Wow, AJ really has the Kool-Aid on tap, doesn’t he?
Let’s see what AJ is talking about.
“The Dems care about one thing: politics”
Ummmm… excuse me, I forget, which party is still calling this occupation a “war”? Which party is still calling Bush a “war president”? Which party has declared an perpetual “war” on terror?
And which party has used “terrah! terrah! terrah! 9/11!” 24/7 to push their entire agenda, like tax cuts for the top 1%, deregulation of industry and banking, globalization, slashing pollution standards, and privatization or politicalization of various government departments?
Hmmm… that’s a puzzler, isn’t it?
“Siding with your country means supporting the troops and their mission…”
Ooo, AJ, no good, my friend. You see, this sets up conditions where any politician and any political party can instantly quell critisism, accomplish political goals, and rally people to their side simply by starting a war someplace. And that, in turn, guarantees war at every opportunity for any reason.
No, AJ, we need to be thinking patriots, willing to hold those accountable that misuse and abuse the trust we give our leaders in time of war and patriotic fevor. Mindlessly falling in line is the path to endless war.
“We won the war in 2001 and 2003. This is just a peacekeeping/humanitarian mission with minimal casualties.”
Conviently forgetting, of course, that we’re the ones that broke the peace and caused the humanitarian crisis in the first place.
If I set your house on fire, then dragged your family outside to safety, am I an arsonist or a hero?
“We’re still in Germany and Japan.”
And South Korea. And amazingly, when our troops go there they don’t have to gun down or blow up men, woman, and children, they don’t come home missing internal organs or body parts, and they don’t have PTSD or other crippling psychological problems.
A year in Japan, Germany, or South Korea is like spending a year in the States. A year in Iraq is diametrically opposite. Do you really think that if our troops in Korea were still fighting an active insurgency 50 years later we’d still be there?
“These are the men fighting for your right to say such balderdash and you poke fun at them?”
Er, um, no, sorry. They are not fighting for my right to say anything because Iraq could not, ever, invade and occupy America and push their will onto our people. Sorry, Charlie.
The primary purpose of the military is to protect and defend America and Americans from external threats. However the military can be used for all sorts of things and all sorts of goals which may or may not have to do with protecting and defending America and Americans. In this case, they are not, and in fact have not done so since World War Two. They are “serving” their country, but they are not protecting it nor the people inside of it’s borders.
“WRONG, as usual. All branches exceeded goals. There are heroes out there who love their country”
Exceeding their lowered recruitment goals, you mean. And unprecedented use of “moral waivers” and big fat giant bribes, er, signing bonuses to fill the ranks.
“Stop quoting from your Poli Sci text. And further, you fool, the MUSLIM countries we are fighting in are the ones who disallow free speech and you have NO interest. So who is the hypocrite?”
And those MUSLIM countried need to progress. To become, you know, progressive. They need to become enlightened and separate church (or mosque) and state and move to some kind of secular republic or parlimentry system.
Invading them is not going to do that. In fact, use or threat of use of military force rallies them to their leaders the same way the specter of terrorism rallies American to the president. It actually discourages change!
Nor is change going to come as long as the fat pipeline of oil money is flooding those countries. As long as they have the easy cash of European, American, and Asian petrodollars flooding it they have absolutely zero incentive to grow their economy, their society, or their government.
Yet another reason to move to an oil-free economy.
“As to the red state yokel comment, racism and sexism is okay in the 2008 USA as long as it is directed at white males, who have no rights, no freedom of speech and no help—even though they built this nation and preserved it for the first 100 years. ”
Awww, the poor white males. Well, maybe one day somebody will strike the shackles from your wrists and ankles and you’ll be free once again. You’ll be able to vote and own property and run for office and maybe the police won’t arrest you and beat you quite so often for “driving while white”.
EVERYBODY, AJ, built this country. Some built it in chains, some built it without voting or property rights or political representation, but EVERYBODY built it.
And Cletus…
“Liberals like you claim to care about human life, but you don’t seem to care about the wholesale slaughter that would take place if the U.S was to pull out of Iraq and leave it open to Al-Qaeda or Iranian proxies.”
Um, then maybe we shouldn’t have gone in there in the first place?
