its complete logic. If you can show me a grass that was cut form the top only, and not from the roots, yet never grew again, I will accept your crap. until then, the resistance will not die.


There is oppression in Zimbabwe, Iran, China, Belarus, Cuba, Russia, and Ethiopia, I do not see resistance as you are suggesting.

no, there is resistance whenever there is opression. in all of the places you mentioned, there is resistance by those who think they experience opression.


Sounds like a sound bite from Al Sharpton to me, and you are telling me I am writing like a five year old.

sounds like LOGIC to me, a term you obvioulsy have no idea what it means.
if there is no justice, the opressed will fight to get their rights back; when they fight, there is no peace. there will be peace when there is justice.
trying to end the resistance without ending the occupation is like cuting a grass from the top and avoiding the root. you can cut it a thousand times, but the grass will keep springing up. you can kill a thousand revolutionaries, the revolution will continue until the total end of opression, the ROOT cause. very basci logic.


And you define oppression as...capitalist exploitation of the working class? Subjugation of the weak by imperialist nations? Social and economic stratification from unfair trade practices?

all of those you metioned above.


I am inclined to believe that you think that when an insurgent detonates a bomb in a marketplace that they are dealing out &#39;justice&#39;.

when someone explodes a bomb in a market place, against an innocnet civlian target, not against the occupation dogs like yourself (or at least, would be in a year) or the collaborater governemnt, then, obviously, this got nothing to do with justice. I never even implyed such a thing.


No it is quite possible to quell resistance in other ways. Pay collaborators, base troops amongst the civilian population, form a biometric database of every civilian you can convince to give their fingerprint and identity, clear and hold buildings and entire neighborhoods, remain on a constant offensive, utilize superior firepower and technology to defeat your enemy and eliminate the effects of their attacks, and arm your planned ally government while you are doing all of the above.

lol, that shit have been tried before many times. you might be able to kill some of the fighters, or even the entire liberation movment, but as long as thier is oppression, the resistance will not die, and another one will spring in its place. that have happned all over the world before, throughout history.


Militarily it is not impossible to defeat an insurgency

it is imposible for the resistance to die, while the opression have not ended.


The insurgency can be defeated, the question is whether or not America will be able to politically, which I believe the answer is no

the resistance will not be defeated, get this in your head.


In short, you are wrong about what happens when rebel groups defeat occupying forces, please read a history book.

lol, plz think for yourself.

[Faux Real]

No I&#39;m 17 and going into the military next year to serve in Iraq. Yes I thought before referencing well established fact.

Lets hope the occupation leaves before that date so you don&#39;t get too upset saving "your" country from the evil people who attacked "you" on 9-11. :rolleyes:

Face it, the majority of the troops want to leave as they have no business there, and polls show 2/3 citizens want them out of there now. Seeing that you fall into the zealous 1/3 you would deserve anything that flies through you, big loss. God speed.

/salute

[freedumb]

ZhangXun,

in response to your response.

Only 0.7% of resistance fighters in Iraq are foreign. Of that 45% are Saudis. What does that say? The resistance is indigenous. If there&#39;s any foreign influence it&#39;s your buddies the Saudis.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...=la-home-center (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-saudi15jul15,0,3132262.story?coll=la-home-center)

You are lumping the resistance in with the sectarian killers, when this is not the case. Here is a coalition of resistance fighters against Al-Qaeda and sectarian killings.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2129645,00.html

The US is not helping matters by giving arms to Sunnis.

There is a mainstream resistance, whose aim is the expulsion of US troops, not murderous rampages against fellow Iraqis. Most of the violence in Iraq is directed towards the US military, not against fellow Iraqis.

The only people insisting that there will be a blood-orgy in Iraq if they leave are the US govt and fellow travellers.

Where do you draw the line though? Do you recognise that Iraqis want the US out, and there are armed groups formed solely to acieve that purpose? Do you recognise their right to attack military targets, especially if you are thinking of going over there.

But it all comes back to this: the Iraqis want you to leave. If they think there will be bloodshed after you leave they obviously think it won&#39;t be as bad as it currently is. Are you saying the Iraqis are wrong? That they shouldn&#39;t be allowed to decide for themselves? If they think a total withdrawal is best for them, who are you to argue?

You can tell me that it will hurt NATO or the US, but that is the US&#39; problem, and not that of the Iraqis. They should not shoulder negative effects that result from this situation of your own making.

I didn&#39;t know you were joining the army beforehand, so I apologise for labeeling you a chickenhawk - guess that makes you a hawk. You are an apologist for an unjust, violent occupation, but you are one of the less deranged I have heard.

What i was saying in relation to el salvador and nicaragua, is that in both cases the US led and directed &#39;elite soldier units&#39; to combat the &#39;insurgency&#39;, or in Nicaragua, the general population. In both cases they relied on torture and random killings to intimidate the population, as this was the only way to achieve their goals short of mass genocide.

