Was it worth it, or not?

[Insipiens]

i'm not an american so I am not sure if my vote would skew your demographic.

In Britain I think you would be hard put to find many people who would be entirely happy about the way we went to war. I am in two minds about whether we should have done, mostly on the basis that we should respect the sovereignty of other nation states.

Let's face it, there are plenty of morally dubious governments around the world, and from a British perspective, many of them are in bits of our former empire (which usually means we feel a greater lingering concern for the issues than we would otherwise). If we are going to say that the invasion of Iraq was justified on the basis of bringing freedom to the people of Iraq, we may be lining up a lot more targets (some of them with better resources) which we would also have to knock down.

There are more terrorists in the world than Al-Qaeda and cutting funding and other support that used to find its way to Hamas and their ilk in the middle east is crucial for any lasting peace in Israel and Palestine and therefore the Middle East as a whole.
The comments made by Al-Sadawi (sp?) today show in my view that he is desperate to prevent the election. Over all I think it was a good thing

[Epee_Pox]

Originally Posted by Insipiens

Let's face it, there are plenty of morally dubious governments around the world, and from a British perspective, many of them are in bits of our former empire (which usually means we feel a greater lingering concern for the issues than we would otherwise). If we are going to say that the invasion of Iraq was justified on the basis of bringing freedom to the people of Iraq, we may be lining up a lot more targets (some of them with better resources) which we would also have to knock down.

Some bad regimes are either direct threats to you, or are part of regional problems giving rise to such threats. Other bad regimes are not so directly a threat to you.

With limited resources, you don't want to have to topple every bad regime by military force. You want to pick those that you think are the biggest threat to your country at the moment. With luck, success will make it easier for change to come from within in other regimes.

Libya caved on its WMD programs after Saddam fell. Saudi Arabia just held the first local elections in its history. Iran's mullahs are fighting a proxy war in Iraq (alongside others) while their populace is turning against them. Afghanistan just had successful democratic nationwide elections for the first time in history. The Palistinians just had a successful openly democratic election for the first time. Iraq is about to do the same (as the opponents of democracy, who have been drawn there like moths to a flame, get more and more frantic and evil in their attempts to terrorize it away).

I'd say it seems to be working, and we're off to a good start.

[Inquartata]

Originally Posted by jBirch

The key is that it is the peoples' right, not ours as a self-interested foreign entity. It is also their test as a nation and a people. Each of our western nations had to grow from what was an ancient monarchy to what is a functioning democracy. We did so through violent, semi-violent and peaceful means. Who would have thought that the colonists could have stood up to the mighty British Empire?

A condign example. So, you think that for example the French were morally wrong for helping us to win our Revolution ( for their own reasons ) and throw off the yoke of the English monarchy? We ought to have done it all on our own or else not succeeded in doing it at all? If it's not done in isolation it's illegitimate?

[telkanuru]

Originally Posted by Rogue

ter·ror·ist n. One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism.


en·abler
Pronunciation: i-'nA-bl&r, -b&l-&r
Function: noun
: one that enables another to achieve an end;

Really Telk, do I have to look up all unfamiliar words for you?

Why those words? What was so wrong with "he supported terrorisim"? When someone says "terrorist enabler", I think "someone's BS-ing me".

How many times does it have to be repeated? At least one more I suppose.
Sadam/911 no evidence nor was there any claim made by the Bush admin.
Sadam/terrorism- YES evidence to support this claim that was made by the Bush Admin. and substantiated, in the 911 report and, IIRC, the Volker (sp) report.

And yet more proof that you only read every other line I write. Yes, Saddam supported Hammas, etc. HOW DOES THIS MAKE HIM ANY DIFFERENT FROM OUR 'ALLIES'?

[Epee_Pox]

Originally Posted by Inquartata

A condign example. So, you think that for example the French were morally wrong for helping us to win our Revolution ( for their own reasons ) and throw off the yoke of the English monarchy? We ought to have done it all on our own or else not succeeded in doing it at all? If it's not done in isolation it's illegitimate?

Remember when Republicans were isolationists, and Democrats wanted to change the world in the cause of freedom and human rights?

When did they swap ideologies? I must have been taking a nap or something; I missed it.

[jBirch]

Originally Posted by Soldier

So...was it worth it?

Dunno.

And I say that in all honesty. I think that the humanitarian work being done in the region as a result of the invasion is definitely a good thing. I think that the actual invasion itself was a grand strategic mistake. I think that it is important to keep up the support of the people there now (troops AND NGOs) so that it doesn't devolve into a HUGE mistake. I think that the US has taken a serious foreign relations hit right now, though what that actually translates into is anybody's guess. The US military is stretched as thin as it can be so other states don't feel the pressure as much as they used to. I think that the preoccupation with Arab states at the expense of Africa, Asia and Israel will lead to greater destabilisation and increased anti-US sentiment. The thinner resources will make it harder to coerce those states now, though once things get settled in Iraq it may be easier.

