If you want to get Saddam out, how do you go about doing it "with ethics"? Stand on the border of Iraq with our soldiers, hold hands, and beg him to leave while singing songs? You call it a one-sided slaughter. Last I checked there were actually people who died fighting Iraq. While trying to help the European country defeat Germany we lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers. So that war was more ethical because we actually had people die to? You have to option when defending a regime, not defending Iraq, defending a REGIME! Surrender or fight. They chose to fight. They had to know that the U.S. soldiers weren't going to just stand there and let them pick them off one-by-one.
If you want to get Saddam out, how do you go about doing it "with ethics"? That is the question and why most analysts find that this war does not meet the test of the just war theory. The good it can lead to is not worth the evil involved in the fighting. Too many human lives, (including Iraqi soldiers, irregulars, misguided patriotic civilians who attempt to resist, as well as other civilians) will be killed to justify the war.
Saddam has killed more people during his regime than we have in this war. If we left him in power, he'd continue to kill more people. The Iraqi lives lost if Saddam stayed in power would far outnumber the lives lost in this war.
Not to mention after Saddam dies his sons will be right there to pick up where he left off. In fact, it's possible The Iraqi Regime could continue forever. The Regime that Saddam has created is a curse on the world, and needs to be removed as soon as possible...kind of like a cancerous mole.
Saddam has killed more people during his regime than we have in this war. If we left him in power, he'd continue to kill more people. The Iraqi lives lost if Saddam stayed in power would far outnumber the lives lost in this war. A credible argument and it is good to get away from the seemingly discarded wmd and UN resolution justifications that were employed early on . Now to evaluate this, we need to know how many Iraqis Sadam has been killing say per month in the last few years versus the grand number we kill in this war. The large numbers killed due to UN sanctions cannot be blamed strictly on Sadam. Killing to just revenge past deaths is not that moral. The past is the past so you can't talk about what happened years ago. Now, that we find it moral that the US should invade any country which kills a lot of its own or other country's citizens, we look how this theory is applied. We've got Indonesia in Timor, several African countries and a number of others. What seems to set Iraq apart from the other countires is that it has the second largest oil reserves in the world. It is this fact that leads the most of the whole world back to the belief that this war is for oil.
I recently saw a report on MSNBC by Bob Arnott (I believe) showing some of the republican guard buildings (not sure which town). In these buildings, there were huge bags filled with wheat from the Oil for Food program. While the Rep. Guard lives healthy lives, the surrounding people are all starving. I blame this on Saddam, the US is fixing this problem by kicking him out and giving the food to the people it was meant for. I'm all for going after countries that abuse their people. I would start with countries that house terrorists first since that's the most dangerous situation for Americans. People shouldn't be starving to death in a country that has the second largest oil reserve in the world. People will believe whatever they want to believe about this war being for oil. I believe that the Iraqi oil will benefit the Iraqi people more than it will benefit us. Right now, the Iraqi oil benefits Saddam, let's help it benefit Iraq...
So why are we getting involved. Whats that got to do with us? Ive said this over and over. If we can have WMD, then other countries should be allowed this too. If we want other countries to get rid of theirs, then we should too. This war is wrong.
I'm trying to see how YOU think...but after reading all of this I'm convinced you aren't thinking at all. As far as the opinion of "most of the world"...MOST of the world is in the coalition. 48 nations, as opposed to France and Germany. You're officially hopeless.
If you are talking about proportionality as a Jus In Bellum prinicple of the JWT, then this war meets that requirement. The U.S. is maximizing good and minimizing evil. The Iraqi casualties are not dispropotionate to the amount of death caused by the Hussein regime, and the US is not using any unecessary violence.
The glynch theorem: If France says it's wrong then it is. If the UN says it's wrong then it is. If US interests are harmed then you just shrug and assume we deserved it somehow.
I'm surprised this thread is so one sided, if in fact we went in with 60+ armored vechs. and took out 3000 "soldiers" certainly many of those must be civilians caught in the crossfire. What i'm seeing on the news is complete destruction of city blocks. We certainly can't go through all of Baghdad in this manner, is this "shock and awe" ground war? I agree that now we are in this war neck deep we need to win it quick, but we can't kill this many people and send out news reports that seem as if we're bragging. btw- This thread has taken on the tone of a football score which is just gross.
So if you were being oppressed here in the United States by a crazy, blood thirsty, soulless dictator you wouldn't want someone to come over here and save your @ss? So now it's wrong to go over and save somebody!? The war is wrong because we're saving lives from a crazy regime that systematically butchers people by the thousands every year? If there are WMD go in and take care of business, but I'll be damned if we're going in there to save human lives! As for other countries using WMD because we have them, the U.S. hasn't used a nuclear weapon in like 60 years. And won't use it. Meanwhile countries like Iraq would use them in a heart beat and give them to terrorists. Case closed, Saddam is a dead man.
Huh? You think this is the first time someone called out glynch or put him on his/her ignore list? And here I thought you were a regular on this BBS...
Well you do know that Iraq is using many civilians to protect themselves, namely in suicide missions. It's hard to protect the civilians when the regime is using them as human shields. But it goes back to this, nobody here WANTS to hurt or kill innocent civilians, but odd are that Saddam will kill them for being "traitors" anyway if the coalition left anyway. <i>btw- This thread has taken on the tone of a football score which is just gross.</i> And the Saddam regime "keeping their people in line by killing them" has taken on the tone of genocide, which is also gross. Bottomline, to stop the killing you have to get the people who love to do the killing.