[rebel_lord]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 11:48 pm
As the war in Iraq drags on past its fourth year a considerable majority of Americans consider the war to be increasingly difficult and perhaps too much so for a Coalition victory to occur. The Senate Majority Leader considers the war a lost cause and said, "I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week…” Two-thirds of the American public disapprove of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war and over one-half of the members of the U.S Congress support a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq. U.S troops are dieing at a rate of 2.5 per day and 3,616 have been killed in Iraq as of today. Congressional Democrats, anti-war Republicans, and a frustrated public argue that this unnecessary war has depleted America of blood, treasure, and precious political leverage that they say could be more appropriately used in diffusing the nuclear crisis in Iran or the genocide in Sudan. To their credit they boast within their constituents experienced and knowledgeable figures such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, renowned journalist Bob Woodward, Senator Robert Byrd (longest serving senator), Senator Charles Hagel, Richard Clarke, and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. Yet even amongst the most experienced anti-war figures, the most ‘dovish’ Democrat, and the loudest protester the argument collapses under a weak base, an absence of historical knowledge or relevant comparisons, and an over reliance on ideological accusations to compensate for what the anti-war platform lacks.

In April of 2004 Senator Edward Kennedy remarked that Iraq is “George Bush’s Vietnam”. A claim that still seems relatively pervasive amongst American voters tired of a seemingly endless military mission in the Iraqi quicksand. But considering the facts behind such a comparison, as well as the man who said it (Kennedy voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964, giving President Lyndon Johnson powers to wage war similar to President Bush’s war powers today) the comparison is completely absurd. Before U.S combat troops arrived in Vietnam in 1962 various administrations had funded eighty percent of the nine year failed French war effort in Vietnam. At the Geneva Conference following the French defeat free-elections were promised for Vietnam, but the provision was abruptly withdrawn and opposed by the U.S.A (who wrote the bill, but did not sign it) as it became almost certain that Ho Chi Minh would defeat the unpopular Ngo Dinh Diem in a nationwide election. After promising not to send U.S soldiers over to job to do what “Asian boys ought to be doing” and winning election in a landslide victory, President Johnson decided to drastically escalate the war in Vietnam as to reach a ‘tipping point’ by which the NVA could simply not hold out against. Conventional tactics used in Korea and World War II were employed far more than counter-insurgency (as was recommended by former President Kennedy) and at the peak of America’s troop presence over 500,000 soldiers were scouring the countryside, guarding besieged cities, and attempting to train patchy and often unreliable South Vietnamese Security Forces modeled along Western military lines.

In 1968 Johnson decided not to run for re-election following the Tet Offensive in which forty out of forty-four South Vietnamese provinces went under severe, almost suicidal attack from the NLF (Vietcong) guerrillas. This blistering offensive all but wiped the Vietcong out of the picture and Johnson out of the Oval Office, from here the NVA took over combat operations and President Richard Nixon began to ‘Vietnamize’ the war and prepare a gradual U.S withdrawal with a pledge to fund and defend South Vietnam should it be attacked. In 1973 the last American troops left Vietnam and a Democratic Congress voted to shut down all federal funding to the unstable South Vietnamese government. Within two years the southern capital of Saigon fell to the Communists and a new bloodbath of retaliation slayings, South Vietnamese diasporas, and ‘re-education’ camps began. If Vietnam somehow compares to Iraq in anyway besides the facts that both enemies we face are guerrilla fighters and that poor intelligence or outright deceit got America involved then please let me know, as that argument could be easily applied to the Spanish Civil War or the War in the Philippines which are seldom mentioned because they are American victories. This “Vietraq” stance many anti-war Americans take is intended to relate a current event of much lesser intensity to an emotionally taxing and shameful war we fought, yet all it accomplishes is confirming the atrocious vacancy of intellectual creativity or knowledge within their ranks.

At the heart of the anti-war movement lies its ‘support the troops, oppose the war’ mantra to display patriotism and dissent hand in hand. It is argued that conservative ‘hawks’ want to send U.S troops into an Iraqi meat grinder trying desperately to clutch on to whatever faded concept of democracy that remains in Iraq. They charge that not setting a time line constitutes a war without end, or one that simply cannot be won. Yet they fail to provide one example where setting a date for withdrawal led any nation to victory in any war of serious proportions, never mind being up against a continually active enemy. One would be an utter fool to challenge the patriotism of anti-war veterans such as John Murtha, John Kerry, or Chuck Hagel yet as with any politician their judgment and line of reasoning falls into serious question.

Should one care to open an encyclopedia, or any historical reference book, one will be provided with the shocking and neglected truth that in every decade of the twentieth century a Western power has achieved victory over an insurgency. From 1899 to 1902 the British Empire fought determined guerrilla resistance in South Africa during the Second Boer War and came out the victors. From 1899 to 1902 and again in 1913 America fought a savage war in the Philippines in which 4,324 U.S soldiers, 2,000 Filipino police, 16,000 insurgents, and over 1,000,000 civilians died. The result was an American victory and colonial rule for decades more, ending in 1946 after a series of agreements relating to decolonization. From 1922 to 1933 Italy fought a determined insurgency in Libya and won after saturating Libya with troops and applying asymmetric and often brutal war methods. 1936 to 1939 the Nationalists began a bloody campaign against Republican (anti-fascist) and communist guerillas and seized control of Spain under General Francisco Franco. In the late 1930s and early 1940s insurgencies developed in Italian occupied Ethiopia and each time was crushed, in several cases through the usage of chemical weapons. From 1952 to 1960 the British systematically smashed the Mau Mau insurgency, delaying Kenyan independence and achieving a more favorable settlement than what would have resulted from defeat.

