Aside: my favorite part of the whole UN argument is how schizophrenic it is; it's routinely picked up an discarded at will: Neocons decry the UN as a useless debating society, then hold up defiance of sacrosanct UN Security council resolutions as a mortal sin, then deride the Security council as a bunch of sniveling cowards when they won't pass another resolution and act regardless thereof and huffily claim it has been rendered irrelevant and multilateralism is a sham, then go back to the UN hat in hand and ask for more help/money/men in the rebuilding process....it goes on and on and on. My own view: I studied this back in college so I used to have a fairly sophisticated view, most of which I have since forgotten. But generally I did view the UN as a fairly useless body as far as an effective global security regime -- I don't think anybody in the foreign policy establishment within or without the US has seriously harbored a contrary view for decades. I've always believed that NATO has always offered the best & most flexible & effective body (witness NATO's spontaneous reaction after Sept 11 in declaring it an attack on all member nations and its contributions in Afghanistan, as well as Bosnia & Kosovo) in this area. It offers/offered a forum for the big countries that are serious/capable of providing force projection to interact one on one, without the silly posturing and parliamenarianism of the UN; witness the absurd spectacle of the US on one side and Germany and France on the other jockeying for the vote of temporary security council members like Guatemala (no offense, guatemalans! . However, since the current administration has been reckless at best and downright contemptuous at worst with respect to the Atlantic alliance for the last 4 years, I don't see NATO becoming a functional security arm again until regime change occurs....
No war on the basis that they are not following the guidelines that were set up at the end of the first war. They were not allowing full inspections so we had to go do our legal inspections forcefully which meant removing Sadaam to end the games he was playing. BOTTOM LINE. First you guys try to refute the fact that Sadaam was complying with his end of the agreement and you could not, so now you have to resort to a "The bar is really low for some people" response. Keep telling yourself whatever little story you want guys and maybe someday you'll actually believe it.
Actually, the resolution would have passed, but a veto was promised by France so we backed out. We are all going to look back at that when France gets blasted for its illegal kickbacks from Saddam. If France wouldnt have promised veto, the US would have had UN support and we would all be in agreement of the action in Iraq - unilatterly.
Before someone says that we broke a treaty to enforce a treaty crap ... The difference is that we were the ones that fought the first war and fought FOR the terms that were in that agreement. If the UN was not going to enforce its agreement, it was our duty and our obligation to those men and women that died for that treaty in the first war. That agreement was no more with the UN than it was the UN that actually fought Iraq in that first war.
Myth # 953 Iraq is a terrorist magnet...now. Prior to the war, there were no terrorists in Iraq. Sadaam systematically squelched terrorist because they were a threat to him as well. Sadaam did not support an Islamic state. Al Quada does support an Islamic state. Sadaam and AQ were enemies.
SADDAM ASKED US TO SEND 2000 FBI AND CIA AGENTS IN TO VERIFY THE LACK OF WMDS BEFORE THE WAR!!! Saddam tried to show us that he HAD complied by letting the UN inspectors back in and by offering to let the US people in to inspect, but that wasn't good enough. The decision to go to war in Iraq was made in 2001 and the goal of the administration from then on out was to drum up support for said war.
Intellectual dishonesty is afoot here. The governing body for the treaty was the UNSC. The UNSC was thus responsible for enforcing its own treaty, as it sees fit. GWB failed to get the UNSC to bend to his will. GWB decided to act without the authority of the UNSC (making GWB a war criminal which is a topic we will save for another day). GHWB built a diverse coaltion, including Arab states, to fight the Persian Gulf War. Thus, the US did not go it alone.
Yeah ok keep telling yourself that. How many times did Sadaam say he would do something(such as allowing inspectors unfettered access) only to deny them when they actually got there. The US was not about to send FBI and CIA agents to Iraq to inspect when Sadaam was not even letting the UN Weapons inspectors inspect things like palaces and other places. I just can't believe that you are actually resorting to defending this tyrant because you hate Bush so much. Even the UN admitted that Sadaam was totally not in compliance for the 13th Time! The only difference was that the UN wanted to give Sadaam a 14th chance and the US said enough is enough.
Really!!! Now, nothing can be said w/ 100% certainty. I'm sure one or two lived there...as they probably live in the U.S. too. But the reality was, terrorism wasn't a problem in Iraq. Iran, Syra and even Pakistan were major harbourers. Sadaam and AQ were enemies. AQ, if you remember, was who were were fighting in Afgan.
