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Absolutely, I agree. But what is said and done must be well balanced, well thought over and well timed. If they really wanted to overthrow Saddam, they should have done it in 1991 when they had seemingly a more acceptable motive and wider international approval. In 2003, when Iraq was rather stable, no genocides or invasions were going on, and Saddam was crippled by the sanctions, no-fly-zones and UN weapon inspections, there was no rush to invade.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa
This is the FIRST time you have said something I can agree with. They should have finished him off in 1991. Under the conditions of the UN Resolutions that Saddam was to live under, the last resort and the final solution was for the war to be re-commenced. The Resolutions were ones governing a cease fire to that war in 1991. The US played the game fairly and followed them for 11 years. Saddam didn't. He kicked the UN out, he let them back in and harassed them, then he kicked them back out. Then he let them in when it was clear the US meant business. Maybe Bush made an error but I doubt it. If he didn't invade in 2002, you mean to tell me Iraq would be any better off?? Maybe if you like oppressive thugs to run nations, yes, but I think at some point, you have to call the man's bluff. Iraq is not a nice place now, I can agree with you on that. That said, if Bush ignored Saddam or just let things go on as they had been, when would we be dealing with Saddam again. Don't you EVER let him off the hook for this. HE COULD HAVE BACKED DOWN, and taken the game away from Bush. Let the UN in, let them actually have some freedom of movement, and Bush's plan of invasion would be out the window. You cannot see that you have to put the blame where it truly belongs. IF you think George is an idiot, then he should be pretty easy to out wit, but alas, Saddam is the bigger idiot. The point is, Hussein was not a man of his word. George bush is, and that is the end of the stroy.....Quote:
Originally Posted by Eki
Eki, you sound like one of those typical diplomatic apparchartiks that hang out in the UN talking about human rights and values, while the real world is full of nations killing and maiming people for power, wealth and terror. You guys would talk us all to death, and nothing would ever happen. You cannot use diplomacy and talk to solve a dispute when you are dealing with someone who wont stand behind his word, and someone who will lie to you to give you what you want to hear. You cannot have diplomacy as the ends to the means. If there is not some sort of implied threat, you will get no where with the likes of Saddam. Now if you want to believe they should have taken longer with him, I wouldn't be spending the last 4 days arguing with you, but you have just blasted Bush over and over, like he is the problem. HE IS NOT THE PROBLEM. The problem was the man who created a country where ethnic hatred was used as a weapon to supress people. You want to know why those idiots were yelling at him as they hung him? Live under his rule, and see how rational you would be....
Maybe, but wise men sometimes admit they were wrong, change their mind and actions when they see things aren't going like they should be going. Only the stupid keep banging their head on the wall when it seems obvious they can't get through it (maybe that includes us, who have been debating the same things over and over again for the past 4 days like you said).Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa
I agree on that, except unlike you, I include the US among those nations.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa
I'm sure there would be Americans yelling at Bush if they hung him, at least Cindy Sheehan would.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa
Cindy Sheehan is a traitor in a time of war. Her son is doing a rotissere in his grave at the way she has dipped her hands into his blood for her personal political agenda. That makes quite a group that you support: Hitler, Saddam and now Sheehan.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eki
Eki, you just don't know when to quit. In your battle of wits with Mark, you are unarmed. Doesn't it embarass you when he repeatedly makes you look like a fascist fool?Quote:
Originally Posted by Eki
I want to take my hat off to both of you gentlemen, Mark and Eki, for having taken the time and trouble to give us this discussion. It has been the most absorbing thread by far that I have seen in the several years I've been a member here.
Mark. I agree with most of what you say, but I cannot help thinking that you let George Bush off far too easily. I don't believe he is evil, as Eki seems to do, nor do I believe that the war against the Ba'athists was immoral. Like you, I think the Coalition went into Iraq for high purposes, to liberate the Iraqi people from tyranny, and to leave in place a regime which would give Iraq freedom and prosperity. Certainly, the Coalition believed that in so doing, benefits would flow not only to Iraq, but to the rest of the world as well. To that extent, Eki is right, in my view; there was self-interest as well as humanitarian interest at work. The Coalition felt that a free, democratic Iraq would be a more reliable supplier of oil, and also felt that an Arab democracy would act as an example to other Muslim Arab populations, showing them that there is a more prosperous and happy life available to them, if only they will abandon radical, hate-filled, warlike politics. Freedom and democracy, it was hoped, would catch on in the Arab world, if only it could be shown to be possible in the very heart of Arabia. Those were noble motives, and if all one looks at are the motives, I think you are right, Mark, when you defend Bush and say he is not the worst of presidents, though not the best.