From 1954 to 1962 France fought an initially unsuccessful war in Algeria but turned the tide of battle with a switch in military tactics mounting victory after victory against the FLN until the Evian Accords were reached under the anti-colonial DeGaulle Administration. This agreement allowed for Algerian independence but allowed the French to keep a considerable military presence in Algeria, some bases used even for nuclear missile tests, and in doing this the Algerian collaborators known as harkis were spared retaliation from bitter nationalists. From 1961 to 1974 the Portuguese military took on three guerrilla wars with equipment so outdated and in such short supply that to any other Western Army would be an insult if asked to do such tasks, and they gained the upper hand in all three wars&#33; Utilizing indigenous collaborators in occupied Guinea Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique, the Portuguese altered war tactics from simple ‘hold the cities’ strategy to classic counter-insurgency. Ironically it was the sudden Carnation Revolution in 1974 (overthrowing Antonio Salazar’s dictatorship and bringing in a social-democratic government) that spared the nationalist guerillas a sure defeat, as all troops were withdrawn following the change in government. In the 1980’s the South Africans utilized Namibian collaborators and elite South African ‘Koevet’ (special forces teams) to extinguish the SWAPO insurgency fighting for independence and retain Apartheid rule. In 1994 a South African defense firm, Executive Outcomes, was contracted by the government of Sierra Leone to defeat the powerful Revolutionary United Front insurgency that neither government troops or soon to be UN blue helmets could stop. Within a few months the firm suppressed the insurgency utilizing superior air power, and small elite soldier units.

The choice belongs to the American people. We can choose to succumb to the wishes of our enemies in Iraq and set a deadline for withdrawal, and then proceed to withdraw. We can take the easy way out, the way we took out in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. By hanging our Iraqi allies on a cross and retreating to the seclusion of our borders so that we can whine and complain about how wrong the war was and how we can focus on boring issues negligible by comparison such as gay marriage, health care, and tax rates. After all why should we Christian Americans give a **** about what happens to poverty stricken, isolated, and embattled Muslims half a world away? Who are we to finish what was indeed a noble cause in removing one of humanity&#39;s most barbarous murderers, Saddam Hussein? If hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered and a wider Middle Eastern War begins it matters not to us, because we are unaffected by it and can still watch the results through the sensationalized lens of our own media. Unfortunately this is the attitude prevalent in America now, and will ultimately dictate our feelings should a wider conflict emerge in the absence of American troops. Far be it for the lonely third of Americans to suggest that we not leave, but change tactics, for if they do suggest such things they are shrugged off as ‘out of touch with public opinion’ by politicians, ‘delusional’ by liberals, and ‘imperialists’ by those further to the left. Yet it is such a stance that can only bring about eventual victory as was achieved by so many before us, thus making it within our power to determine the fate of Iraq and all nations that will be affected by the war. This nation can bow to the demands of murderous terrorists, our can bind itself to achieving the victory vital to the well being of Iraq and democracy at large.
----------------

This is an essay I wrote for my summer project in history, I &#39;ve posted it here in the hopes of hearing more than one dissenting opinion. Let me know what you think of it. : )

USA is a thief, it cannot steal foreing oil, why don&#39;t the US starts to build more bicycles, etc, so that the country wouldnt&#39; have to steal nobody&#39;s oil

rebel_lord

[freedumb]

USA is a thief, it cannot steal foreing oil, why don&#39;t the US starts to build more bicycles, etc, so that the country wouldnt&#39; have to steal nobody&#39;s oil

It would be nice to get americans on bikes, but just watch the Big Three motor companies start frothing at the mouth the moment a congressman/woman mentions those words.

The US govt is in the pocket of Big Corporations, which is a large factor in why it invaded Iraq, and a large reason those fuel efficiency standards have remained stagnant for the past 15 years.

Basically, the US does what it wants around the globe because it can, and in part because it needs to due to the military-industrial complex. What is truly pitiful is when it is excused as being in &#39;noble intentions&#39;, &#39;for good&#39;, etc.

[Glory to Bethune]

The united &#036;tates of imperialism is the enemy of the entire Third World. I am delighted whenever an Amerikkkan pig soldier gets sent home in a body bag. Every Yankkkee soldier that gets corrected in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere brings us one step closer to the much-awaited downfall of imperialism.

Eternal glory to the Iraqi forces of national liberation&#33; Defeat the Amerikkkan invaders and their lackeys&#33;

[Dimentio]

Very fyn&#33; KKKould you synd my sym acid?

[ComradeR]

I&#39;m 17 right now and I&#39;ve already met with the U.S Marine Corps to enlist in 2008 when I graduate from high school, so no the chicken hawk label does not apply to me.
You seriously need to stop playing video games, you do realise that war is not like SOCOM or C&C right? Your in for a massive dose of reality when you get to Iraq.

