Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT: politics

exactly my point...so why are people beating up George Bush over this? He correct an old wrong. (oh and I'm pretty sure Saddam would have killed those innocent people whether he had American weapons or not - doesn't make it right, but it is so).

SOAPBOX RANT=100% ALIGN RIGHT
It seems to me that everyone talks about how we did it for the wrong reason (Bush lied, people died), or we did it badly (Abu Gahrab), or that we did it to no good effect (quagmire!) All this, I think, is not only debatable, but misses the really important point.

Which is simply and powerfully that we did it. We changed reality. Whatever may happen, Saddam’s family will never rule Iraq again.

All the side issues we distract ourselves with are all about us, here in the West. Our goals. Our sins. Most often, our fears. But the real point of invasion always was and still is the people of Iraq. Their freedom, not our safety, is the prize today. Watch them, not us, because at this precise moment in history, they have a chance at real democracy.

Yes, they might fail. They’ve got little infrastructure to work with. Yes, we certainly could have given them a better start by doing better with the occupation. Yes, their history of sectarian violence might poison their efforts. But however many mistakes we made, however slim their chance, however “unfit” for democracy some judge them to be, they’ve at least got this chance.

Twenty five MILLION people have a chance.

It cost a thousand American lives. It will certainly end up costing many more Iraqi lives. And it all might end horribly. Or it might spread freedom throughout the Middle East. Who will stand up and say their chance wasn’t worth our sacrifice?

In fact, many people and nations did and continue to do just that. But that's a soapbox rant for another day.
/SOAPBOX

You know what? I don't object to Saddam being gone. I don't object to trying to start a democracy there. What I object to is this:

1. Preemption. We change the doctrine of the last x amount of years by hitting first.

2. Unilateralism. We don't wait for the proper process to happen. The UN was headed our way, it just would have taken a little while. Yeah, yeah, how many more would die, but still. Procedures should be followed, or we should pull out of the UN, and cause even more people to hate us.

3. We were lied to. We are still lied to. The revisionism is amazing. Now our primary motivation for going into Iraq was to remove Saddam. A year ago, our primary motivation was because of the "WMD."

4. WMD. Since when does everything need to be an acronym?!

5. A lack of a plan for the peace. Sure we won the war. Uh, now what? Let's make it up!

6. The War on Terror. Uh, what happened to Osama? Good lord, we're pulling people out of Afghanistan to go to Iraq!

7. North Korea. They've got ICBMs and Nukes. They've said so. We know it. They're irrational as hell. You know why we're not touching them? 'Cause under the Bush doctrine, they should be little piles of radioactive ash.

In short, I don't trust this administration to be making these kinds of decisions.

On the economy thing, here's something that will anger both sides. The President has almost nothing to do with the current economy. Clinton got lucky. Bush got unlucky, and he's starting to get a little lucky. We'll see what happens when the deficits come back to bite President Schwarzenegger. Or President Edwards.

You forget the Constitutional Amendment! That's outdated... obviously we need to get rid of that part of the Constitution.

Les9596, that was excellent. I'm proud of that post and I had nothing to do with it.

"3. We were lied to. We are still lied to. The revisionism is amazing. Now our primary motivation for going into Iraq was to remove Saddam. A year ago, our primary motivation was because of the "WMD.""

kcarlie, you're obviously just funnin' us now, right?

I think that many people selectively remember only the WMD aspect of that speech Bush gave prior to the invasion of Iraq. The Democrats and the media have helped reinforce that false impression. If you press me, I'm sure I can google up the text of that speech.

Let me add another number:

An amazing unwillingness to admit a mistake!

You're probably right on number 3. But the emphasis shifted...

Ba'athism is Arab National Socialism - it is Nazism. We cleaned up that scourge against humanity in Europe. I'm a lifelong democrat, but I'll admit that Bush did what needed to be done. If anyone thinks absolutely criminal regimes like the Ba'athist malignancy in Iraq has any legitimacy, they are either out of touch with reality, or moral imbeciles.

Adam, if you think a democratic Israel is a threat to the United States, I'd like you to share your reasoning with us. Seems to me, the only way Israel is a threat to the US is if the UN permits the Arabs to exterminate Israel's Jewish population and make Israel another Muslim country.

KC, United States' policy has, since 1947, always acknowledged that preemption was our national policy vis a vis the Soviet Union and China. The United States never agreed to sign any treaty by which we would renounce first use of nuclear weapons.

Please, take a look at what's happening in this world. Please explain how the world permits the genocide in Rwanda, or the current genocide in Somalia, or what the Ba'athist malignancy did in Iraq? Will the UN do anything about the genocidal anarchy of the Muslim south Sahara region? You can count on not only the impotence of the UN to do anything about Somalia, after all it is an Arab genocide and there are over 80 Islamic nations represented in the UN, but a UN which appears only offended by the policies of Israel or the United States.

This country can stick its head in the sand, like France, but if we do, we'll still be the target of an international war of Jihad which is being waged against us.

Do you think that we are being attacked because Muslims don't like our policies? Well, that's what war is about!

If you want to concede control of our policies to any extra-national group willing to fly jetliners into our buildings, or blow up our ships, or release pathogens in our cities, or poison our water, then you have declared the terrorists winners and conceded our sovereignty.

If you think that our sovereignty is equivalent to the sovereignty of malignant criminal regimes like the Ba'athists in Iraq, or the genocidal anarchy that is Somalia, then you're crippled by a moral relativism which concedes there is no morality, or which acknowledges that there is no difference between immorality and morality.

2x6, you don't sound like a Democrat - though all those pictures of you, the Clintons and Gore rubbing elbows leaves little room for doubt. LOL