Cletus, my friend, pretty much all the goals we are trying to accomplish in Iraq, now, were in fact accomplished before a single US soldier or marine cross the Iraq-Kuwait border. Consider:
-Functioning and fairly effective national, provincian, and local governments, including law enforcement, justice, and education.
-Functioning utility infrastructure, such as electricity, water, sewer, roads, bridges, etc.
-No weapons of mass destruction.
-No capability to make nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons.
-Secular, not religious, government, including woman’s rights and alcohol and adult product sales.
-No Al-Qaeda.
-Regional counterbalance to Iran.
-Religiously integrated neighborhoods. No ethnic cleansing or Balkanization.
Okay, Saddam was still in charge. Big whoop.
And if we wanted the oil of Iraq to be on the worldwide market to lower the whopping $28/barrel oil prices (that’s about what it was when Bush took office), all we had to do was lift the sanctions!
And my friend apb, we get this from you:
“The past 5 years has been an amazing growth period for the Iraqis, from the fall of the Saddamites to the initial elections, creation of a constitution, building of their self-defense and internal reconciliation.”
Yeah, amazing all right. They’re on their, what, third constitution? They are so unstable that the voters won’t know who’s on the ballots until the day before because of the thread of assassination! And we keep replacing prime minsters that don’t agree with us.
As to internal reconciliation, it’s happening via ethnic cleansing. You do realize that 15% of Iraq’s population are refugees, right? And that the Kurdish people are pushing for their own country?
“the Bush doctrine is working in several ways.”
*snort* ROFL!
Oh, wait, you’re serious. Okay, let’s see, confronting terrorism abroad so we don’t have to face it here.
Well, Saudi Arabia is taking the massive profits from selling for $140 what costs $15 to pump out of the ground and supporting Al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents in Iraq. Glad we’ve sucessfully invaded and occupied them, those theocratic fundamentalist Muslim misogynic aristocrats!
Oh, wait. Well, at least we invaded Pakistan and threw out the unstable nuclear-armed military dictatorship that’s hiding Osama Bin Laden!
Oh, wait. Well, at least we invaded a cripped country that hasn’t pumped significant amounts of oil in decades and as a result has a much larger percentage of it’s oil reserves intact compared to it’s busily-pumping neighbors!
Yeah, that’s it!
Oh, and what happend to Tony Blair, anyway? Oh, yeah, retired. Imagine that.
And Yokel…
“As Reacharound displayes…liberals only care about themselves. They could give a rats a$$ about Iraqis or anybody else.”
Uh-huh. Says a person happily supporting a war and occupation that has caused the deaths of nearly a million Iraqis.
How else do you show your love for your fellow man, your compassionate conservatism? By sending US manufacturing jobs to China? Which, last time I checked, was a tolitarian nuclear-armed Communist country brutally enforcing a one-child policy?
“He has zero perspective of the larger strategic consequence of the effort.”
Ummm… says a Bush supporter. And Bush didn’t know that there was a difference between Sunni and Shia Islam. Or how it would affect the occupation of Iraq. Or how it would relate to Shia Iran or Sunni Saudi Arabia.
Keep in mind, of course, that if we didn’t go in in the first place, we wouldn’t have to be worrying about strategic consequences.
I noted above that our strategic goals were already met BEFORE WE INVADED.
“He has zero understanding that what happens NOW matters regardless of how we got here.”
I bet he does. But if he doesn’t, I do. First off, we get rid of and PUNISH the people that got us into this mess in the first place. That gives us an enormous boost in credibility. And keeps the people that f***ed up in the first place from continuing to f*** up.
Then we have to do one of two things: either institute a draft and war taxes and partially nationalize our defense industry to put a half-million troops in Iraq for a period of at least a decade to restore law and order, or we have to remove ourselves from the country (no bases, even) and pursue economic and political means to achieve get Iraq to reconcile with a minimum of violence. Which, frankly, isn’t a whole lot.
Regardless of which we do, we need a real Marshall plan, not this “unaccountable US contractors on fat cost-plus contracts” system of corruption and failure we currently have. Give the Iraqis money to rebuild their cement factories, then buy cement from them and hire local Iraqis to rebuild their country. There can’t be peace with 60% unemployment rates. Put those idle hands to work rebuilding, not rebelling!