As debating on the casualty count will only sway us from the original point (Iraqi Ministry of Health reported 150,000 dead) I will say that Iraqis are dying because of Coalition misfires in the broader war against armed resistance in Iraq and because of foreign terrorists (namely AQI) who are trying to make a political statement to the world of how they can defeat a superpower by murdering civilians on a daily basis.
Misfires in the broader war? How can you not cause massive civilian casualties when you use overpowered weapons in civilian urban areas? using 2,000 lb HE bombs and heavy artillery bombardments on civilian homes (and in cases like Fallujah napalm and WP) is guaranteed to cause a high number of civilian deaths. And it&#39;s even worse when occupation forces "misfire" and attack innocent civilians even though no resistance fighters are present (which has been happening allot in Afghanistan lately)

350,000 Iraqis serve in the Security Forces
Even the head of the US army as admitted these forces are useless as most are poorly trained, poorly equipped, have very little loyalty for the puppet government or US forces, and are under paid resulting in many moonlighting as guns for hire for the insurgency.

27 out of 31 tribes in the turbulent al-Anbar Province are fighting alongside the Coalition against al-Qaeda
True, but they are taking up arms against foreign fighters which make up a very small percent of the resistance, not the domestic fighters which they&#39;re own forces are often a part of.

and most Kurds wish for America to stay
The Kurds don&#39;t play any part in what is happening in the south.

I never spun it in such a way, I said leaving Iraq would pose a security risk to America and NATO in Afghanistan.
This is something I&#39;ve never understood about the pro-war argument, that somehow fighting terrorists over there will keep us from fighting them over here. That somehow by keeping them occupied in Iraq and Afghanistan will keep them from attacking western nations, if this where true then how is it that they been able to continue to carry out attacks in Europe?

Please do enlighten me, because from the way you speak I am inclined to believe that you think that when an insurgent detonates a bomb in a marketplace that they are dealing out &#39;justice&#39;.
No i don&#39;t condone these attacks on innocent civilians that are being carried out by religious fundamentalists. But i ask you, how is it any different then when the US drops thousands of pounds of HE bombs on civilian homes killing dozens, hundreds or even thousands?

The U.S Military is taking more and more of the Iraqi countryside as the campaigns in Diyala, Anbar, Babil, and Salahuddin provinces goes on, we will only lose as a result of political actions in Washington. Militarily it is not impossible to defeat an insurgency, America did just that in the Philippines, Britain did that in South Africa, Burma, Malaysia, and Kenya, and South Africa did that in Namibia.
This war cannot be won for one simple reason, there is a massive lack of manpower. There is one simple rule in guerilla warfare that has not and will not ever change, and that is regardless of how advanced or powerful the weapons are you will always need troops on the ground to hold territory. It does not matter how much territory you take if you do not have the troop numbers necessary to hold it, all this creates is an endless cat and mouse game that can never be won. All the resistance has to do is adopt a strategy of mobility, as the occupation forces take an area the resistance just moves somewhere else, and as the occupation leaves the area the resistance just moves back. Tell me how the hell are they supposed to secure a nation of 169,234 sq miles and a population of 26,783,3834 with just 150,000 troops?

If you believe the &#39;resistance&#39; will end when we depart Iraq you are in for quite a surprise. The same men you called heroes now will continue their gruesome trade of bombing, shooting, looting, and decapitating innocent people.
No the fighting is likely to continue for many years and it&#39;s going to be brutal, but the US presence there isn&#39;t going to change this, it doesn&#39;t matter if the US leaves tomorrow or stays the next ten years the result will be the same. But it is the Iraqi people that must decide they&#39;re own future, it cannot be done for them by some foreign power.

At the moment they should not have the right to self-determination as they are killing each other in scores every day and will proceed to commit even more brutal attacks if there is no semblance of security anywhere in the country. And yes I am willing to support a military crackdown across Iraq to end this violence and uproot organizations affiliated with the resistance.
My what a very imperialist view, "those people are completely incapable of settling they&#39;re own disputes or ruling themselves because they are barbarous animals, therefor it must be done for them by a superior more civilised imperial power" :rolleyes:

Manage their own affairs? With what might I ask? Their "unified and united resistance" that has such groups like the Fedayeen Saddam, al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic Army in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, the Mahdi Army, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the Badr Brigades, and the rest of the minor insurgent groups among its ranks in perpetual conflict with each other? Are you telling me that when American troops leave the Shi&#39;a death squads will cease to exist, al-Qaeda will leave Iraq, and the Iraqis will "manage their own affairs" as the Vietnamese (who had one unified insurrection movement) did after the war? You must be out of you mind, the nation will be carved up by respective powers unofficially and a regional conflict will grow even larger. The KSA has already pledged military intervention to protect Iraqi Sunnis if the US leaves, Iran is already omnipresent in Shi&#39;a sectors, and the Turkish Army waits right on the border to strike the PKK if rebel activity resumes. Your idealist argument simplifies a conflict that involves multiple groups who hate each other and look to serve their own interests, you act as if Iraq will unite when we leave, you could not be more mistaken.
This is true, US imperial expansionism in the mid-east has sown the seeds of a massive conflict, but like i said above the continuing US presence there will not change this as it is inevitable at this point, we have passed the point of no return. All the US accomplishes by staying is to prolong it, it&#39;s all a big shitty mess.

