5 More GI's killed today in Iraq. Is it worthwhile?

My eyes ain't what they used to be. Don't worry about it.

 

What actions prove that he was a threat to the world? His actions may prove that he was a threat to his neighbors in the past. His actions since the end of the first Gulf War, and the no-fly zones, resolutions, and containment don't show that he was a threat to even his neighbors.

Actually they weren't all saying that. One of the inspectors by the name of Ritter was saying that the WMD weren't really there based on the inspections. The man was labeled unpatriotic and traitor. History has proven that man to correct, and courageous enough to say so despite all the public outcry against him.

Actually the message that we were too soft to fight a ground war was proven wrong with Afghanistan. Furthermore that also sent the message that if anyone messes with us we will take action.

The best way to send a message is by just and reasonable policies regarding the middle east, backed by action and troops should a need occur.

By invading a country based on false pretenses, and forcing people like Chalabi in the govt. only sends a message that we may be imperialistic, bullies, not concerned with the value of lives, may be out to get all people of a certain region whether they had anything to do with terrorist attacks on our country or not, and that democracy isn't portrayed in a positive light, because of what we've done with it.

Some of those things may only be part of the story, but none-the-less that is the message sent.

 

Fine. I'll ask you the same question I asked MacBeth. What exactly is your alternate solution?? And you're right about the U.N. inspector, but it's not like the U.S., and the world for that matter, did not ask for confirmation that these weapons were destroyed, as required by the U.N.'s own resolutions I might add. Saddam Hussein repeatedly chose to call our bluff, probably hoping to destroy American credibility by forcing us to invade his country, and now we are where we are.

 

Of the alternate solutions that I've heard so far I can tell you what I liked.

Do things like support the Geneva model peace plan for Israel and palestine, try not to jump in bed with authoritarian and oppressive regimes in the region such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc.

Denounce the policies of these countries when they hurt their citizens by denying education, rights etc.

These are the first steps towards being fair and just, as well as decreasing the amount of hate towards the west and the U.S.

As far as dealing specifically with Iraq, I liked the idea of inspections with armed escort provided by the UN. Continue the no-fly zones and containment. Work with other nations to hear their ideas and come up with a workable plan.

Lead by example to show the benefits of democracy, encourage and reward democratic reforms in other middle eastern countries.

 

Wasn't there precedent before the latest precedent? In other words, sometimes things change because there are new, overpowering circumstances.

 

I avoided your question because I was trying to avoid the race based undertones. However, as you;ve taken the time to respond, so will I;

My first response is that you are making the assumption that to point out the flaw in a plan you have to have an alternative, which is fallous. The usual example is that I may not know how to cure someone's headache, but if you were to suggest decapitation, my lack of an alternative would not disqualify me from saying " Bad idea." In this case it would be akin to saying it's a bad idea to cure a headace by cutting off a leg.

My second response is that the worst thing you can do when it comes to military decisions, and this is something of an area of mine, is to do something for want of something to do. When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging.

My third conclusion is that, without meaning to diminish your experiences in the Middle East, several experts on the area who have devoted their lives to study of their culture, history, political and religious practices etc. would disagree with you about the inevitability of the conflict you mention. Sorry, but you're saying " It's gonna happen, bet on it!" is not enough for me to go firing up the B-2's.

My fourth response is that your rationale for the existing ill will in the Middle East betrays a certain slant on things which could well effect other areas of your perspective on the matter. To what extent to you think that issues like Project Ajax, the support and protection of murderous despots like Saddam and the Shah at the expense of literally millions of local lives has to do with the acrimony?

A certain amount of jealousy is inevitible when you're a superpower, true. But look at the regions where it is simply mild jealousy and the areas where it is outright hatred...you might see a correlation between such areas as we practiced Dulles style covert Imperialism, at the cost of millions of local lives, in regions like the Middle East, Central and South America, parts of Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia, and the places where we didn;t get involved, like Australia, Canada, other parts of Europe etc. It's not just a coincidence.


