Grisly day in Iraq

YOU BROUGHT IT UP. APPARENTLY YOU DEEM THE DISCUSSION WORTHY. SO LET'S DISCUSS.

There is a MASSIVE difference. Did you happen to peruse the sick inhumanity exhibited by the Iraqis in these photos? Do you recall images of Americans cheering the deaths of Iraqi civilians?

sick sick sick

 

Ok glynch.. since you know so much... What actions would you take to make the muslims become more moderate in their views and not support such terrible acts. Do you believe that its too late to do so?

In all honesty, I think it could be too late due to the way we went in to Iraq. We did not make war the last option and therefore it made us look like invaders.

 

glynch, sometimes you have to look at the big picture. I have no idea what reasons motivated Bush and company to invade Iraq. I could guess, but it would only be a guess. But I can't see us just pulling out now. It took decades for the world to look at us again, after Vietnam, the same way they did before that war. One could argue that Vietnam, and not the way it was fought by LBJ or Nixon, made more sense than this tragic misadventure. And that's a war I protested in the streets.

 

Good question. I imagine that many Iraqis, including non-sunni, will hate us forever. But IIRC, even the leading Shiite cleric is appreciative of the US' gift of liberty to the Iraqi people. Just like western Europe after WWII, I expect that many more Iraqis will feel the same once we've left their country and they prosper under democracy and capitalism.

As for hussein's pissed-off sunni neighbors in fallujah and other areas, they can go to hell. They prospered on the backs of and torture and murder of their fellow Iraqis and now are pouting because they will have to pull their fair share. TFB.

 

It took decades for the world to look at us again, after Vietnam, the same way they did before that war. One could argue that Vietnam, and not the way it was fought by LBJ or Nixon, made more sense than this tragic misadventure. And that's a war I protested in the streets.

Good to see someone else who protested that war in the streets, as I did.

Is staying over there going to make the world like us again if that is a main concern?

I don't think so. Maybe if we selflessly apologize to the UN such allies as Germany, France and Canada and , turn to the UN for help and offer to foot the bill for the messy cleanup and large scale forces needed to prevent genocide it would be a good start.

None of this keeping the spoils for Halliburton, the Carlyes , the Bushes and Cheneys type stuff we've been doing.

Despite the best of intentions of course there is no guarantee we won't still lead to the types of scenarios feared by the first Bush presidency. But it would be a start.

 

Did Saddam give these people special treatment during his decades of rule? Or are they just muslim extremist clones?

I'm not too familiar with the people that are in the Sunni Triangle.

 

glynch, the world liking us has nothing to do with it. Respect and trust are what I'm talking about. That's the abreviated version.

 

Ok, are they going to respect and trust us more?

 

Deck,

Do you think the Liberation of Iraqi people was a misadventure?
Or Bush's likely motivations a misadventure?
Or Bush's atrocious foreign diplomacy...er...lack of foreign diplomacy?


I won't give Bush 'credit' for the war, because I seriously question his motivations. I am not so disturbed about the war itself because it frees the people most effected, the Iraqis. If in 10 or 20 years, the Iraqi majority remains upset about the war, then I will change my opinion about it and about future endeavours that may assist others. The Iraqis have been handed freedom on a plate, a right that seems to usually require the lives of many patriots.

As for Vietnam, one can argue on and on. Anecdotally, I know Vietnamese who were unaware of what communism would be like and were quite disillusioned after the war. The problem was that the American public thought they were protecting the Vietnamese from what they saw as a scourge, but the Vienamese saw it as a war for independence. In a material way, both sides were right. Tough situation.

 

If we did all this crap and then go, "Well, that was a ****-up! Gotta run." No. For sure.


edit: I gotta run... "see" everyone later. And "run" ain't a Freudian slip.

 

Per media reports, they received very special treatment and essentially ruled over the Iraqi majority and other minorities.

 

Can we ever leave this place in a way where there will be peace and prosperity for these people?