The murderers are the cowards who hide amongst civilians while fighting and bombing crowded marketplaces to make head lines and prompt a U.S withdrawal.
That unfortunately is the nature of guerilla warfare, the southern US guerillas during the revolutionary war against England used similar tactics as they would use terror against civilians they viewed as collaborators, and they would hide among civilians in towns causing the English to attack said towns and kill civilians.

Our invasion was just
Really? I wouldn&#39;t view invading a nation just to expand imperial holdings as just.

our occupation of Iraq is just
The US occupation is guilty of everything it said it invaded to end, the use of WMDs (the occupations use of chemical weapons in fallujah) and a brutal regime that uses torture and repression (both the US occupation forces and its puppet Iraqi government have used both).

but the notion that U.S troops are the cause of all problems in Iraq is absurd.
No not all of the problems are the occupations fault but many of them are, such as the divide and conquer strategy they used by playing the Sunnies and Shiites against each other that lead to the conflict we have now.

I did not say that our government invaded for that reason, I said the notion of overthrowing him was a noble cause.
It is not a noble cause when you turn around and commit the very same crimes.

No, many insurgents are men who lost loved ones due to U.S sanctions or due to the present occupation and are justifiably opposed to that particular nation marching in and demanding a new democratic order. But I do not apply this generalization to most of them.
It will be these resistance fighters (who make up the majority of the resistance) that will turn around and fight to expel the fundamentalist extremists like AQI once the US occupation is gone.

[Marsella]

Even the head of the US army as admitted these forces are useless as most are poorly trained, poorly equipped, have very little loyalty for the puppet government or US forces, and are under paid resulting in many moonlighting as guns for hire for the insurgency.

That&#39;s not to mention that elements of the security forces are essentially Shia death squads. No wonder that the Sunni militias respond with violence.

How could anyone support the Iraqi government - it&#39;s supported torture far beyond what Saddam achieved.

[ZhangXun]

That doesn&#39;t change the fact the vast majority of Iraqis want the Coalition forces out of their country. You can quote Churchill, and point out that Iraqis feel life is better without Saddam (which may have something to do with the lifting of sanctions under the new post-invasion regime), but it&#39;s irrelevant. The consent of the population is the only thing that can justify US/UK troop prescence, and that consent has never existed. The occupation is UNDEMOCRATIC.

An opinion poll from a news organization does not accurately show the opinion of every Iraqi citizen or even a majority of them, it is taken from 500 to 3,000 Iraqis in an area or across the nation itself. The Iraqi Government (elected by the people) has not demanded America leave, Prime Minister al-Maliki has said that the ISF could handle itself if we gave it the necessary guns and left but he never ordered our troops to leave his country. The Iraqi Government is elected by the Iraqi people and we will have to wait for the next election (Parliament or Prime Minister) to see what the nation as a whole truly thinks. As for the Kurdish question, over eighty percent of Iraqi Kurds view us as liberators and believe we should stay, on that count should U.S forces retreat to the independent Kurdistan if we decide to end combat operations in Iraq?


Quite simply irrelevant. If leaving Iraq causes problems for the agressors and occupiers, then that is a function of their own actions - not something the Iraqis should have to shoulder. The only thing that is relevant with the presence of foreign troops in any given country is the consent of the population. If consent does not exist the presence is illegitimate and therefore a military occupation.

But it is very relevant, from an ideological standpoint of course one action will lead to another, and this applies to jihadists who wanted to fight us in Iraq. We as the aggressors chose to invade Iraq, and in doing so opened up a whole new conflict in the region, if we leave we will fight the same foreign terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, if we stay we must continue a long war against Iraqi and foreign insurgents. I will not support retreating from the fight against AQI and abandoning the Iraqi nation to collapse and divide.


The insurgency is an indigenous one. Thus we can interpret what you have said as &#39;I support the US leaving at the moment the Iraqi Govt are strong enough to subdue the resistance from within their own population.&#39; Because that is what it is. You can say you don&#39;t support imperialsim, but your insistence on the presence of US troops in Iraq, against the will of the population, is exactly that. The US presence is all about securing strategic power in the region, mostly due to the considerable leverage thay have gained over Iraqi oil.

You view this insurgency as the Iraqi people versus the Coalition and not much more, this is incorrect. The Mahdi Army alone counts among its ranks 60,000 militiamen and many more in the Iraqi Police and are the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing campaigns against Iraqi Sunnis. The Badr Brigades back the SCIRI political bloc and carry out similar actions. The Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq counts several insurrection movements in its group including AQI (Tawhid and Jihad) and carries out brutal attacks against both Sunni and Shi&#39;a civilians. If you really believe the resistance is as straightforward as you think I implore you to read this article and more on recent developments in al-Anbar, once the base for nearly every Sunni insurgent group.

