Censport said:
I'm not saying mistakes weren't made on our side. The difference is OUR policies have changed since then. Changed enough? No. Are we seeing any help from Canada?
No, you were just trying to lay the blame for terrorist getting into the US on Canada's doorstep. Canada HAS changed its immigration policies since 9/11 BTW.
Censport said:
Exactly. They don't know how to tough it out.
Tough it out? The UN presence in Iraq was a civilian one, they don't have a huge army to protect them like the US. So it isn't really surprising that they, like every other foreign civilian organization, withdrew from Iraq when the violence got out of hand.
Censport said:
Why, those war-mongering Republicans!
You were the one criticizing Clinton for withdrawing from Somalia. The Republicans (whom you seem to be supporting here) were in favor of withdrawing too and in fact were the most vocal in doing so. So which party is the coward, exactly? The Democrats for supporting withdrawal from Somalia or the Republicans for....supporting withdrawal from Somalia? I don't follow your logic at all.
Censport said:
Didn't stop genocide in Iraq? Ask the Kurds.
These would be the same Kurds who had set up an autonomous government in northern Iraq and had US and British warplanes protecting them? The same Kurds who Saddam's forces hadn't fired a shot at in over a decade? The invasion saved them from genocide? I'm sure that would be news to them.
Censport said:
"the UN's lead role..." Hahahaha! What, twenty days after the US military had already been providing relief?!? Oh yeah, great leadership.
What do you expect, exactly? The UN to send its navy to Sumatra? They dont' have a military. Its an international organization whose role is to COORDINATE relief assistance, the actual job of providing immediate assistance is dependent on the contributions of member states. While the US can take all the publicity from having its helicopters drop supplies on the victims while the tsunami is still a hot topic on the news, in the coming years when these people are going to have to rebuild their homes and lives its the UN that is going to be playing a lead role in helping them.
Censport said:
Okay, so it wasn't their sole official purpose, but there are certainly those in the UN (and CNN/CBS/BBC, etc.) who would be more than happy to publicize any such occurances. (What was the name of that prison again? Abu-something, I'm sure you've got it memorized....) Besides, we were still under the impression that the UN was still good at humanitarian work. Silly us...
So...now it was the UN that broke the Abu Ghraib torture scandal? Funny, I thought it was the American media that did that.
Censport said:
There was no call for Nixon to liberate any countries.
I see. So there was no call for Nixon to liberate any countries but - if we are to follow your logic - there were pressing calls for Carter to liberate countries that he failed to heed. So this just begs the question as to what exactly happened in the world between Nixon's leaving office in 1974 and Carter's taking over in January of 1977 that caused this radical change of circumstances. And, indeed I might ask why president Ford isn't singled out by you for criticism as a lot of these earth shaking changes must have occured on his watch.
I'm a little confused about how you arrive at these conclusions. Was Carter supposed to liberate Iran by invading it and giving the Shah - who was every bit as viscious a dictator as Saddam Hussein - back his throne? Interesting definition of 'liberation', if that is what you were trying to get at.
Censport said:
And just how fast do you expect peace and prosperity to grow after a war? It took Germany and Japan decades to get back on their feet. It will take more than a few months for stability to return to that region. Just because it hasn't happened already, doesn't mean it never will.
This is exactly what I meant when I said it would probably take a generation for Iraq to recover from the damage inflicted on it. What you have just written above supports what I was saying and I find it amusing that you feel it somehow contradicts my point.
While what you have just written conforms to my own opinion, it directly contradicts the statements of the Bush administration in the run up to the invasion when they predicted Iraq would, in fact, make a speedy recovery from the war. Wolfowitz even predicted that the US wouldn't need to spend any money on reconstruction as the Iraqi economy would be healthy enough to rebuild itself.
Censport said:
It wasn't "old Palestinian women" who were strapping bombs on themselves and blowing up Israelis. IT WAS THEIR SONS. Nice attempt to put a "basket of puppies" face on terrorism. Ever thought of working PR for al-Jazeera?
I'm not trying to put a nice face on terrorism, I'm trying to take a rationale look at things. The point in question wasn't 'who is killing Israelis', you were talking about Saddam's alleged financing of terrorism as a rationale for invading Iraq. Saddam didn't give money or weapons to terror groups, he in fact just gave money to "old Palestinian women", as I said above. I'm not defending Saddam's action, it probably did act as an indirect incentive for people to volunteer for suicide attacks that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. But strictly speaking as a rationale for the US to start a war that has so far claimed tens of thousands of lives, including over 1300 US troops it is pretty damned thin.
Censport said:
Once again, you're expecting the US to be clairvoyant when it comes to foreign policy (and everything else). Our previous support of Hussein was when we faced a greater foe. Oh well. I promise we'll never help Saddam attack another country ever again.
I'm not expecting anyone to be clairvoyant. I'm just asking you to take a rationale look at what you are saying. You said said Saddam's history of invading other countries provided a legitimate rationale for invading Iraq because it was an indication of what kind of threat he posed. Look at the history. Saddam invaded two countries, Iran and Kuwait, during his rule. He did so at the height of his power while he was a US client state (though he quickly lost that status after invading Kuwait). I'm not mentioning the fact that he was a US client state at the time as a way of criticizing the US, I only mention it because it is relevant as an indicator of Saddam's power. In the 12 years between the destruction of his army in the Gulf war and the invasion in 2003, Saddam posed a threat to no one. He had no air force or navy to speak of, his army was equipped with Soviet weapons from the 1960s for which he could import no replacements or spare parts. Meanwhile all of his neighbors that the US cared about (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan) had upgraded their military power with the latest US equipment. Even if we accept that Saddam may have had WMDs the case is extremely weak. For one thing it was a known fact that 95% of his weapons had either been destroyed or decayed beyond use. There was a certain amount of suspiscion that he may have kept some of the unnacounted weapons or developed new ones, but it was also known that even in the worst case scenario whatever WMD Saddam may have possesed would NOT have been significant enough to alter the military balance in the region. His only possible motivation for seeking them would have been for defensive purposes and even in that narrow field they would have been of limited use.
So given that he no longer had the ability to invade anyone (even the Kurdish regions within Iraq's old borders), how is his history of invading other countries at all relevant to the US invasion of Iraq? It didn't defeat an existing threat and with sanctions and no fly zones in place there was no reasonable concern that he would become a threat in the forseeable future. The argument is completely superfluous.
Censport said:
Have you ever considered the alternative? Our enemy was spread out to 60 countries. A few dozen here, a half-dozen there. What were we going to do? Send our military to each country and go door-to-door? Have a horribly time-consuming process of diplomatic tap-dancing with each country, either to allow our men to find and kill the terrorists on their soil or have them do the work for us? One, that would've taken longer. Dangerously longer. Two, we didn't have the resources. Remember, we'd have to use the same CIA that told us Saddam had stockpiles of WMDs. How confident does that make you now?
So...the answer is to invade a country that doesn't harbor terrorists with the deliberate purpose of attracting terrorists to that country so that you can kill them? And at the same time you are supposedly trying to promote democracy and freedom in that country? And this doesn't strike you as being at all contradictory?
I wasn't condemning Clinton for using air strikes. I was condemning him for using
only air strikes.
Censport said:
How nice of you to speak for the Iraqi people. I'm sure they appreciate it. Let's check in with an actual Iraqi, eh?
Excuse me but I was quite specific in stating that I was speaking for myself, unlike the Bush administration which felt so comfortable speaking for the Iraqis that they went ahead and invaded their country for them. The Iraqi people are quite capable of speaking for themselves. I just happen to notice that the 80% of them who want the US troops out of their country agree with me.