Though I'm not sure I buy the strategic idea of Iraq as a base of freedom in the area. There is Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Turkey and India all within pissing distance and all with substantial US presence. The ability to float carriers up the Gulf is substantial ability too. Not sure what the addition of some bases in Iraq is going to do for anyone.

At the end of the day I'd have to say that I'm unconvinced it was a good thing but not prepared yet to call it a bad thing either. Whether it was worth it or not is going to be determined at the end of the next five years when the US Military and diplomatic corps can get back its balance and reassert itself in the world.

Take it easy.

[jBirch]

Originally Posted by Inquartata

A condign example. So, you think that for example the French were morally wrong for helping us to win our Revolution ( for their own reasons ) and throw off the yoke of the English monarchy? We ought to have done it all on our own or else not succeeded in doing it at all? If it's not done in isolation it's illegitimate?

No, not at all. I never said it needed to be done in isolation. It needs to be done in support of a popular uprising, not in spite of it. The American Revolutionary War was exactly that, a *revolutionary* war. The American and British Invasion of Iraq was exactly that, an invasion. That the populace "hailed the conquerors as liberators" is nice but also the crucial difference. You can not say that the people of Iraq rose up and, helped by the Americans and British, overthrew a brutal dictator then created a free and democratic society. That's the difference.

[Soldier]

Originally Posted by Epee_Pox

Some bad regimes are either direct threats to you, or are part of regional problems giving rise to such threats. Other bad regimes are not so directly a threat to you.

With limited resources, you don't want to have to topple every bad regime by military force. You want to pick those that you think are the biggest threat to your country at the moment. With luck, success will make it easier for change to come from within in other regimes.

Libya caved on its WMD programs after Saddam fell. Saudi Arabia just held the first local elections in its history. Iran's mullahs are fighting a proxy war in Iraq (alongside others) while their populace is turning against them. Afghanistan just had successful democratic nationwide elections for the first time in history. The Palistinians just had a successful openly democratic election for the first time. Iraq is about to do the same (as the opponents of democracy, who have been drawn there like moths to a flame, get more and more frantic and evil in their attempts to terrorize it away).

I'd say it seems to be working, and we're off to a good start.

Very well put, thank you.

[Soldier]

Originally Posted by jBirch

Dunno.

And I say that in all honesty. I think that the humanitarian work being done in the region as a result of the invasion is definitely a good thing. I think that the actual invasion itself was a grand strategic mistake. I think that it is important to keep up the support of the people there now (troops AND NGOs) so that it doesn't devolve into a HUGE mistake. I think that the US has taken a serious foreign relations hit right now, though what that actually translates into is anybody's guess. The US military is stretched as thin as it can be so other states don't feel the pressure as much as they used to. I think that the preoccupation with Arab states at the expense of Africa, Asia and Israel will lead to greater destabilisation and increased anti-US sentiment. The thinner resources will make it harder to coerce those states now, though once things get settled in Iraq it may be easier.

Though I'm not sure I buy the strategic idea of Iraq as a base of freedom in the area. There is Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Turkey and India all within pissing distance and all with substantial US presence. The ability to float carriers up the Gulf is substantial ability too. Not sure what the addition of some bases in Iraq is going to do for anyone.

At the end of the day I'd have to say that I'm unconvinced it was a good thing but not prepared yet to call it a bad thing either. Whether it was worth it or not is going to be determined at the end of the next five years when the US Military and diplomatic corps can get back its balance and reassert itself in the world.

Take it easy.

Ah...so very nice to see somebody stopping to really consider things, from multiple points of view - and willing to wait and see how things actually pan out, instead of jumping straight to conclusions.

[Rogue]

Originally Posted by telkanuru

And yet more proof that you only read every other line I write.

Maybe you only remember every other line.

Originally Posted by telkanuru

not only were the links between him and bin Ladin not valid, you claimed that the current administration never said there were links on a previous thread.


:

Originally Posted by Rogue

How many times does it have to be repeated? At least one more I suppose.
Sadam/911 no evidence nor was there any claim made by the Bush admin.
Sadam/terrorism- YES evidence to support this claim that was made by the Bush Admin. and substantiated, in the 911 report and, IIRC, the Volker (sp) report.

As for the rest of your post I saw no point in responding. So I didn't.

[Epee_Pox]

An excellent op-ed piece in this morning's WSJ by Mark Helprin:

Our Blindness

BY MARK HELPRIN
Monday, January 24, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

A hundred years ago, Republican presidential incumbent Theodore Roosevelt had just defeated the now obscure Judge Alton B. Parker, the army had long been fighting Muslim insurrectionists in the Philippines and was recasting itself to fight insurgencies, reformers were concerned with the environment and money politics, and the country's meat supply was viewed with suspicion.