Deals in Iraq Make Friends of Enemies-In Tactical Shift for U.S., Informal Amnesties Win Some Insurgents&#39; Cooperation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7071902432.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902432.html)

If you do not approve of the Washington Post there are plenty of other sources saying the same thing.


Exploiting (or at the least) Iraqi resources is what the whole thing is about. The US is now trying to get the Iraqi parliament to sign a bill allowing foreign (read: US) access to the oil industry, and are using their prospective withdrawal as an incentive for it to pass.

I&#39;m not doubting this I am only going to ask if you have a link to this bill or news related to it.


Nah, you&#39;re right, nothing to do with oil. Nothing to do with power and control. Nothing at all.

I said it was about oil... :unsure:


At least you&#39;re not a chickenhawk. Still wrong though.

I&#39;ve heard some members here have joined the EZLN in Chiapas, I don&#39;t view them as an unjust organization but I&#39;m sure the Mexican Army does, it all comes down to what one thinks of the organization involved.


None of those countries are enduring a foreign military occupation.

A country does not have to be occupied by a foreign army to have oppression in it, we know this because of what people like Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse&#39; Tung, and Pol Pot have done.


Oppression is....

1. Foistering, without consent or popular support, neo-liberal economic policies onto the Iraqi population

Iraq isn&#39;t the only place that type of economic policy effects, look at what is going on with NAFTA in South and Central America or what is happening in the coastal regions of Nigeria. This is such a slim category of oppression, go broader than that, you are giving me reasons why the Iraq War is immoral.


2. Invading and Occupying Iraq against the will of the population, resulting in the deaths of tens/hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Out of curiosity, would you happen to know of a poll shortly after Iraq was occupied by the U.S.A that said they were against it? I&#39;m not trying to be condescending I&#39;m just wondering.


Just two examples. For a simple, easy to remember summary: the occupation is oppression.

Start with your own country first, otherwise it&#39;s more than a little bit hypocritical.

Occupation is one example of oppression, what our enemies do to their own people is another form of oppression, remove one and the other still remains. I view occupation as the preferable form of oppression to the other.


That&#39;s all very swell, but the resistance is a legitimate response to a foreign military occupation. The occupation is unjust. The complete withdrawal of troops would correct the injustice, doing away with the need for the resistance. This is the proverbial elephant in the room of your arguments.

You have no evidence to support such a claim and have not challenged my comparison to what happened in Angola after Salazar was deposed in Portugal. The MPLA and the socialist coalition (Cuban troops, Soviet advisers, East German pilots) continued an even more gruesome war against the UNITA insurgency which had fought side by side with the MPLA against Portugal until they left. In Vietnam the people overwhelmingly sided with one guerrilla organization (NLF) and when it was destroyed in the Tet Offensive in 1968 they backed the PAVN army from the North, one group without any competition after the U.S troops left. In Iraq there are multiple groups who only agree on fighting the Coalition occupation now, but when the Coalition leaves they will fight each other for their own interests.


Whether resistance has been crushed before is irrelevant. The resistance is neccesitated by a foreign military occupation. The occupation has to justify it&#39;s continued existence, which it cannot, because Iraqis do not consent to their continued presence. The resistance is legitimate, so you&#39;re missing the point.

What you need to understand is that while the resistance is legitimate, the occupation is not. You&#39;ve got it the wrong way around.

But I addressed this point several times, the resistance can be legitimate and still suppressed. The British did this in Burma three times during the 1800s and held onto that colony until World War II. Benito Mussolini and Rodolfo Graziani&#39;s troops tore apart a nationalist insurgency in occupied Libya and only lost the colony after they lost World War II. The insurgents and their sympathizers may not consent to occupation, but they are still human and can be as easily killed as anyone else.


The US is oppressing Iraqis by refusing to leave. It oppressed Iraqis in it&#39;s decision to bomb and invade the country, without just cause.

The US has an obligation to Iraq to prevent the insurgent groups from carving up Iraq amongst themselves and igniting a far more costly civil war. Our present day oppression is a small prince to pay to ensure the long term stability of Iraq and the safety of American forces stationed elsewhere in the region.


And your troops wouldn&#39;t have to fight the resistance if.... the troops weren&#39;t there in there in the first place&#33; You&#39;ve got the causation wrong here. The resistance is a RESPONSE to the occupation. Once the occupation ends, which Iraqis want it to, there will be no need for them. No need for your fellow americans to get blown up everyday.

No, you&#39;re right, we wouldn&#39;t be fighting them if we withdrew, the Iraqi people would be taking the bullets once directed at our troops. There is no reason to think that just because the insurgents have one common enemy now that they will not turn on each other when Baghdad is up for grabs.


The problem, is that you are not the Iraqi population. You have no right to decide what is good for them. They know quite well themselves. They want you out, so you should leave. If you, in your stubbornness, stay on, then prepare for indefenite killing.

We may not have the moral high ground to direct the destiny of the Iraqi nation but we sure as hell have the ability and authority to. The Iraqi people will hate the Coalition today and each other tomorrow, they kill their own more than they kill soldiers and they will do the same when we leave. If our stubbornness can lead to an end to a resistance, legitimate as it may be, and allow the government in Baghdad to consolidate control the war will be over and it will have been well worth the sacrifice, from there we could concentrate on defeating the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan with the experience we have acquired in Iraq.

