AgentWood wrote:
bLuE oRdEr wrote:
Does the 3-4000 westerners dead include the WTC victims? Because they died before Bush hijacked the WTC attack as an excuse to invade Iraq.
The civilian dead in Iraq-- and there are more today, by the way-- are the victims of suicide bombers from Saudi Arabia. Religious extremist nutjobs. The US and the UK haven't killed many civilians at all after the war. Maybe the occasional accidental killing occurs, but the suicide bombers are deliberately targeting civilians. The absolute lowest was the bomber who drove up next to a group of children who were lined up for candy a week or two ago and pulled the cord.
yes
the suicide bombers wouldn't be in iraq if we hadn't invaded! it doesn't justify their actions, but we helped stoke the fire just like we did in afghanistan when we abandoned the mujahedeen. the lesson: we need to be less myopic in deciding our foreign policy objectives.
elias, in answer to your comment about the greek tourists, i talked about it in one of my posts above (if you can trawl through all of our back-and-forth political nonsense ;) ): it was in 1996 in front of a hotel in cairo.
OK, so my point with #1 is that those deaths can't be used as an example of the folly of UK & US policy on Iraq, because they occurred before the Iraqi war.
#2, I agree, we need to be less myopic, but #2 was followed by #3, which is that the fact that there's a resistance post-invasion shouldn't be what directs policy.
[CAVEAT: A Chinese General made some noises a week or two ago that if we interfere with any Chinese invasion of Taiwan, they'll go nuclear. He said they're prepared to lose all their coastal cities, and we should be prepared to lose ours (i.e., he singled out L.A.). Now, he was giving a speech to some group when he said all that, so it may not be "official" Chinese policy, but I rather doubt under their system that he's free to just say any old thing that pops into his head, so it's likely that they're warning us, "unofficially," not to get over-committed to the defense of Taiwan. That's a good example of how we need to take the consequences of American action into consideration before we go to war.]
So, back to being less myopic in deciding our foreign policy objectives, I agree, but...
1938, Chamberlain appeases Hitler. It doesn't work. Churchill comes into power. The British have to decide whether to oppose Hitler or stand aside. If the Brits, the Yanks, and the Russians work together, they can defeat Hitler, BUT, post-war, outraged Swedish Lutheran extremists will begin blowing things up in occupied Germany. Should the British, then, step aside, and give Hitler a free hand, so as not to arouse the ire of the extremist Lutherans?
Obviously, the consequences of action need to be taken into account, and in the case of Iraq, there are only two possibilities: 1) That Bush & co. were seriously deluded going into Iraq, or 2) that Bush & co. knew what they were getting into, and lied to us. Neither of those alternatives is acceptable leadership.
Also, there are significant differences between pre-war Iraq and pre-war Germany, and I don't mean to say that Iraq was a similar situation. Rather, I used the "extremist Lutheran" example to point out the flaw in the argument that because there will be resistance, we should therefore not go to war. That's why #3 in my original post said that the justification for going to war in Iraq has to stand or fall on its own merit, not on whether or not there will be resistance. Point #2, that there are terrorists in Iraq, leads to Point #3, which is that foreign policy should be decided on its soundness, not on avoidance of conflict. Whether Iraq is sound policy or not isn't decided by whether or not religious extremists are outraged.
