Why we went to warFollow

Look. I just don't think that "the poor" is relevant here. Yes. You are midly correct that lower income people tend to end up in military service (particularly enlisted) at a higher rate then anyone else. Um... What's that got to do with why we went to Iraq?

Was WW2 an "ok" war? Guess what? "The poor" mostly fought that one too. The issue isn't about the poor. It's about why we went to Iraq, and the misconceptions many people have about those reasons. Who's fighting is irrelevant. Until there's some major social change which I don't forsee in the immediate future, "the poor" will always fight and die in disproportionate numbers to "the rich" in wars. Noting about Iraq is different in that regard, so the statement is irrelevant.




If you want to debate Republican vs Democrate economic plans, I'm more then willing to do so. Start a new thread.

Has it occured to you that maybe those "poor" who are Republicans are right? After all, there's roughly the same number of Reps and Dems in the country. If it was soo obvious that one party was "better", then that simply wouldn't be the case. Maybe we Reps understand something that you just don't get? Ever think about that?...



Since when were "the common people" all poor? Again. That's rhetoric designed to draw a group into a feel-good position that makes them think they're somehow morally superior. Look. There are lots of people. There is a whole spectrum of economic levels. Most people fall somewhere in the middle between rich and poor.

And again. The Iraq war had *nothing* to do with helping the poor. You didn't have to be poor to be arrested and tortured in Iraq under Saddam. You just had to be of the wrong persuasion, or say the wrong thing, or have someone claim you said the wrong things. That may fly in the face of your "brotherhood of poor" coalition you seem to be trying to form here, but it's not just poor people who are oppressed around the world.




Huh? I'm 35 years old. I've had a pretty diverse field of experiences in my life. This is not brash confidence of an inexperienced person speaking. It's the comments of someone who's spent a long time thinking about politics, and who's discussed politics, strategy, and every other topic under the sun with a wide assortment of people from a wide assortment of backrounds. But my opinion doesn't count because I'm not serving in the military?



It's irrelevant because it is. Deal with it.



They generally don't let 35 year old people join up moron.

I've had the business end of a shotgun held to the back of my head by a guy who was very high on drugs and very pissed off at someone (not me. I just happened to be in the wrong place). I managed to talk him and his friends out of killing me and my girlfriend at the time. We don't all have the luxury of carrying firearms and operating in a unit where we know someone's covering our backs and keeping us safe. Don't even pretend that serving makes you any more qualified to discuss anything about politics, or somehow makes you more mature, or worldly, or experienced at life.





Ah yes. All us "rich folks" grew up with a damn silver spoon in our mouths. Sure... Look. You know nothing about me. My life is the result of my choices and my actions. You need to stop sitting there wallowing in your own pity and protesting that the freaking world is "unfair" and doesn't give you a break.

I've been homeless. I've lived on the street. I've been unemployed. I've had my fair share of "adventures" during my life (and a hell of a lot of good stories to boot!). I was given *nothing* by my family. Every single thing I have today I earned with my own two hands.

So I don't want to hear about you sitting there boo hooing about how life is unfair. You make of your life what you want. You decide. You work hard. You achieve. I'm sorry if you thought that joining the military was a free ticket out of poverty, and you're now pissed that Uncle Sam expects you to pay for it after all. That's just too damn bad. But I simply do not have any respect for someone who expects to get something for nothing. Not ever. You made the choice. You live with it.


Sheesh. You're freaking pathetic.








Edited, Tue May 11 12:37:00 2004 by elevenbravo[/quote]

Ah yes. And I was born with the friends I have, right?

No. If I hadn't gotten the job I've got, I'd likely be working somewhere else in the same field. I'd probably be making as much money. I might not have as nice of an investment portfolio, but it's not like I live off that anyhow. I'd still be living in the same neighborhood, I'd just likely be a renter instead of an owner (actually, I could have probably still bought the place without selling any stock, but I'd have higher payments due to taking a secured loan).


It really is all about choices you make. I chose what friends to make. I chose what skills to learn. Sure. There's luck involved, but you make about 90% of your luck in life. You make that luck by making choices that increase your opportunities. If you make bad choices, you wont have that freind who can maybe get you that good job, or you don't have the skills to qualify for that job, or you don't have the drive to excell at that job.

If you just sit on your *** waiting for the money tree fairy to come and give you a good life, you'll be waiting a really really long time...

It certainly gives me just as much right to discuss the political situation in Iraq as a guy who simply one day showed up at a recruitment depo and signed some paperwork. Exactly when in the standard enlisted man's training do they go over historical political scenarios and relate them to current world events?