He may have made a laughing stock out of it...but was it working? Isn't that the relevant question? As we now know, it was. And it was minor, it was symbolic, it had no tangible effect on the purpose of the inspections; to prevent him from building WMDs. SOmeone who looks at the matter as black and white simply does not understand the complexity of international relations. Fortunatley the people who write treaties usually do, which is why there are built in means of deetrmining and dealing with violations of same. As there were in this case, the treaty we signed on with, and subsequently broke when we felt like it. This has nothing to do with defending/liking Saddam, that tired old refrain, it has to do with our decision to violate international law, the conditions of justifiable defensive actions and the treaty we signed...because we thought someone else was doing the same. Questions, for you and all who support this 'defense' of the war: Do you therefore approve of any nation being able to invade other nations which it determines are in vioation of UN agreements, even if the UNSC and the world at large object? If not, do you have a list of nations which do get this right? Or do you have, as expected, a rationale why the US and the US alone should be allowed to do this?
1. Yes, Sadaam was a tyrant. 2. Yes, Sadaam did not cooprate w/ the UN. But that isn't justification for war. We're not defending Sadaam. We're arguing that the technicalities of the broken UN sactions wern't justification for the high cost of going to war. What were the sanctions protecting? They were protecting against WMD or other threats to the region/world. The sanctions worked because we discovered there were no WMD. It is very simple. Why must you justify W's actions w/ long winded explainations of UN history. 20/20, we were wrong about waging this war. And now we have to spend billions to bow out gracefully so we don't breed a nation of terrorists (which is supposedly what we were trying to avoid in the 1st place).
You are right, but the vast majority of forces(especially those on the front line) were American forces and the US paid the biggest price by far in the first gulf war. I'm not going to argue any more because we could go back and forth all day long. I can understand why some people don't like Bush and all and that is fine. I can understand people not supporting the war for the reasons I stated(although I believe they were just, but that is just my opinion and you are each entitled to yours). I can really understand people that are upset with the Bush handled the whole we should go to war for whatever reasons he stated before(and however many times he changed it). I totally agree with that and I think Bush was just setting himself up for a political disaster when he used all these dumb reasons for going to war. He did not handle this situation well at all and I believe he may pay the price in the upcoming election. Believe me ... My politics are completely different from Kerry so I cannot vote for him, but if I had a choice other than Bush I would probably go that way ... But I am taking the lesser of two evils. The only thing I cannot understand is people defending Sadaam actually trying to say he was compliant. I will never buy that you actually believe that. You guys are too smart. I will buy that you believe he wasn't compliant but it wasn't enough for war and that is a reasonable opinion. I just disagree and we'll leave it at that.
1) Doesn't alter the law, or the treaty we signed. We knew we had sacrificed the most troops when we signed the treaty. 2) Whether or not the UN was enforcing the agreement appropriate to the situation is not, contrary to your posiition, an objective fact, but a subjective determination. Fortunately, in anticipation of this, the agreement determined who would decide if appropriate response to violations: the UNSC. Saying that your or Bush's interpretation differs no more justifies acting on same than if I have sex with children because I've determined that it's ok to do so. 3) Aside from all of that, do you really believe that provinding troops to fight an action freeing Kuwait is equivalent to liscence to invade any time we feel like it from that point onward!?!?! 4) Please , if possible, respond to me boldened questions in this thread re: this excuse.
Fair enough. I respect your honest and open response. We liberals get tired of hearing the rehashed rhetoric. Such as..."we are defenders of Sadaam" Everybody wants what is best...but we differ on what that is. What is refreshing is a response that doesn't include propoganda as a defense.
For whatever its worth (I don't really see how this relates to the main argument), significant portions of the monetary cost were covered by Saudi Arabia and Japan, among others. EDIT, actually it was the majority of it: "The cost of the war to the United States was calculated by Congress to be $61.1 billion; two-thirds of that amount was paid by Kuwait, Japan and Saudi-Arabia" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Desert_Storm
If those violations are done in a direct threat to a nation or the destabilization of a region. Now let me ask you a question. If we find a WMD in Iraq, or one in another nation that was either financed by or built by Saddam, will you then consider this war justified?
As determined by whom? The prospectiuve invader? No. The WMD's were never sufficient in and of themselves. It's just that they are necessary for some of the arguments people have used to justify the war, and are certainly THE reason the administration used for going to war, hence their non-existance is an abvious rebuttle to both positions. I was against the war while personally thinking it likely he had them. The contentions I had were those mentioned here, the strategic and moral issues with unilateralism, or it's next door neighbour, and the fact that we had offered no substantial proof for our claims which wasn't discredited. War being he last resort means more than just saying these words while invading.
And where was the DIRECT threat in Iraq? In Iraq I, Sadaam invaded Kuwait. What was the rationale this time? If If If. But IF we do find any, context is important. If we find one petri dish in Syria w/ Sadaam's name it, that isn't too significant, is it? IF we find stock piles of something, I'll concede... a little while... until I see how the impact of destabalizing the country doesn't create a bigger problem than where we started. At this point, they've been searching for years (before and after the war started) and haven't found a thing.
