Hitchens: Does the left really want the U.S. to lose?

What's good coming out of the Iraq War?

- More than 1800 U.S. military personnel are dead and ten of thousands more are wounded.

- Tens of thousands innocent Iraqi civilians are dead, countless more are wounded.

- Countless Iraqis lost homes. A large population are lacking food, living without water, electricity, sewage systems. Basic infrastructures were destroyed.

- Many Iraqis got wrongly arrested and tortured. More Iraqis fear for their daily lives under the threats from both insurgents and "friendly fire" of the coalition forces.

- More Arabs/Muslims are turing violent and becoming hostile towards U.S., the potential for terrorist attacks increased significantly after the War. Most of the good wills and sympathy after 9/11 have been lost among the Arab/Muslim nations.

- Iraq changed from a mostly secular state to a more likely fundamental Islamic state, with the likes of Ahmed Chalabi dominating Iraqi government and forming alliance with long time U.S. nemesis Iran.

- A civil war among different fractions of Iraq is simmering, potentially causing more deaths and destructions.

- U.S. suffered considerably in reputation (thanks to Abu Ghraib) and credibility (thanks to falsified WMD claim), making it much more difficult to form a true global coalition against terrorism.

- U.S. military, stretched too thin, couldn't finish its job in Afghanistans, has yet captured or killed Osama Bin Laden.

- Greatly worsened U.S. national deficit. Fewer and fewer people are willing to enlist in military. The country is more divided than ever.

If you people think the above "goodies" are worth the cost for toppling a shaky dictator which posed no threat to U.S. and replacing with a iffy democracy (your last straw of hope), you are beyond sanity.

 

LOL. What the heck does that mean??? "uncontravertable". Yes, whatever that means, you must be such an expert that it is right....LOL

Lefties focus on the negative. I feel sorry for people who have mindsets like that - never happy.

 

Are we reducing this to say that if soldiers die war is wrong?

 

I'm sorry, I was a bit ambitious in my word choice there...(note to self..don't create new words to hammer a point home). Anyway, as a "lefty" I am never happy when people die unnecessarily. That's my mindset. Once again, seeing that your country needs you over there in Iraq you are more than welcome to turn all of that wonderful pity and hatred for "lefties" into positive action against the enemy.

That's what I thought. You can run along now.

 

Hitchens, Basso and gang are as usual trying to claim opponents of the war want our country to "lose" -- in other words we are traitors. Same ol. Same ol. I don't think these tactics are really working as reality cuts through such bs.


Only roughly half of America ever supported this war, though it is less than half now and declining rapidly. Of the half that supported the war, almost half of them polling showed, were so uniformed that they thought Sadam was behind 9/11. What if Bush hadn't deliberately tried to mislead them about this?

Those who oppose this war,do so because we naturally don't want our country to continue to "lose" due to this stupid war. We don't want our country to "lose" its soldiers, it wealth, its prestige, its freedom, and its security from terrorism here at home, which a growing majority realize has been worsened by Bush's war.

Shame on Bush and the neocons for putting American in the position in which it can't help but "lose". Hurrah for patriotic Americans who are non Bush/GOP- first Americans who would like to see our country end the neocon's war, therebye stop the losing caused by the neocon's war and get back to winning.

 

Let's not forget, democracy is when people argue over their ideals peaceably not violently. Anytime you have at least two people you are going to have a conflict of ideas, ask any married man. What we are trying to achieve is showing the world that govenment is about the cooperation between people.

Wnes, if the US is guilty of anything is is just naivete not evil intent. We in the west have a inherent understanding about freedom and democracy that we thought would be self evident to the people of Iraq. We underestimated their fuedal and theocratic tradtion and adherence to their power structure.
We underestimated the degree of insurgency and it's support from outside forces. We discounted the natural rebellion of youth positioning ourselves as the rallying point for young muslim to find their commanlity.

It's true , no good deed goes unpunished and all actions have unintended consequences. GEB did rush the country to conflict in Iraq but his cause was very American. It has turned to **** but most everything does. Only dogged effort ever achieves any positive results. It's always a good to analyze why things happen so you can make better decisions in the future but once your into a bad deal you just have to keep working till you can get an acceptable result. So as Americans we should just temper our rhetoric a little, don't stop analyzing don't stop supporting the work in progress. That's the democracy we are trying to promote.

 

What you say about naivete and being misinformed may be true for the average American. Bush and Rummy might have been naive, but if they were misinformed it is because they chose to be so. A majority of the real experts on the Middle East and a majority of all inteligence services, including our own CIA, which the neocons had to work around, were not naive about the probable problems to be caused by our invasion, the lack of a democratic tradition in Iraq, the probable increase in terrorism due to our invasion etc. These were deliberately ignored by the Bush adminstration.

It is good to analyze how our country made the great Iraq War mistake. By "work in progess" I assume you mean our democracy here in the US. If you mean the war which was a loser from day one, I disagree. We need to cut our losses.

 

I have never hid my distain about Bush and his neocon administration that is true, but for you to sit there and self righteously accuse me of hoping that America would lose this war or somehow become less then what we as Americans aspire to be is an insult.

Shame on you!

Most clear thinking, true Americans can separate the two and while we love our country and hope for the best, we can see how corrupt this administration is and how they truly don't have the best interest of America at heart.

 

Christopher Hitchens is nothing more than a rabble-rouser. There is no reason to ever take him seriously.

 

You are right that after seeing what facts have come out in the Plame case I believe a crime has been committed. There are only a handful of people who could have committed it. Those people are in the whitehouse.

