Herodotus

[QUOTE=JAD_333;463445]For the purpose of disussion, I am not basing my view on whether Saddam had or had not WMD nor whether he had or had not any ties with terrorist groups. As I said, it would have been better for our image if he had. The underlying purpose of going into Iraq was not to punish Saddam, but to confront the whole terrorist phenomenon in the region where it it is based and draws its strength. If it was not operating specifically in Iraq at that time, it was all around Iraq. If the objective is to get close so you confront terrorism, you pick a point of entry that is politically and militarily vulnerable. Iraq fit the bill. Saddam's record was deplorable; he appeared to still have banned WMD; he gassed his own people; he was responsible for thousands of deaths; he saw to his own pleasures out of the oil for peace program; he had started a war with Iran; invaded Kuwait. In short, there was little sympathy for his continued survival.

What region? AL Qaeda was based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hezbollah is based in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine. If by region you mean Islamic countries, that's a whole big region encompassing North Africa, the Middle East, South and Central Asia...and Southeast Asia. If you mean Islamic countries that also have oil then that narrows it down a bit.

If we really wanted to pick a point that was militarily and politically vulnerable and ACTUALLY take out a terrorist group we should have picked Lebanon. At the very least if we wanted to "reform" the region we should have started with our purported allies; Saudi Arabia, and the deplorable Kuwaitis.

Now you rattle off a list of tertiary reasons for the invasion, all in the past (except for oil-for-food which was after the fact), and at the time they occurred elicited little international outrage (save the invasion of Kuwait). Even if Saddam gassed his own people (and there is still some debate on the subject) or 'killed thousands', those are internal matters, that a state has a right to deal with. Deplorable yes, but a reality that exists. If we can invade Iraq 15 years after one crime, and justify the invasion based on that crime, despite no evidence that the crime continued, or that it would re-occur what's to stop us from invading Myanmar for what they did this last fall, or 1988, or any other country for crimes committed in its past?

As for his invading of Iran, this is a myth, that he started the war. In truth a border conflict had been raging between the two countries for ten years prior to his invasion. Coupled with that was Saddam's fear (real it turned out) that the Islamic Revolution in Iran would target his regime, so he launched a pre-emptive war (I thought that was allowed). As for Kuwait, Iraq has always had a territorial claim to it that predates Saddam and the Baathists. When Kuwait declared its independence in 1961, Iraq almost invaded but was stopped by a show of force by the British. The removal of Saddam does not mean the Iraq/Kuwait issue has been resolved.


All very interesting, but irrelavent to the central issue. How does the US protect itself, its allies and trading partners, and its vital interests in the face of escalating terrorism? Modify its ME policy and abandon Israel to suit the terrorists? Once you start doing that, there is no end to it. It invites every group opposed to US policy to blow up American embassies. It inculcates a culture of retreat among your own people. No. Going into Iraq was saying 'enough is enough.'

That's a slippery slope argument. No one, at least not me, is saying don't get the Taliban or al Qaeda (You know the ones actually doing the blowing up of embassies). But its one thing to go after the actual culprits and entirely another to go after someone who had nothing to do with it. Radical Islamic terrorists that want to wage war against the US are a tiny, tiny, tiny minority in Islam--there are over 1 billion Muslims in the world, Al Qaeda/Hezbollah have what 20-30,000 members combined?

Instead we have created a self-fulfilling prophecy with our faulty inductive reasoning:

All terrorists are Muslim
Iraq is a Muslim country
Therefore we should invade Iraq to fight terrorism





Failure comes at the end. Until then, there is struggle. Struggle has its good days and bad. I know people opposed to the war who say they'd be ok with it if it had been a slam dunk as advertized. It's a subtle contradiction: this idea that victory is ok, but fighting for it is not.

Well how do you define victory?


First of all, most observers don't agree that expectations are as low as they were. Second, the so-called "remnants" of a terrorist organization is exactly what I was referring to earlier. Iraq sits in the middle of a region where the terrorists are recruited for Iraq and before that for 9/11, Bali, USS Cole, our embassies in Africa, etc. Don't think for a minute that our being in Iraq caused them to organize against us. They merely moved to a place where we were a handier target, and likewise they became targets.[/quote]

Before the Iraq war terrorists were angry about foreign occupation of Islamic holy lands. After the Iraq war terrorists were angry about...foreign occupation of Islamic holy lands. I think there's a trend here. There is irony in justifying an invasion in order to prevent the invaded from invading other countries, or in occupying a country holy to Muslims in order to alleviate their anger over the foreign occupation of another country holy to Muslims. Perhaps this war should be named the Ironic War?