One man's resistance: 'Why I turned against America'

What are the "facts" to which you refer? I'm not sure what "facts" you think I'm denying.

Perhaps you are mistaking that I am not being deterred by setbacks which I consider temporary. Even the guy in the interview admits that the resistance is stretched thin on resources. I guess someday they'll start throwing gasoline-filled water baloons when they run out of RPGs.

Maybe if other resisters stop killing Iraqi police recruits and there can be a stronger police presence on the street so that daily life calms down he can <b>quit his night job.</b>... if somebody doesn't kill him first and I hope we do.

I heard a quote from Eisenhower the other day. It goes something like this: ~" Every battle has a plan until it meets the enemy."

 

actually someone posted earlier trying to prove that most iraqs dont want us there, but it turned out most iraqis do think of us as invaders, and think we did more wrong than good.

 

Thus is the peril of taking a quote out of context. The facts:
*It is a unilateral war.
*The war is carried by two motivations: Iraq posed immediate threat to the US with its WMD and connection to terrorists, and getting rid of Sadam is worth the war for Iraqis and the world. The first has yet to to proven. The second is US's assumption, benevolent or nor, imperialistic.
*Most of the Iraqis dont' want US to be there. "Dancing in the streets" is a false theory.

 

Defining imperialism is not an easy task - please dont get a webster's definition, its much to generic to be useful. Imperialism used to be defined as the expansion of territory, and you can't deny that the US has done that. But the establishment of colonial territory is not what the US is doing, and that's where the confusion arises. What some call 'Open Door Imperialism,' where economic and cultural domination are the goals probably more accurately defines what has happened in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Whether that is something to be used as a blanket pejorative is another question, and that is why I resist the labelling of the US as an imperial power in the mold of a Great Britain or Rome. Although Teddy R might have (and probably did) consider himself an imperialist, I don't know if he'd have thought of it in the pejorative sense. If the US is trying to bring freedom, peace, and prosperity to the unfree and instable world, that is not an imperial aspiration but an ambitious (no doubt) voyage. If it is following Rome and getting greedy then I suppose it is imperialism in an evolved form. I think its more of the former, and not the latter.

 

What quote out of context are you talking about? Eisenhower's?

The immediate threat that Saddam posed to the US was that 9/11 changed everything and a new age of terrorism appeared to be upon us. Saddam's opposition to the US was an obvious problem. His connection to terrorists was secondary. If he didn't have it now; he was more than ever likely to develop it.

How is assuming that Saddam would sooner or later be in bed with terrorists imperialist. Is is pre-emptive but not imperialistic.

Iraq is a nation of 25 million people or so. I'm not sure how accurate polling those closest to the fighting is really going to be.

 

a. there are no weapons, there was a chance, hell there is a chance that there will be weapons in switzerland , who knows how long that will take, ther was no threat to America, atleast not an immediate one, not as big of a threat as N. Korea anyways... but fact is the war was a step taken in haste.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm..._on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_weapons&cid=542&ncid=716

b. Why do you belive that the Iraqi's want to be invaded, and attacked, and such. Surely Saddam was a horrible dictator, but if he was as bad as the Media is showing him to be now, then we would have heard more cries for help in the last 10 years. This is not a case of freeing the people from a dictator.

 

Two of the three major groups that comprise 'Iraqis,' the Kurds and shiites rose up against Saddam and were crushed by his military. That doesn't sound like people that wanted Saddam in power to me. Does it to you?

 

How many times do we see Kashmiri's protesting against either india or pakistan, how many times do we see cubans protesting, africans all day long protesting against governments that are corrupt, stuff like that usually is taken lightly by the US. why now is it that we felt the need to attack?

 

So unless we intervene in all cases, we cannot intervene in any case?

 

That's irrelevant. You said there was no sign that Iraqis wanted to ovethrow Saddam. That is simply wrong as I've shown.

 

We never really heard of it untill the war, the war just magnified the whole ordeal, it would have been just as unheard of as the others. Why is that important, because if A. there was no war, B. we wouldnt have known about it.

 

No, its more like we should intervene in cases that desereve it more or justify invasion. if we spent half this money on helping opressed africans, O what could have been. If we would have spent this money on taking down korea, well we all know that woulda helped a lot more than admitting that Iraq has no WMD and never did.

 

Never did? Tell that to the Kurds.

 

OK not admitting, but from every single speck of evidence it sure is almost a fact that there were nor are any weapons, and it shows how pathetic the gov. looks trying to go on and on about how there are weapons. This is worse than a child trying to lie about weather he broke something or not.

 

This is just not true. Opposition to Saddam was long-known. Why do you think Saddam killed so many Iraqis?

 

Then why the hell didnt we invade as soon as we found out about it, why wait till 9-11, why wait at all, bush shoulda done it as soon as he got into office, because apparently this was something he was determined to do "free the iraqi people"...

 

I think there are two reasons:

1. As bad as Saddam was, we had been friendly with him before and now we were at odds with Iran. We needed someone as a friend in the region.

2. We werent' exactly waiting on 9/11 but it sure did prompt action. No one knew what to expect post 9/11, thus a preemptive doctrine. Sit around being nicey-nicey and have another 9/11? No thanks.

Saddam would have allied with terrorists eventually. Our should-have-been allies were deep into his pockets. So we go it "alone" with a much smaller coalition or as some would prefer to say "unilaterally!"

 

Freeing an oppressed people from a tyrannical dictator was not reason enough for the libs. There had to be some excuse. That is why the libs are still so up in arms about there being no WMD in Iraq. I don't care if they never find stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, because there is already a good reason to go over and overthrow Saddam, and his name is Saddam. Wouldn't it have been great if the Nazis were overthrown before they started WWII and exterminated 12 million people in death camps? How about if Stalin was overthrown before he murdered 25 million Soviets? Dictators in general are usually bad, and ones that exterminate big chunks of people are worse. Getting rid of them is reason enough for me to support a war. For whatever reason, Bush decided to intervene in this case. Whether there are other cases that are "more deserving" or not, doesn't change the fact that this case was deserving in it's own right. Now, if we were to invade Canada, I don't think the same could be said.

 

So now the US punsihes people based on what could have happened. What is this "minority report"

 

Saddam deserved what he got. We had tolerated him for too long for the wrong reasons. It's not like we toppled Holland or something. That's for you arno_ed!!