 

War is horrifying. Atrocities and the killing of innocents are unavoidable by all side once fighting has begun. We know this. It's nothing new.

That is why you set the bar very high when making the decision to go to war.

That is why the Bush Administration's deceptions to convince the US public that this war was necessary are obscene.

 

We can only do so much. The rest is up to them.

I expect than some of them will never recover from their loss of privilege.

 

What I would propose. BTW it would help greatly with terrorism.

1) The US will stop vetoing the UN resolution to give the Palestinians a state in the occupied territories. We announce that they will take steps to make Israel comply. This would incude, which shouldn't be necessary once they know the game is up, a boycott of the Israeli economy. Israel will protest, but will soon realize that this was in their best interest as it easier to defend a border than to occupy. This will remove perhaps the principle reason why they believe we hate them, which in part causes them to hate us.

2) We will pull out of Iraq and give the UN and local authorities hundreds of billions necessary for them to clean up the mess.

3) Most likely this will require breaking the old Iraq into three countries as this is the only way to avoid civil war and no one want to police them for 50 years ala Yogoslavia, just to see them go at each other when the UN leaves. If any of these want to democratically elect the next Ayatollah Khomeini, well that is their choice, but the policies I advocate are the best way of moderating him and his followers.

4) We sill start a multi trillion fund to develop the Arab world. This will not just be a program to enrich the Halliburtons and Carlyles. Sad to say but taxes on the rich in the US will eventually have to be raised. Iraqi oil will remain scrupulously clean of any taint that it is being disproportionately used to benefit the US or its corporations.

5) We will start a crash program to reduce our dependency on Middle East oil.

6) We will ruthlessly hunt down the Al Qaeda types and their spin offs, which should be much easier as we regain allies, even in the Muslim nations.

 

As for hussein's pissed-off sunni neighbors in fallujah and other areas, they can go to hell. They prospered on the backs of and torture and murder of their fellow Iraqis and now are pouting because they will have to pull their fair share. TFB.

Not a very temperate post. We're talking about hundreds of thousands or even several million people here. (Mango could you look it up?)

This is sort of like the mistake we made over in Aghanistan. Many of the Taliban were just ordinary people trying to do what helped them get along with the leaders who had the guns. It would sort of be like blaming each Russian or member of the Communist Perty for Stalin's atrocities. Fortunately we did not take a similar view with respect to the Germans and Japanese after WW II.

BTW you may think killing people with aerial bombing and destruction of water supplies is so qualitatively different than dragging the victims bodies around, but maybe the relatives of the bombing victims don't see the distinction so clearly. I bet you many Iraqis haven't quite forgiven the US for those atrocities yet. These facts are widely know in Iraq so no spinning or professed ignorance will change them for the Iraqis.

 

Interesting. Seems the Bush-Cheney Junta has decided they need to distract the public from a mess again.

Not surprisingly, it's by returning to another mess:
(IMO - If they do get Osama before election -- Bush will win, no matter what, it's his master trump card to make everything else he screwed up forgotten and forgiven.)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040331/ap_on_re_as/afghan_us_marines_3

Marines Sent to Boost Afghan Terror Hunt
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer

KABUL, Afghanistan - The first of 2,000 U.S. Marines have arrived in Afghanistan (news - web sites) to intensify the hunt for al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents, the American military said Wednesday.

The deployment signals new resolve to crush militants — and hopefully capture fugitive leaders including Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) — in an election year for both the Afghan and U.S. governments.

The U.S. Marines "have started to come into the country," said military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty. "Their deployment will take several weeks."

Hilferty said the Marines would be sent to one region of the country, where existing bases were being expanded to accommodate them. But he declined to say which area, or how long they would stay.

Meanwhile, in the latest U.S. operation, troops detained six suspected Taliban members — including a "mid-level" leader — in a raid in southern Afghanistan late Tuesday, Hilferty said. He did not disclose the leader's identity.