Those absorbing passions would nonetheless prove completely irrelevant to the influenza pandemic that little more than a decade later would kill 50 million people, including half a million Americans; to the rise of Germany, Japan, and Russia; and to the century's three great wars.

Our own absorbing passions, which are remarkably similar, have blinded us in the same way. We have yet to find a serviceable framework for the application of our military power in the war on terrorism; in view of potential catastrophes of which we have a great deal of forewarning, we have yet to provide adequately for what used to be called civil defense; and we have no policy in regard to China's steady cultivation of power that soon will vie with our own. Though any one of these things is capable of dominating the coming century, not one has been properly addressed.

God help the army that must fight for an idea rather than an objective. After somehow failing to argue competently on behalf of a patently justifiable invasion, and as its more specious arguments were collapsing, the Bush administration then pivoted with breathtaking enthusiasm to nation building, something so Clinton-tinged that it had previously been held in contempt. The more that nation building in Iraq is in doubt, the more the mission creeps into a doubling of bets in hope of covering those that are lost. Now the goal is to reforge the politics, and perforce the culture, not merely of Iraq but of the billion-strong Islamic world from Morocco to the South Seas. That--evangelical democracy writ overwhelmingly large--is the manic idea for which the army must fight.

But no law of nature says a democracy is incapable of supporting terrorism, so even if every Islamic capital were to become a kind of Westminster with curlicues, the objective of suppressing terrorism might still find its death in the inadequacy of the premise. Even if all the Islamic states became democracies, the kind of democracies they might become might not be the kind of democracies wrongly presumed to be incapable of supporting terrorism. And if Iraq were to become the kind of democracy that is the kind wrongly presumed (and for more than a short period), there is no evidence whatsoever that other Arab or Islamic states, without benefit of occupying armies, would follow. And if they did, how long might it last? They do not need Iraq as an example, they have Britain and Denmark, and their problem is not that they require a demonstration, but rather their culture, history, and secret police.

If we could transform Germany and Japan, then why not Iraq? Approximately 150,000 troops occupy Iraq, which has a population of 26 million and shares long open borders with sympathetic Arab and Islamic countries where popular sentiment condemns America. The Iraqi army was dispersed but neither destroyed nor fully disarmed. The country is divided into three armed nations. Its cities are intact.

In contrast, on the day of Germany's surrender, Eisenhower had three million Americans under his command--61 divisions, battle hardened. Other Western forces pushed the total to 4.5 million in 93 divisions. And then there were the Russians, who poured 2.5 million troops into the Berlin sector alone. All in all, close to 10 million soldiers had converged upon a demoralized German population of 70 million that had suffered more than four million dead and 10 million wounded, captured, or missing. No sympathizers existed, no friendly borders. The cities had been razed. Germany had been broken, but even after this was clear, more than 700,000 occupation troops remained, with millions close by. The situation in Japan was much the same: a country with a disciplined, homogenous population, no allies, sealed borders, its cities half burnt, more than three million dead, a million wounded, missing, or captured, its revered emperor having capitulated, and nearly half a million troops in occupation. And whereas both Germany and Japan had been democracies in varying degree, Iraq has been ruled by a succession of terrifying autocrats since the beginning of human history.

To succeed, a paradigm of "invade, reconstruct, and transform" requires the decisive defeat, disarmament, and political isolation of the enemy; the demoralization of his population and destruction of its political beliefs; and the presence, at the end of hostilities, of overwhelming force. With U.S. military capacity virtually unchanged since the Clinton years, and a potentially heavy draw upon American forces in other crises, the paradigm is untenable. Though against all odds it may succeed temporarily in Iraq, it is premised upon succeeding in far too many other places of fierce and longstanding antipathy to what we represent.

An impressive civil-defense effort has been made, but only relative to the absence of anything before it. It isn't a question of gaps in the fence here and there, but of sections of the fence here and there. Four and a half years after September 11th, air cargo is still not x-rayed; illegal immigration and drug smuggling prove that the borders are porous; simulated attacks are almost always a walk-over for the red-teams; and the nature of chemical, nuclear, and biological terrorism remains such that merely rattling terrorist networks is insufficient.

Although nuclear detonations in American cities are not to be slighted, still, the greatest and most likely perils are natural epidemics and biological warfare. A common belief among public health experts is that a viral shift such as that which caused the 1918-19 pandemic is almost certain. Estimates of the number of dead run to the hundreds of millions world-wide and scores of millions in the U.S. If nature fails to deliver an epidemic, it is unfortunately easy for a highly trained terrorist, by genetic manipulation, to create a super-virulent pathogen with a nearly 100% rate of mortality. Natural or artificial epidemics are collectively the greatest threat this country has ever faced, and will not be exceeded for decades to come. But though the biological sciences advance day by day and could put up a spirited defense, they can do so only if efforts are begun now on a scale several orders of magnitude beyond what is scheduled. Given current plans and preparations, this will not occur, and the greatest enemy the country has ever known will have no opposition.