Um... And it certainly supports my assertion that opportunity is more important then entitlement. Honestly though, this belongs in a different thread. I just find it absurd that someone would suggest that only someone who's served in the military is qualified to make an assessment about political issues.


And none of that changes the fact that our mission in Iraq is not to find WMD, and our success in Iraq is not based on whether we find those WMD, and the lack of finding WMD does not in any way mean that we failed, or that we shouldn't have been there.

Happy?

Sure it does. I never made the argument that being in the military gave anyone magic insight into policy.



I find it absurd that a white guy who got lucky and got a job because he knew people would say affirmative action wasn't nessicary. That's just me, though.


What's the mission then, in your mind and how could we ever possiblt fail?

Lol. Smash, I know your ego is about the size of Montana, but I wasn't talking to you. I was responding to Elevenbravo's comment that since I didn't serve in the military I had no right or experience to talk about Iraq. Next time you pick a side to argue, you might want to actually read the posts that lead up to that point.

Thanks for playing though...




Again. This has nothing to do with why we went into Iraq. Elevenbravo's "the poor" argument was from left field. That's all I was saying.

We've discussed the whole opportunity vs entitlement thing before. If you want to do it again, feel free to start a new thread.







Um... The primary mission in Iraq was to remove Saddam's regime. Um... That mission was "accomplished". The next mission was to replace it with one less hostile to the US. We've still got a pretty good shot at doing that as long as some idiot doesn't come along and make getting us "out of Iraq" an issue in the next election, manage to win, and end up abandoning the Iraqi people to the next dictator that comes along.


The more long term mission is to fight the so called "War on Terror" (as much as I really do hate that kind of moniker). Iraq is one piece of that puzzle (hence why issues of terrorism outweighed WMD in the resolution). The primary policy shift after 9/11 was the decision to hold nations accountable for harboring/supporting terrorist organizations. On that issue, Iraq has been an astounding success. The concessions we're getting from Jordan, Syria, and Libya alone are huge. What did you think the point of that sort of doctrine change was? It's to make governments clean up their own countries. If for no other reason then to avoid the consequences if they don't. Iraq was exactly the object lesson needed to show that we were serious about following through with that doctrine.


Sure. There's lots of ways to still fail. But that's true of anything you do. However, we have not "bungled" Iraq nearly as badly as many people would like to imply. While I completely agree that the problems we've had managing the policing of Iraq were badly handled, I still don't think that the purpose of the war was misguided, and I still do believe that in the long run, it was the right thing to do. But mistakes made along the way does not mean that the goal is wrong.

If, after the dust settles in Iraq, there emerges a leader who is more unfriendly to the US then Saddam Husein was, and oppresses his people as much or more.

If, over the next 10 years or so, terrorist groups gain the backing of nations rather then lose it.


The first condition is a matter of relative cost of course. If the resulting leader is just a few percent less nasty towards us then Saddam, then that part would be a failure. And if he only kills 80k of his own people over a 10 year period instead of 100k, then that would also be a failure. Honestly though, I don't think the resulting leader will be anywhere near as bad as Saddam was. The most likely cause of a "bad" leader emerging is if the factions in Iraq believe that our resolve to see this through is waning. Then they're more likely to try for a grab of full power versus sharing it. If they think we (or the UN, or some other powerful 3rd party) will actively prevent that, then they'll accept a shared solution as long as they aren't oppressed themselves.

The issue really is a matter of how those faction leaders see the future. I think for the most part, their justifications are about preventing their faction from being the ones on the bottom of the heap. The less faith they have in a shared power solution, the more likely they'll just break into open warfare to make sure they're the ones in power instead of the ones being oppressed. It's absolutely critical that they believe that the US has a firm resolve in Iraq, or the whole mess will collapse (and get really ugly).


As to the second condition, that's going to be something we'll really have to just wait and see. The difference between a relatively harmless group of nutballs and a dangerous terrorist organization is money and support. By actively going after those, I think we will see those terrorist groups lose their ability to take action. Will they be eliminated? No. Not even close. We have radical groups here in the US. Most likely the reason they don't tend to go around blowing up buildings is simply because they know they'll be caught and punished for it. If our government for some reason turned a blind eye to those groups, you can bet they'd be more violent then they are, right? Why not expect that works in reverse as well?


Bush's doctrine makes that a very real threat down the road for these groups. If we can make it so that they know that they wont be able to operate openly under the protection of an indifferent nation's borders, we will see a reduction in the amount of violent actions. Add in the increased difficulty to fund those groups, and you deal a crippling blow. This is the hidden bonus that we're getting out of Iraq. See... No matter who ends up in power in Iraq, as long as it's not Saddam, we win this part of the war. All Kadaffi cares about is that he's in power (same with every other leader in the middle east). He's not going to care much who ends up replacing him in Libya if we take him down, so he'll take action to avoid that. Previously, the terrorist groups in his country were far more likely to threaten him then we were. Now, that situation has changed and he knows it. That kind of pressure has a pretty good chance of success.

