Muzzies, Godwin's, and Liberal Media BiasFollow

Do you believe that, had we invaded Iraq, deposed Saddam and kept a significant military force in the nation to assist in the nation building of a pro-Western state in 1991, that Osama bin Laden would not have harbored a vendetta against the United States?

Obviously you can't tell what might have been but do you think that's a plausible alternate reality?

Yes. I do believe that. He's a Saudi citizen. He cares most about what the US is doing in his country. While we certainly would have seen resistance and suffered attacks in Iraq from Muslims opposed to our presence there, it's clear from OBL's own writings that his primary reason for mobilizing Muslims worldwide to attack the US was because of our presence on Saudi soil.

Remember. He didn't much like Saddam or care about Iraq either. He only cared about it in the context of the effect it was having on his country. I'm sure he (or someone else) would have used our presence there as an excuse to conduct operations in Iraq itself (just as is happening now, but I'd argue it wouldn't have been as bad), the conflict would have been contained to just Iraq.


In short. 9/11 would not have happened.


I think that the more important point is that we know what did happen. And we know why. We can play historical guessing games all day long, but the fact is that the 9/11 attacks did happen specifically because the US government was enforcing the UN's "solution" in Iraq. That is absolutely without question. Talking about how to deal with the aftermath of those attacks without addressing the underlying cause is kinda silly, don't you think?


Additionally, attacking anyone who even mentions that the two are connected is even more silly. Somehow the rhetoric of "Iraq wasn't involved in 9/11" has managed to creep so strongly into many people's minds that they automatically dismiss the facts of the situation. Yes. Iraq was not involved in the attack. However, the situation in Iraq most definatly was the root cause of the attack. By denying this and covering this up and refusing to accept this, it becomes harder for people to understand why we invaded Iraq and by extension makes arguing against that invasion easier.

I have no problem with someone who argues against our actions in Iraq. I do have problems with those who practice revisionist history in order to support their position. Attacking Bush (for example) because he mentions Iraq and 9/11 together in the same speach, without addressing the context of those mentions is part of this fallacy. We should be debating our actions based on the facts themselves, not false assumptions. When Red makes the kind of broad assumptive statement he made, he's doing the latter.


Now if he wants to argue that we should have resolved that issue in some manner other then invading Iraq, we'd at least be at the beginnings of a rational dialogue. But his (and many many other's) insistence on ignoring any relation between Iraq and 9/11 at all makes it impossible. The entire issue devolves into meaningless rhetoric and chest thumping.

Another point to ponder. Maybe I've missed something, but I've been searching for fatwas issued with regard to Iraq and the US troops presence there.

I have not found one denouncing their presence, nor demanding their removal. I did find one the required that general elections be held (which ultimately meant that US forces would have to remain longer, not get out quicker), and one that objected to laws regarding oil and gas revenues. Both of them imply consent for US forces in Iraq by addressing issues that involve US involvement in Iraq (and in both cases demand a course that ultimately will require us to be there longer then we might otherwise have been).


I may have missed one somewhere. Assuming that I'm correct though, this does seem to indicate that the US forces in Iraq are not nearly as worrysome to Muslim religious leaders as US forces in Saudi Arabia was. And that's not surprising. Iraq does not hold the "two holiest sites" to Islam. Saudi Arabia is "special" in terms of Islam because it's integral to the religion itself. Iraq is not.

For empahsis:



*cough*. The troops were in Saudi Arabia to enforce the UN sanctions in Iraq in general (and specifically needed to enforce the southern no-fly zone).

The point is that the *only* reason we had troops in Saudi Arabia was because of the sanctions on Iraq. You'd have a point if our soldiers were on Saudi soil for any other reason. But they weren't...

Correct. But they weren't.

They were there to enforce the UN sanctions on Iraq. What part of this is confusing for you? If we had not been helping the UN to enforce those sanctions, we would not have had soldiers in Saudi Arabia and therefore would not have been attacked on 9/11. See how that works?


Your logic is bizarre here Joph.