By taking intelligent advantage of the fertile relation between economic development and military capacity, China will be able to leverage its extraordinary growth into superpower parity with the United States. Without the destruction of Chinese social and political equilibrium, this is only a matter of time. And just as we had no policy for dealing with the rise of Germany, Japan, and (prior to the late 1940s) Russia, we have none here.
But with the exception of South Korea, which chafes under our protection and may eventually break from the fold, our major allies in the Pacific are islands, and conveniently in this regard our strengths are the air, the sea, space, and amphibious warfare. We have not since the Korean War been able to face China on the mainland, but if we vigorously augment what we do best, we and our allies--by deterrence and maneuver rather than war--can hold the chain of islands well into the coming century or longer, after which our objective would be to contest the open ocean. China's objective is to establish a defensive line to the east of the chain, and it is building up its navy accordingly. But we, to prepare for the coming maritime century in the Pacific, are forcing naval strength to its lowest levels since the 1930s.

Uneven and ineffective application of military power, vulnerability to mass terrorism and natural epidemics, blindness to the rise of a great competitor: matters like these, that may seem remote and abstract, are seldom as remote and abstract as they seem. A hundred years ago, our predecessors, unable to sense what had already begun, did not know the price they would pay as the century wore on. But, as the century wore on, that price was exacted without mercy.

[Soldier]

Well, Epee_Pox, you quote the Almighty Tallest in your signature. With regards to your post, then, I believe it would be most appropriate for you to begin singing the Doom Song.

[scrapinpeg]

Doomy doom doom doom
Doom, doo-doom doom doom
DOOM!
Doodoodoodoom doomy doom
Doomedy doom doom DOOM!

[scrapinpeg]

Sorry, Epee Pox, I couldn't help myself and sang it for you. Yay Doom!

Westley, care to join in the chorus?

[Soldier]

Originally Posted by scrapinpeg

Doomy doom doom doom
Doom, doo-doom doom doom
DOOM!
Doodoodoodoom doomy doom
Doomedy doom doom DOOM!

Now where's the "applause" smiley?

[Calder]

Originally Posted by mrbiggs

Calder, your post is too long to be worth quoting. Suffice it to say that I'm responding to your comment to the effect that the Iraqis should rebel for themselves, as the Americans did.

The problem with internal revolutions are twofold. First, there are many, many casualities. This is because the rebels are usually fewer in number, yet less well-equiped. (This is assuming the army stays loyal to the government). Secondly, a natural rebellion could put anyone into power. Fidel Castro, for example. It is much safer in terms of the new government, and causes less casualties, to invade with a modern army, like our own.

You also say that our soldiers aren't fighting for something important. I think they are, and I assume that most of them do, too. They're fighting to protect the people of Iraq. You might not think that that's worth dying for, but many of them beleive that freedom is worth sacrificing your life for, even if the freedom granted is not for you, your friends, or your descendants. The fact that the cause they're fighting for is not directly related to them just enhances my opinion of their morals.

Hmmm...I think my point was mistaken by my long rammbled attempt at being politically correct...sorry about that.......my own fault. First off let me put this much less gently and more blunt...being in the miltary, and having been activated twice within the last two years....I believe this....as much as I respect other cultures, I do not feel that the Iraqui culture is worht dying for. I dont care about their freedom, I dont care about their bloodshed, and I dont care about their problems...not anymore...and not when it costs OUR lives. I understand the whole spread freedom thing and I believe in it...to a point. Thats why I started my post out with Im sorry to be putting this down. I am not saying we should be a totally isolationist nation, I am just sick of seeing us sacrifice for them, so ya, I guess there are some tones of isolationism in there...I wont even begin to comment on the ostrich thing, not knowing if the individuaal behind the post has seen anything to warrant such a suggestion. There is a saying that went around our unit...1 of ours, four of theirs....thats my point. Sorry to sound so cold, but war sucks.....

[Calder]

MBriggs, you said "They're fighting to protect the people of Iraq. You might not think that that's worth dying for, but many of them beleive that freedom is worth sacrificing your life for, even if the freedom granted is not for you, your friends, or your descendants."

the question is not of the morals of those of us who have fought...thats a given. And the question is not of the importance of giving your life for freedom...the question is that of how much for whos freedom...who is paying the GREATEST cost for their freedom.....its more of an objective comment really then a "I dont think we should be over there fighting at all " type blanket belief.....