[freedumb]

[/QUOTE]An opinion poll from a news organization does not accurately show the opinion of every Iraqi citizen or even a majority of them, it is taken from 500 to 3,000 Iraqis in an area or across the nation itself. The Iraqi Government (elected by the people) has not demanded America leave, Prime Minister al-Maliki has said that the ISF could handle itself if we gave it the necessary guns and left but he never ordered our troops to leave his country. The Iraqi Government is elected by the Iraqi people and we will have to wait for the next election (Parliament or Prime Minister) to see what the nation as a whole truly thinks. As for the Kurdish question, over eighty percent of Iraqi Kurds view us as liberators and believe we should stay, on that count should U.S forces retreat to the independent Kurdistan if we decide to end combat operations in Iraq?


And the Iraqi Govt is in no way influenced by the US presence in the country? I don&#39;t think it&#39;s possible to call the Iraqi govt democratic with the backdrop of thousands of US troops in the country.

This Bush on Lebanon and the Syrian Occupation:

"This is non-negotiable. It is time to get out . . . I think we&#39;ve got a good chance to achieve that objective and to make sure that the May elections [in Lebanon] are fair. I don&#39;t think you can have fair elections with Syrian troops there," the president said in a wide-ranging Oval Office interview with The Post&#39;s editorial board.

I&#39;d agree: you can&#39;t have fair elections in the backdrop of a foreign, military occupation. Like Iraq, for instance.

A news poll has limitations, obviously, but in the absence of a referendum or national vote (for example) it&#39;s all we have to rely on to gauge the opinion of the Iraqi population. The polls would suggest that the majority of Iraqis would like US forces to leave. What individual sub-groups think I don&#39;t know, but what matters is what the majority wants.

[QUOTE]But it is very relevant, from an ideological standpoint of course one action will lead to another, and this applies to jihadists who wanted to fight us in Iraq. We as the aggressors chose to invade Iraq, and in doing so opened up a whole new conflict in the region, if we leave we will fight the same foreign terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, if we stay we must continue a long war against Iraqi and foreign insurgents. I will not support retreating from the fight against AQI and abandoning the Iraqi nation to collapse and divide.

No, your presence in Iraq and Afghanistan only enhances support for groups like AQ who see it as a war against Muslims. If you retreat, their raison d&#39;etre is gone.

And you are ignoring the Iraqi nationalist resistance, which are not intent on dividing the country, sectarain revenge or whatever, but rather ridding Iraq of US troops. The US has made it clear that it will not withdraw as a result of peaceful resistance, neccesitating acts of violence against US military targets, and their collaborators like the Iraqi Police and Army.

You can&#39;t simply brand your opponents in Iraq &#39;al Qaeda&#39; and hope to ignore the legitimacy of the resistance. As I raised earlier, the &#39;insurgents&#39; are overwhelmingly Iraqis - more than 99%.

I&#39;m not going to go on, I admit I&#39;m no expert to the internal power-plays within Iraq and not really well versed in the bourgeois foreign policy debate, but I do believe the continued presence of US troops in Iraq has far more to do with maintaining control over Iraq (and it&#39;s resources) rather than trying to help Iraqis themselves.

If you are right, and the US is in Iraq to try and stop it from descending into chaos (how much more chaotic can it get?), it would be the first example of beneficence to another country as the basis of a foreign policy.

A long 150 year history of US intervention in the third-world for the sake of power and economic leverage, however, would lead me to believe that Iraq is in fact no different, and that the US is in Iraq to consolidate it&#39;s own power, against the will of the population.


I think this sums it up, though:


Our present day oppression is a small prince to pay to ensure the long term stability of Iraq and the safety of American forces stationed elsewhere in the region.

lol, small price to pay - especially when Iraq is paying the price. No bombs going off or landing in your neighbourhood is there?

Stability is a code-word for &#39;safety of business and economic interests&#39;. I&#39;m sorry but the interests of the US ruling-class are not a valid reason for interfering in other people&#39;s countires.

And US troops elsewhere in the region are one of the reasons the US is so despised in the Arab world. You prop up dictatorships against the will of the populace and then don&#39;t expect any repercussions.

Everything you have done in Iraq thus far has led to more violence. I don&#39;t see that pattern changing. Get out now.

[Ol' Dirty]

What would have been the most appropriate response to 9/11?

It certain as fuck wasn&#39;t to keep the same thing we&#39;ve been doing for the past- gawd, one hundred and... 10 years? If doing stupid things like that was causing the problem it&#39;s bloody well not going to be the solution.


(Feel free to argue that we deserved it. It won&#39;t offend me.)

The bombing of the twin towers was just a slaughter of innocent people. It was more of an attack on poor people than an attack against a state structure.




I thought our ruling class already had a mainstay on the global stage? The USA has been the supreme super power since the 1940s. Was this really necessary?

Fighting wars doesn&#39;t come cheap.