As far as Iraq is concerned, this goes beyond just using a weapon to attack the whitehouse. It is about upholding the priniciples our nation was founded on. It is about holding leadership accountable. I think for the most part we have stopped arguing about whether we should have ever gone to war in Iraq. That part is done. But we can argue about how incompetantly the leadership has been in handling the war, and how there is no accountability when the leadership makes mistakes. These aren't little mistakes, but mistakes that costs hundreds and thousands of lives. Yet the only side that truly seems to want accountability and is concerned about that, is the side that gets accused by being allied with terrorists. Our way of speaking out against a failed leadership is to show the harm they are doing. That is very democratic, very supportive of our troops, and very American of us.

 

Which is exactly why nobody should go into Iraq to give them that opportunity unless we are sure they want it, are ready for it, or we at least have a workable plan to insure that we can institute an autonomous democracy in that nation.

Of course our leadership failed us in those regards. It isn't fair to Iraqis who didn't ask to have our forces come in and turn their home into a war zone, to all of a sudden pull out and leave, and tell them what a great thing we have done for them, while they watch terrorists blow up their husbands, wives, daughters, and sons. They have less electricity than before, and far less stability.

 

I was giving the Bush supporters the benefit of the doubt and supposing their latest rationale for the war was true. Of course the U.S. security was not at risk, nor was it improved with the action in Iraq.

I do agree that U.S. security is worth fighting for. So is Democracy and freedom.

Because I support fighting when our security is at stake, I was in favor of Afghanistan. I didn't oppose Bush then just because I disagree with the way he runs the nation. I also gave Bush credit for the elections in Iraq when I was wrong in believing they should have been postponed. When Bush is right, I will admit it. I oppose Bush not because he is a Republican. I am not a Democrat, and didn't vote for Clinton, or Al Gore.

I am in favor of helping freedom reign. But freedom isn't best spread by forcing it on another nation at the barrel of a gun. Freedom and the willingness for it needs to come from within.

 

You are the most disingenuous debater in the history of this board. I dare you to reply to FB's posts from the previous page. I'll repost it for you here so we can all watch you ignore it again in favor of your usual ignorant slander.

 

Then, if you would be so kind, please explain exactly how Saddam was a security threat to the United States.

Thanks in advance.......

 

We love to demonize those we disagree with, it helps to make us feel more righteous. After all, is there anything scarier to the human condition than self-doubt?

Failing to even try to understand other points of view is indicative of cowardice. Fear of change, fear of influence, fear of there possibly being a different answer and we mask this by calling this resoluteness or righteousness. It is fine to dispute different points of view, but to demonize it? those are signs of a coward who really fears that what they hold on to so tightly may really be fragile and easily broken.

This applies to those on both parties. Too many accusations, not enough listening, not enough debating.

 

Bingo!

FB, is a better man than I. He still tries to constructively engage basso, li'ltexx, et al. Batman, you also gave basso the benefit of the doubt far longer than he deserved. I reached my limit for accusations of treason and intellectually dishonest discourse long ago.

 

Agreed. This is a really stupid thread, and until the above statement was not worth more than a . While FB constructively addresses the topic, basso and the moron twins pump out stupid rhetoric with no basis in fact and an obvious intent to demonize; all the while ignoring all information counter to their point of view.

That's not debate. That's a fox-news-esque waste of time.

Kind of sad really.

 

Apparently, "Actions speak louder than words" only when you are talking about your hated "liberals." It is the actions of the administration (the leadership, not the troops) that have directly caused many of the "setbacks that our troops face." You are perfectly happy to believe the words of the administration over the actions they have taken, but when called out (I know it was basso who was actually called out), you cannot name even a single poster who has said that they want the US to fail in Iraq. Instead, you say "Actions speak louder than words."

No, people like me (I was for the war in Iraq until it came out that I was misled) want the administration taken to task for the mistakes they have made. We would like to see the people responsible for those mistakes held accountable rather than given medals or promoted.

I wish the best for the troops. I pray for them every single day. I know they are doing the best they can under the circumstances. However, their leadership has not been effective, their CinC is clueless, and the people who have made the worst mistakes were actually given medals or promotions.

 

As you said, democracy is when people argue over their ideals peaceably not violently, nor should it be forced upon people with your power, in a certain version. I don't see war is a right option to convince others how good democracy is about.

No one ever claimed oneself of evil-intent throughout the whole history. Most of the dissidents in those fascist countries were judged by their words and opinions, smeared to have evil intent. Similar pattern can be seen here as well. I learned to judge people's action by action itself, not to second-guess others motives. Claiming to be naivete not evil intent, does not really justify anything. The impact of the same war to those who suffered IS exactly the same. Besides, I don't believe there is anything naivete about the Bush administration. They knew it all along, they planed the whole thing way back. They lied in order to start the war.

I don't think the West can claim that they had an inherent understanding of freedom than the East, but maybe the modern version of democracy. The West world was in slavery much much longer than the East did. Thousand years of feudal society gave you far more freedom and "democracy" than slavery did.

Underestimating all the bad situation, is just the consequence of underestimating an invasion. In other words, it was never properly planed. Why? Because US is so powerful, and it happened on foreign soil. This underestimation is just reality of neglect.

Once you made a mistake, to claim that you have to finish it since it's already started is NOT democracy, at least not the democracy I understand nor the main stream advocated. I was never sold of the notion it was about democracy in the first place. Otherwise, Saddam would never be in power.