Now, for what it's worth, here is how I would have gone about the issues confronting us right now:

* Emphasized Afghanistan. THAT could have been the democratic lynchpin in the Middle East, although lacking in Iraq's natural resources, it was supported by a REAL coalition, and was symbolic of the global communion following 9-11 to tackle terrorism. The most important thing you need to make war on terrorism is genuine support around the world. If you have that, the terrorists gradually become marginalized, lose recruiting and training bases, risk more and more exposure. Additionally, each subsequent act, rather than win followers, furhter isolates them among the global community. And most importantly, it really becomes a lot easier to track their funding with world governments and populaces on board.

We had that, and not only threw it away, but reversed it. When we told the world that we followed no one's rules but our own, we simultaneously threw away the sympathy we had gained, replaced terrorists as the globe's biggest fear, and confirmed many of the claims terrorist groups make about us and our goals.

*I would have stayed the course with Terrorism and Afghanistan rather than use the emotional currency of 9-11 to undertake a preconcieved invasion of Iraq. I would have used internationa pressure to ensure Saddam conformed to the resolutions, as I was getting annoyed that he kept seeming to posture, but you don;t kill a mosquito with a bazooka, and his little games could have, and were, be better dealt with diplomatically with the threat of global military resolve behind them. That said, it was a side bar issue which Bush et al pushed to the front burner.

* Another thing is, and this is based on the assumption that your theory about an impending Holy War is accurate, which I sincerely doubt (although it's more likely now) is that if history shows us anything about religious wars, it's that they can't be won by force. Occupying territory and killing soldiers of a certain faith only engenders furhter resolve and creates martyrs. ( This is why, assuming he is indeed out of the link with leadership and unable to actually cause any more harm, I would almost rather Osama was never caught and simply lived out his natural life becomeing an increasing irrelevancy than become a martyr. Of course there is no way we could be certain of the conditions of this, so it's a moot point.) But this kind of ham fisted bludgeoning solution to this religious conflict you see coming will only make things much worse is history is anything to go by.

* And lastly, we have to get tougher. We need to understand that real freedom does not come in a safety wrapped guarantee of comfort. Everyone else on the planet has had to understand that freedom often comes with a price at home. Due to our geographic isolation and technological advantages, we have lived for so long in comfort that we have begun to assume that it means freedom. No other area of the world has had that luxery. Europe has had to play host to several massive wars which illustrate the point. But now technology has evolved so far that our geographic isolation no longer makes us immune, and when it comes down to choosing real freedom or comfort, too many of us are choosing comfort. We have gotten really soft as a nation. We are never, ever, no matter how hard we try, going to be immune to terrorist attacks anymore. We can do what we can to make them less likely, and part of that is to stop creating enemies with our arrogance and self-centered so what if it costs others attitude. part of that is focusing on the real threat: terrorists, rathet than invent new ones. But part of it does NOT include giving into fear and a desire for creature comfort at the price of our morals, sense of realism, and freedoms.

 

MacBeth,

Who are these so called experts on the middle east, what is their political agenda, do you have links because I don't care what any so-called expert says on the matter, I can't change what I've seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. The problem with "ignoring the race based" side of this argument is that this entire conflict is born out of two races with conflicting point of views. The Arab people are a very prideful people. Most would rather die than change their current ways which makes trying to negotiate the kind of changes we're talking about peacefully pretty much impossible in my opinion. Wars have been fought in this region of the world because one leader insults another leader's mother. It really is that archaic.

As for making Afghanistan your democratic example, aren't we trying to do that? Even so, going into Afghanistan alone does little to dispel highly held beliefs in the Arab world that the Americans are too weak for a ground war. You see, when the enemy is riding horseback against your planes and choppers, it still gives one the impression that the U.S. is hiding solely behind their technology. The Iraq war completely erased this source of emboldenment. Iraq's geographic location also makes it a more viable base of operations for keeping the middle east in line. You can only do so much from an air craft carrier and with the Saudi Arabian bases no longer available to us for use and Qatar too unstable a country for them to allow us to remain there long, a base in the middle east has become a number one priority if you are going to have any chance of non-violently bringing about the sort of change in these middle eastern countries that we need to be encouraging.

 

When you have no real substance, resort to cute rhymes. Thanks there glynchenem.

 

Deuce...


Will answer your post in full later, but first:

Do you see the inherent contradiction in the above quotation?