...To the people that actually fight them. It&#39;s awesome for the millitary contractors and the war department, but it&#39;s bad for regular people. Millitary Industrial Complex. You might want to read more about that.

[MYSTIC OWL]

Let us establish a reality check:

A country can never fairly and honestly elect a group of people to form a government whilst it is under ILLEGAL OCCUPATION. What we have in Baghdad is a French Vichy style regime that collaborates with the United States. It was unacceptable during WWII in Europe and it is unacceptable in 21st Century Near East.

Any legislation to utilize or dispose of Iraq&#39;s natural resources cannot be decided in Washington with the Vichy regime in Baghdad acting as a &#39;rubber stamp&#39; - (remember, the country is illegally occupied). The post-occupation UN resolutions cannot (retrospectively) make the occupation legal.

Participation in an electoral process does not make a democratically elected government. There has to be adherence to the rule of law that recognises the culture of the country and the diversity of its people. In particular, you have got to prevent a sectarian &#39;power grab&#39; . . . which is what the Shia clerics have managed to achieve because the United States needed their help in getting popular participation in the vote. The trouble now is that the clerics dominate the Iraqi government.

A country cannot begin the process of having sound government without SECURITY.
Iraq has a police and rag tag army composed of sectarian militia that treat citizens according to their religious tradition, as opposed to being equal citizens before the law. Indeed, these militia take part in sectarian murder (whilst dressed in army and police uniform). Imagine being approached by an officer of the police in Washington, Los Angeles or New York and not knowing whether they are Protestant or Catholic . . . (because if you&#39;re unfortunate to belong to the wrong sect, you are in danger for your life).

Then there is the dubious nature (I&#39;m being kind) of the US intervention in Iraq. The Weapons of Mass Destruction argument does not make it to the intellectual &#39;starting block&#39;.

Was it to spread democracy?&#33;

REALLY? ARE YOU SURE?

Then why not start with those dictatorships in the Muslim World that are good friends to US foreign policy . . . Saudia Arabia? Egypt? Jordan? all those fucking Emirates?
Pakistan? Uzbekistan? Morocco? Libya?

Are these (moderate?) Muslim states too important as torture chambers for the US as the CIA &#39;extraordinary rendition&#39; flights come and go?&#33;

The former Secretary of State Colin Powell made the case in 2003 (at the UN) that there was credible evidence that AL-Qaeda was working with Saddam Hussein and his regime. Those people with only a rudimentary understanding of Arab (secular) Bathism and the Islamic militia movements laughed at this suggestion, however, US public opinion accepted this obvious falsehood - (mainstream US opinion can only aspire to rudimentary knowledge).

The US is now in &#39;intellectual gridlock&#39; because the neocon philosophy has collapsed (on all fronts) and we see the US rabbit frozen and looking into the headlights of an Islamist backlash.

US actions have further undermined her own proxies in some (if not all) of the countries surrounding Iraq - with one exception: IRAN.

The United States, after only a decade and a half after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has created a foreign policy FUCK-UP of truly historic proportions. She deserves what is coming to her . . .

[Tower of Bebel]

2 things to say:

1. Analysing the material conditions of the iraq war is a better method to see whether the troops should return or not than your comparisons. Making a comparison to other wars is ridiculous because we can attack this in the same way as your attack on the statement "Vietraq".

2. The last part is ridiculous and if this really is for a summer project I hope one person will take his or her responsibility and give you a big red zero. You don&#39;t care about the lives of these people, just like the fundamentalists (and the youngsters they can convert because of the misery) who don&#39;t care about you.

[Dean]

A friend of mine left for Iraq, with the intentions of "killing some sand n*ggers." He came back after 6 months, his concepts of the war - and Arabs / the Middle East - totally changed. He said we had no busines there, that we were only hurting them. The imagery of naked children living in squalor while soldiers kill indiscriminately is reminescent of Vietnam.

Another friend joined the navy before the war... he is in and out of Iraq, but his description is pretty much that the military is spending 90% of the time waiting to get attacked, in the meantime looking for good T.V. shows to watch. This comes from a conservative friend of mine, btw.

Do you want to go just to wait around to get attacked? This is a far away community of people our nation is bombing for the bottom line. You&#39;d be nothing but fodder.

[fabiansocialist]

Originally posted by Capitalist [email protected] 17, 2007 09:18 pm
Did the USA have justification for going into Afghanistan?

Or was that just another imperialist war that serves "no purpose other than to perpetuate our own ruling class over the world"?


The justification is in terms of realpolitik. The US sees the entire region as the "Greater Middle East"; this includes not only Iraq and the Gulf states, but also Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and so on. The US is now involved one way or another in all these places -- primarily because of oil and gas and the leverage they afford in sustaining a tottering global hegemony. This is high-stakes poker. And it&#39;s not even a new game -- it&#39;s ones that&#39;s been played by successive adminstrations for over half a century, albeit at lower levels of intensity. It should be seen not as a "war" (misleading term), but as an ongoing project, and one which US elites cannot afford to see derailed as so much is at stake -- credibility, and maintaining control of the oil spigot.

9/11 afforded a pretext for this "New American Century" project, but had this not fortuitously occurred, one would have been concocted.