But look at method, rather than motive, and Bush begins to look far more sinister, closer to Eki's portrait than yours. I refer to the ruthlessness with which the campaign has been conducted, the utter lack of concern, for example, with preserving order after the invasion had been carried out. Rumsfeld's dismissive "stuff happens" comment about the looting and the chaos in the days after Saddam's fall was emblematic, in my view, of the entire American approach. The wholesale imprisonment of people in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and similar hell-holes, was not the reluctant imprisonment of enemies, but of anyone who was remotely suspect. It didn't matter to the Americans, as a matter of policy, if completely innocent people were tortured or killed; they wanted to err on the side of brutality, and in this, they resembled the Japanese in World War II, rather than the Allies. In that war, unlike this one, the Americans were honourable combatants, who minimised suffering wherever they could. In this one, they clearly did not care how much suffering they caused. That, in my book, is hard to forgive.
Not only was the callousness of the Americans wrong, it was also stupid. What a way to win hearts and minds!! So the Bush administration was cruel and foolish at the same time.
Another complaint I have against the American administration is that, as you admit, the chaos, anarchy and high death-toll was entirely predictable. In not taking steps to prevent it, the Americans are in the same moral position as a drunk driver who ploughs into a school-bus -- he is admittedly better than a murderer, whose intention is to kill, but far from blameless, as you suggest the Americans are. It is morally outrageous to blast into a situation without troubling to question whether your actions will cause grief on a massive scale. But this is what the Americans did.
It didn't have to be that way. The British ruled the South in a much more considered and humane way. Had the entire Operation Iraqi Freedom been run as the British ran their sector, things could have gone according to plan, establishing freedom, being seen as liberators, leaving a country which could look forward with confidence and gratitude to those who set them free.
So I despise Bush's conduct of this war. I despise its cruelty, its incompetence, its arrogance and its effects. I cannot see how you can call Bush anything other than a disastrous wartime leader. I cannot see how he could have possibly done a worse job.
And let me add one thing. I do not have any criticism of the American forces. For years I worked with American military personnel, and they impressed me enormously. But a fighting force is only as good as its leaders allow it to be, and in this terrible war the Americans were let down badly by their president. The blame lies with him, not them.
The bottom line is Bush lied & soldiers died,
Bush traded blood for oil & didn't even get the oil !
One of your theses, Mark, is that the reason for the terrible violence we are currently seeing in Iraq, Baghdad especially, is that the tyrannical lid on simmering sectarian hatreds was raised. It was inevitable, you seem to be saying, because Sunni and Shia just couldn't wait to get their hands on each other's throats. I don't believe that at all. There was every possibility of Sunni and Shia getting along. Under Saddam, Sunni and Shia did not fear each other or even hate each other at the street level. Intermarriage was quite common, Shia would attend Sunni weddings, travel in Sunni neighbourhoods, have Sunni friends. The hatred between Shia and Sunni that we see today is not the result of long-simmering animosity that has been unleashed. It had to be fomented, this hatred, stirred up, created. Those who created it were, primarily, Moqtada al Sadr on the one hand, and the remanants of the Ba'ath army, Saddam's army, on the other. They tried and tried to turn Iraq into a cauldron of hatred, and it has taken them years to achieve it. First, the groups used the Americans, and the killing of Americans, "resistance" they called it, to establish their legitimacy with the population at large. Moqtada al Sadr was considered a warmongering fool at first among the Shia, and they were much more interested and impressed by the very peaceful and devout Grand Ayatollah al Sistani, who advocated no violence against even the Americans, never mind the Sunni. Al Sistani's advocacy of peace toward all Muslims could have become the prevailing view, but Moqtada al Sadr used the Americans to discredit Sistani, and the Americans played right into al Sadr's hands.
Likewise the Sunni. They, the vast majority, had no real axe to grind with the Shia population at large. There was no general hatred toward the Shia among the ordinary Sunni man in the street. They had not stomach for war at all, but the Americans completely disenfrachised the Ba'athist army, turned their leaders overnight from respected, feared pillars of society, into sub-humans, not worthy even of the most menial job. So the Ba'athist leaders, taking the rank and file with them, became warriors against the invaders, gaining respect in the only way they knew how -- through violence. I don't condone that, Mark, but I do say that it needn't have happened.
Once the Ba'athists and the Shia militias embroiled the country in war against the Americans, it was a simple matter for the warlords to turn that war into a war between themselves. It wasn't inevitable at all; it was the result, in large part, of the incompetence and callousness of the invading forces. The civil war is largely George Bush's war, and that is another idiocy that I find hard to forgive.