 

Apparently power isn't the things Arab respect most with apologies to the neocons - it's public works and welfare that'll pacify em...


http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2004/0129/p01s04-woiq.html

The GI's weapon of choice in Iraq: dollars

Congress recently allocated $180 million for aid to be disbursed directly by US soldiers.

By Dan Murphy | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD – In November, the deadliest month for US soldiers in the occupation of Iraq, angry and sometimes desperate calls began streaming back to the US from commanders, complaining that the government wasn't giving them what they needed to battle an intensifying insurgency.
But the front-line soldiers weren't calling out for more ammunition, armor-plated Humvees, or night-vision goggles. Instead what they wanted was a little money, enough to restart the Commander's Emergency Response Program, or CERP, a decentralized aid program started shortly after the US occupation began.


The grants, ranging from as little as $1,000 up to $30,000, were designed to get money flowing back into the economy fast. Potholes were filled, schools refurbished, and irrigation canals - choked off by weeds and silt for decades - restored in 12,000 projects across the country.

The project started with found money, the bundles of $50 and $100 bills that advance units found in Saddam Hussein's palaces as they rumbled into the country last spring, but was quickly expanded when front-line soldiers began reporting back that it looked like their best weapon in combating the insurgency. Between May and the end of October, about $80 million was spent.

The hardest month

But then the money ran out in the middle of October, and the casualties began to mount. There were both funding problems, and also concerns within the centralized Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad that it didn't have enough oversight of the program.

In November, when little CERP money was available, the coalition casualty count soared to 81 dead from 42 in October and 31 September. In December, after the funding tap was turned back on by congress, which allocated up to $180 million for the program in its 2004 supplemental spending bill, about 40 US soldiers were killed.

"You talk about good will - we could go into a village and fix a well that hadn't worked in 15 years and all of the sudden you've got old women with tears in their eyes and people chanting "President Bush,'' looking like the most staged thing you ever saw in your life,'' says Maj. R.J. Lilli bridge, of the 101st Airborne Division near the northern city of Talafar. "The CERP funds have been a major tool for us."

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I was looking for a thread to post this article in and this was the first one that looked appropriate. This is very depressing reading, by the way. You have to wonder if the educated, professional class think the war was worth it. My guess would be that their feelings are decidedly mixed.
Check this out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/international/middleeast/07ASSA.html?

February 7, 2004
Assassinations Tear Into Iraq's Educated Class
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

AGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 6 — Abdul al-Latif al-Mayah was never safe. Not before the war started, and not after.

A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Mayah, a 53-year-old political scientist and human rights advocate known in his neighborhood here as "the professor," was driving to work when eight masked gunmen jumped in front of his car. They yanked him into the street, the police said, and shot him nine times in front of his bodyguard and another university lecturer.

In an instant, he became one of hundreds of intellectuals and midlevel administrators who Iraqi officials say have been assassinated since May in a widening campaign against Iraq's professional class.

"They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."

These white-collar killings, American and Iraqi officials say, are separate from — and in some ways more insidious than — the settling of scores with former Baath Party officials, or the singling-out of police officers and others thought to be collaborating with the occupation. Hundreds of them have been attacked as well in an effort to sow insecurity and chaos.

But by silencing urban professionals, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, the guerrillas are waging war on Iraq's fledgling institutions and progress itself. The dead include doctors, lawyers and judges.

"This works against everything we're trying to do here," the general said.

It has never been easy being part of the educated class in Iraq, certainly not under the repression by Saddam Hussein. Now, all over the country, it is a lethal business.

In Baghdad, Haifa Aziz Daoud, a high-ranking electricity manager, was shot dead through her front door in June. The deputy mayor, Faris Abdul Razzaq al-Assam, was also shot and killed near his home in October. Every member of the Baghdad City Council has been threatened, said Muhammad Zamil Saadi, a lawyer and council member.

"In the past, it was the party people who got the good jobs," said Mr. Saadi, who has two bullet holes in his windshield. "Now it is the professionals. These killers are desperate to go back to those times."

The American authorities say foreign terrorists may be behind the attacks. "There is a huge incentive for foreign terrorists to create chaos here," General Kimmitt said.