The extra Marines, deploying from ships in the Persian Gulf, will expand the U.S.-led force in Afghanistan to about 15,500, its biggest yet.

Many of the troops are strung across the lawless provinces near the Pakistani border as part of what U.S. commanders call a "hammer-and-anvil" strategy, drawn up with Pakistani forces on the other side.

The Marines are to adopt new U.S. tactics of sending forces from one unit to the same villages again and again in the hope of gaining better intelligence.

"They will conduct operations in one set area of the country to get to know the terrain and the local people," Hilferty said.

The military says the approach has helped them uncover weapons caches across the country, but it has yet to net any top militants.

The expanded U.S. force is also expected to help protect landmark Afghan elections from attacks by militants, including Taliban holdouts. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who enjoys Washington's strong backing, is expected to win a five-year term if the September polls go ahead as planned.

The six suspected Taliban detained Tuesday were caught in a nighttime search operation near Deh Rawood, 250 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, in Uruzgan province.

"We appear to have surprised the personnel there," Hilferty said. "They did not put up a fight." Troops found weapons and "other material which lead us to believe they are Taliban."

The province is considered a Taliban stronghold where some observers believe the hardline Islamic movement's supreme leader, Mullah Omar, could be hiding.

Thirteen people were killed in three days of fighting in Uruzgan earlier this month, including two U.S. soldiers and nine suspected militants.

More than 200 people have died in violence across Afghanistan so far this year, an unwelcome milestone as Karzai tries to convince donor nations gathered in Berlin to provide $27.5 billion for reconstruction.

 

we need martial law and thoroughly enforce draconian punishments for crimes. in many asian countries, murder, robbery, armed assault, kidnapping, drug dealing, are punished by automatic death penalties. this is absolutely necessary in a lawless country like iraq, whose citizens' respect for human life and civic order are obviously a joke.

we also need to totally revamp the iraqi nation's institutions just like we did in japan/germany post-ww2. this means total dismantling of existing govt/education/religious system, and wholesale re-education of the people.

we then need to institute clear church-state boundaries. prohibit all muslim clerics (or any religious figures for that matter) from assuming political office, and imprison those making remarks inciting violence.

frankly, i think some states are so underdeveloped, some people so undereducated/miseducated, that they are simply not ready for true democracy at the drop of hat. our job should not be to simply pay for feeding their people during their self-created chaos, nor should it be to watch our boys come home in bodybags and wonder why. it should be to proactively and if necessary FORCEFULLY provide them with the tools and education to build a healthy, stable democracy. this may take a long time, but eventually we'll get there.

and frankly i don't believe in doing all this work for free. we should be taking some of that oil for compensation. if we're paying for rebuilding those oil wells, then we should be paid back. if we're sending our boys to die to protect the freedom of the average iraqi, then the iraqis should be paying us for the service. it's that simple.

 

Originally posted by glynch
Not a very temperate post. We're talking about hundreds of thousands or even several million people here. (Mango could you look it up?)

Mango won't find anything. I intentionally directed my vitriol against the 'pissed-off' sunnis, not all of them.

This is sort of like the mistake we made over in Aghanistan. Many of the Taliban were just ordinary people trying to do what helped them get along with the leaders who had the guns. It would sort of be like blaming each Russian or member of the Communist Perty for Stalin's atrocities. Fortunately we did not take a similar view with respect to the Germans and Japanese after WW II.

We cannot blame individuals for acting inhuman? BS.


BTW you may think killing people with aerial bombing and destruction of water supplies is so qualitatively different than dragging the victims bodies around,

I know that it is.

but maybe the relatives of the bombing victims don't see the distinction so clearly. I bet you many Iraqis haven't quite forgiven the US for those atrocities yet. These facts are widely know in Iraq so no spinning or professed ignorance will change them for the Iraqis.

Many of them also believe that the Isrealis are behind many of the bombings in Iraq. Thank goodness they're immune to the 'spinning'.