Sure. But we didn't. I'm pointing to historical fact. You're playing guessing games. As it happened, we were attacked on 9/11 because we had soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia because we were enforcing the UN sanctions on Iraq. Direct causal connection.

If you want to condemn Clinton for not making that decision and changing our method for dealing with Iraq, please go ahead. I've been arguing this for years...


If you want to debate what Bush should or could have done differently after 9/11 happened. Then that's great too. However, it still requires that we do "something with regard to Iraq" as a direct result of the 9/11 attacks.

Which is the whole point I'm making. The two are connected in that context. It is completely valid to see the need to deal with Iraq as a result of the 9/11 attacks. That's all I'm trying to get accross. We can debate other choices that could have been made, but we must first agree that doing "something different" with Iraq is a necessary and valid response to 9/11.


Do you agree?

I wasn't. I was using it to counter Reds statement that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. More to the point, I'm countering the assumption that discussing what to do with Iraq wasn't a valid response to the 9/11 attack itself.

For the umpteenthbillionth time, we can debate the degree to which you, I, or anyone else agree or disagree on the decision GW made as a result of that connection, but I was simply arguing against someone claiming that there was no connection at all.

It's just that it seems like no matter how many times we have this exact same argument and arrive at this exact same point, a few months from now Red or someone else who should know better by now will make that same assumptive statement. And I'll have to make this same argument... again.

Can we just assign a number to this one and use that instead? Sheesh!



Also completely valid though. Clinton won the 1992 election. He took office in January of 1993. The first inklings of problems from Al-queda began in late 1993 with the bombing in Riyahd. At that time, the connection hadn't even been made yet though. Sometime between that point and 1996 is the earliest point that a connection could possibly have been made. That entire time period Clinton was in office.

Now. You could argue that Bush Sr maybe should have realized what would happen if we stationed troops in Saudi Arabia for a long period of time. I'm not going to do massive research on this. It's possible there were signs that this was a bad idea and we shouldn't do it. In any case, you can't lay the blame on Bush regardless (or not very much at least). The original cease fire agreement was only supposed to take a year or two (I've heard estimates of 18 months most often). That was the expected time it would take for Iraq to comply with regards to turning over all the materials related to its WMD programs, handing back stolen property to Kuwait, addressing issues with the Kurds, etc...

At the time Bush Sr made the decisions he did (including enforement of the no-fly zones) he likely had no clue we'd still be doing the same things 12 years later. Since the first attacks that could possibly be related to that decision didn't come until after he left office (and after the time period the cease fire should have lasted), it's a reasonable guess that had Iraq complied and had the terms been met by late 1992, we would have removed our soldiers from Saudi Arabia (no need to keep them there), and those attacks would not have occured.

So sure. Bush put them there. But I really don't think he intended to keep them there for over a decade. By the time it became obvious that the sanctions process wasn't working. Clinton was in office. He made the call to essentially "let it ride" with regards to Iraq.

So yeah. I hold him particularly responsible for the results.




Wait! You're saying that you don't agree that some change with regard to our actions in Iraq was a necessary and valid response to 9/11?

Ok. This is a new one. Usually you just kinda ignore the question. I don't see how you can take this position. Even if the argument is "move our troops enforcing sanctions on Iraq somewhere else", that's still "doing something diferent" with regard to Iraq, and in direct response to 9/11.


Unless you're somehow arguing that after 9/11 there's no reason to remove our soldiers from Saudi Arabia? Cause your position here makes no sense...

Edited, Jul 18th 2007 9:18pm by gbaji

It didn't, directly. Sorry. You could claim that it had some indirect connection but that's nothing to hang your hat on.You rarely do Of course not. See, Saddam invading Kuwait led to the creation of the No Fly Zones which had us station troops in Saudi Arabia which angered ObL which led to 9/11.

Bush Sr. led the war on Iraq, failed to eliminate Saddam, was involved in the creation of the No Fly zones and chose to station troops in Saudi Arabia. But he's not directly responsible. Clinton continued the No Fly zones and that makes him directly responsible. Oh, and Iraq was directly connected, but we have to leap over Bush Sr to get there because he's not really responsible.