The Iraqi authorities point to former Baath Party elements or displaced military officers. They say the killings have been coordinated.

American and Iraqi officials say there is no tally of all the professionals assassinated. But Lt. Akmad Mahmoud, of the Baghdad police, said there had been "hundreds" of professionals killed in Baghdad.

Mr. Saadi, the Baghdad city council member who works closely with the police, estimated the number at from 500 to 1,000.

Colonel Natiha, the head of the organized crime unit, said there were too many to count. He blamed the general sense of lawlessness in Iraq, which is still struggling to form its own police forces.

General Kimmitt said the military was not involved in the investigations, though advisers from the F.B.I. were helping train Iraqi detectives.

Lieutenant Mahmoud, 28, says he has not met with any American advisers. He has been left to investigate Dr. Mayah's death by himself, one in a sea of similar cases.

In Basra, Asaad al-Shareeda, the dean of the engineering college, was assassinated in November. Two months later, Muhammad Qasim, a teacher in the technical college, was stabbed to death in his home.

In Mosul, Yousef Khorshid, an investigative judge, and Adel al-Haddidi, head of the local lawyer's association, were killed in drive-by shootings in December. The same car was seen by witnesses in both cases.

Iman al-Munim Yunis, director of the translation department at Mosul University, said someone recently slipped a note under her door. It read, "It's better to leave your job or you will face what you don't want." In the envelope was a bullet.

She resigned.

Several physicians have been killed. Many more have been threatened. Some have closed their practices. Others have held on.

"I was given one week," said Abid Ali Mahdi, director of the Institute of Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine in Baghdad. "But I can't quit. If I step down, nobody would come and take my place."

Dr. Mayah, the professor who was killed, had also refused to be intimidated. He spent years ducking the secret police under Mr. Hussein. As a member of the Shiite underground, he pushed for the overthrow of the government, his family recounted.

In the 1990's, he formed a secret society called United Iraq Is Our Home. He drove around at night in his blue Volkswagen, other activists said, slipping flyers out the window detailing the government's abuses.

Once, he pasted small messages onto Iraqi dinars, which he folded and left behind on buses and park benches. People would pick up the money and read about revolution.

"He was an old-fashioned activist, completely committed to the cause," said Sami Mahmoud al-Baydhani, a historian at Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad, where the professor served as director of Arab studies.

A few years ago, the secret police took the professor to their headquarters. "We have an expression," said Khalid Ali al-Mayah, the professor's brother, "anybody who goes into that building, comes out a body."

But one of the agents was a former student and let Dr. Mayah go. According to his family, he had many allies in the security services. They considered him the professor with nine lives.

His daughter and only child, Hiba, 16, used to sit up with him at night as he drafted fliers. Once, she asked him if he was scared.

"He told me, `If I'm scared and you're scared, who's going to do anything?' " Hiba recalled.

After the war, Dr. Mayah turned down an invitation to meet with Jay Garner, the former general who was first American administrator for Iraq. He told his friends that it was wrong that a military man should control the country.

Instead, colleagues said, the professor concentrated on human rights, going to a conference in Jordan and holding symposiums.

Then the threats started.

Last fall, the police said, a man came to his office and told him to close the human rights center at Mustansiriyah University. The professor told him to go away.

Two days before he was killed, his brother said, Dr. Mayah received a final threat: Resign or else.

He gave a stack of his papers to his secretary for safekeeping. He told his daughter that when the time came for marriage, she should consult with her uncle. It was as if he was saying goodbye.

"I knew my father was surrounded by danger," said Hiba, wearing a black veil and a black leather jacket, a product of two worlds. "I was closer to my father than to my own soul."

That last night, Dr. Mayah went into town for an interview with Al Jazeera, the Arab television network, in which he criticized the occupation and called for prompt elections.

The next morning, Jan. 19, Dr. Mayah left for work in his blue Mitsubishi. He made it as far as a dusty side street about a mile away.

"We had a pledge, to live together and die together," Khalid, the professor's brother, said as he started to cry. What hurts most, he said, is that after all the years his brother secretly worked for democracy in Iraq, its arrival was just around the corner.

"These people are not just assassinating our brothers," he said. "They are assassinating our future."

 

What a hero! That's a stirring tale.