Edited, Tue May 11 20:24:30 2004 by gbaji

Those are a measure of cost, Smash. Not success. Obviously, you want to reduce the cost as much as possible. However, you don't determin success based on that cost. You can judge how efficiently you succeeded based on cost, but you can't determine success itself based on that.

In WW2, if we'd stopped after losing X amount of soldiers, no matter whether we'd won or not, we would have only ensured we lost. That did not mean that commanders in WW2 didn't try to fight the war in a way that reduced the cost in lives as much as possible, but the goal was to win the war. The cost will be what it will be.

If my goal is to climb a tall ladder and I decide 80% of the way up that the cost in terms of my exhaustion is more then I want to pay, I could turn around and go back. However, I will not have achieved a success. I've only avoided paying a cost. In this case, I made a stupid decision since I paid 80% of the cost but gained *zero* success.


That's the error with your way of thinking about this. If we don't succeed, then no cost will be efficient. We'll have zero success with X cost. Infinitely expensive. If we succeed, even at a high cost, then it will be infinitely more worthwhile then stopping halfway through. Since your entire argument is about cost versus return, it can't really be used to argue that we shouldn't be doing the operation at all. Only over how efficiently we're doing it.

The only time to stop is if it's determined that we have no chance of success. Do you honestly believe that is the case? If so, please explain how we have no chance of putting someone in power in Iraq better towards us then Saddam, and no chance of reducing support for terrorism worldwide.

If you can't make that assessment, then you can't really argue about whether we're succeeding. You're free to ***** about the cost, of course. But that's a different issue. I agree with you 100% that several aspects of the Iraqi operations have not been done as well as they should have. There should have been more preparation for an occupation. There should have been more training for the men who would serve as defacto police and penal officers. There should have been more planning in terms of interrim governing, infrastructure repair, and transition to a new government *before* we started an attack.


But none of that changes the fact that the operation was justified, and it does have good potential for achieving the stated goals.


Edited, Tue May 11 20:52:22 2004 by gbaji

If our plan had actually involved say, invading North Vietnam and putting someone in power over the whole country, then yes.


The US adopted a middle ground policy in Vietnam that could not succeed. In fact, they used thinking just like you are. They forgot to set a military goal and instead looked at cost versus political gain as their measure of success.

If we adopt a thought process like your's then we *will* lose Smash. Don't you see that? It's people like you and thinking like yours that causes Vietnam style conflicts.

Um... yeah. If we accomplish our goals, then it's a success even if we loose 100,000 troops. It's a costly one, but still success.

Again. That's the problem with your thinking. It's exactly what got us into trouble in Vietnam. We approached that conflict with the idea that we would "spend" X number of military personnel to get Y amount of result back. Body count was important in Vietnam even though it never had anything to do with achieving military objectives. Obviously, it did not work. You simply can't approach the use of military in that way. You will *always* fail if you do.




I said it earlier. Establish a government in Iraq that is friendlier to us the Saddam was. We have a military obligation as the occupying nation under international law to maintain the peace and infrastructure of Iraq until that happens.

So our military must maintain order. Our government should be working towards establishing a government. We're doing both of those right at this very moment (although the order thing is less then idea IMO).


Any more questions?

Its amazing how people from all walks of life who make 100k+/year think that this war was the best thing sinced sliced bread. Christ, one more tax cut and these jack offs will be telling us all about how W's dog ***** chocolate icecream.

My bad. New here.

****** laser sharks.

You know what kind of a ***** they are to super secretly keep them in our grain silos for decades? I mean they have frikken lasers on their heads. And they're sharks! Sharks don't eat frikken grain, you know.

But you just wait. When we get fed up enough with the world, we're gonna press the little flashing red button and launch all our laser sharks tied securely to ICBMs and ravage the whole damn world. And then have a beer after and play some hockey. Eh.

The primary goal of a war must be to decrease external threat to a nations safety. Fundamentally. It is very easy to intelligently speculate that this war will increase the risk, and incidents, of terrorist attacks.

What does "holding nations accountable for harboring/supporting terrorist organizations" achieve? I can be a terrorist tomorrow if I am sufficiently motivated to become one! Al Quada has terrorist cells in most countries. They don't require the support of nations to exist. They require motivation to exist, and it can be argued that this war provides motivation - in fact it multiplies it hundredfold. Ask the people of Madrid.

So, if my speculation is correct, can this war be successful?

Edited, Wed May 12 06:02:19 2004 by Patrician