Well, that makes sen--- no, it doesn't but, again, I understand that you have a special passion for blaming liberals for everything. So it makes sense that you'd say it, even if the logic itself is nonsensical.That's what I said, yes.No, that would be doing something different with our troops. Our policies and actions in Iraq would be identical to before. It's not hard.

Edited, Jul 19th 2007 12:47am by Jophiel

Please, find a quote from me saying that the US troops in saudi was not *a* part of their justification.

You won't, cos I never said it, yet you felt you needed 28 paragraphs telling me I did.

Nevermind...



Right, the fatwa from 1996 which was unrelated to 9/11.

Relevant.

Not only that, but you of course edited any reference to anything else, such as this statement:



Why not quote that? Cos it doesn't fit within your rethoric?

The first thing you have to understand is that OBL has a personal gripe with SA. You can clearly see it in the same 1996 fatwa you linked, where he talks about SA saying:



Do you really think Palestinians, Yemenis, Sudanese, or Pakistanis give a shi't about the internal economics of SA?

OBL is a poster-boy. He's to Islamic terrorism what Che Guevara was to Communism. A face. Not much more.

Second, you do know that he said he wasn't responsible for 9/11? Only in 2004 did he say that he was an "inspiration" for it. So you can link all his fatwas, it doesn't matter since he himself admitted he wasn't the mastermind behind those attacks. He was not the main funder. He did not think them up. He did not organise or plan them. He was aware of them, sure, but AQ is not OBL.

If you really want to, I can link you heaps of statements from OBL where he talks about the 82 Lebanon war, Israel, the governments of Egypt and SA, Kashmir, and all those other gripes they have.

But even that's not really the point. The question is not about doing now what would've stopped 9/11. The question is about defeating this ideology. That's the crux, and that's why you need to understand the problem as a whole. The guys fighting today in Iraq don't give a crap about OBL or SA. The guys putting bombs in London every summer don't give a shi't about SA or sanctions either. It's much, much deeper than that.

For argument's sake, though, let's pretend that the main reason why 9/11 happened was because of the Iraqi sanctions and US troops in SA. Why not just move the US troops to Jordan? To Israel? Egypt? Quatar?

If their grieviances was that the sanctions were killing children, how does invading the country, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and occupying the place, including the Imam Ali Mosque (one of the holiest sites in Islam) make it any better??

Even if what you argue was true, the actions of the Bush administrations in Iraq were the worst possible solution. "They're pissed off cos sanctions kills kids? Alright, let's just invade and occupy the whole place then."

And one last thing. If your argument was true, then surely AQ would lose it's raison d'etre after this, no? And yet, I don't see any signs of Islamic terrorism stopping, despite this fact.

How can that be? Could it be because US troops in Saudi Arabia were just one excuse amongst many? Could it be because instead of fighting the root of this ideology, we are simply adding weapons to their propganda by embarking on pointless and disatrous occupations of Muslim countries?

There is no way you can reasonably argue that the invasion of Iraq made the situation any better when it comes to fighting this ideology.

Though, I don't doubt you'll try...



Edited, Jul 19th 2007 10:25am by RedPhoenixxx

Always funny to see a philistine calling the jews cowards. too bad, so sad, stop crying ya ******* muzzies.

In the most superficial ways.

I believe his "cryptic" remarks confuse you because he is intelligent. Does that explane it?

My statement was every bit as well supported as "They are all the same God".

Superficially, that's true. You have an old dude in the sky (well, popular conception, anyway) who wants you to behave and get along. They're even built off of one another, more or less. Deeper than that, the different faiths espouse differing concepts on how God communicates, how God forgives, how God rewards the faithful and concepts of the afterlife, how God punishes the unfaithful, what God actually wants from us, etc.

You could make a safe argument for saying that Catholics, Lutherans and Baptists worship the same God. Or that Sunnis and Shiites worship the same God. But cross-religions rather than cross-denominations, it falls apart in a hurry.

Edited, Jul 19th 2007 12:25pm by Jophiel

You're not exactly sweetening the pot.