Former Iraqi Citizen Has Some Questions for Anti-war Demonstrators

I think the author does bring up some good points and accurately describes "some" of the anti-war crowd. Notice I said some, not all but I do think that saddam's rights abuses are awful. I saw something on the history channel about this guy who designed one of saddam's torture chambers and it was horrible.

 

Since Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, started warning that a US invasion of Iraq would "open the gates of hell," the retort that has been flying around Iraqi exiles' websites is, "Good! We'd like to get out!"

Classic.

 

Very interesting article. I curious what some anti-war people on these boards would say to respond [not a shot against, just curiosity].

 

And where are the peace demonstrators protesting what Saddam is doing to his own people? I would certainly call some of the examples noted in this article to be anti-peace, wouldn't you?

Obviously you can't paint all of the anti war crowd with a broad brush but I still say a sizeable portion of them are anti Bush and anti US and not necessarily for peace.

 

Obviously you can't paint all of the pro war crowd with a broad brush but I stil say a sizeable portion of them are blindly pro Bush and will follow what he says like so many lemmings to the cliff edge regardless of the facts (or lack thereof) presented to them.

 

Wow, I'm convinced now!!!

Drop the nukes.

 

I'm convinced. We must invade Cuba immediately.

Hey, what happened to the right-wing "If you're here, you're an AMERICAN!" crowd? I thought we were against all these new arrivals not assimilating our culture. And here's this guy, bringing all this Old World stuff with him.

Am I too cynical in wondering why the guy didn't mention the babies being tossed out of the incubators?

Am I also cynical in wondering why exiles are so freaking concerned about the families that they, well, maybe "abandoned" is too strong a word. "It's okay, dear, I'm going clear around the world, so I can protect you."

Am I cynical in pointing out that without an effective internal resistance, what the guy is effectively asking us to do is to colonize the place? I understand "puppet leader" is a very lucrative occupation.

Am I cynical in wondering where this guy was eleven years ago, and why he isn't more pissed off at the first Bush Administration than the protestors? We didn't choose to keep Saddam in power.

Am I cynical in wondering where his family lives, that he's fine with having some ungodly amount of missiles tossed at them? Or has he not read up on what "Shock and Awe" is going to consist of?

And I prefer mochas to cappucinos.

 

Hey, what happened to the left wing "We're the protecters of the poor and oppressed everywhere" crowd? I thought it was our job to help all those who were the victims of ethnic cleansing and systematic torture such as those in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, etc.

I think he was having a hard time getting past the "torture our children" and "buy the bullet" episodes.

Maybe he left because he knew he'd be killed. Maybe he was outside the country when the first attack happened and didn't go back. Maybe he's a coward and ran screaming like a little bitch. I don't know and neither do you.

Yes....btw Mr Loney, Mr Karzai would like to speak to you about your references to him as a "puppet leader".

[EDITED after much chagrin about putting Iraq in Kuwait's place]
No, you can wonder all you want. It was never going to happen though. The coalition that was built at the time was for one purpose: liberating Kuwait. If you think the action we're about to take now is going to cause a stink, it would have been Bandini mountain if we had kept going in '91. No amount of revisionist histroy can change that annoying little fact.

I'm willing to bet that the voting stock he has in the "Republican Duct Tape Conspiracy" allowed him to get his name off the "lets kill civilians" missile target list.

I uhhh...yeah, so do I

 

Well . . . I have family in Baghdad. Not immediate family - they, including an Uncle who was tortured for 2 years by the Baathist, got out live in Jordan or Michigan. A childhood friend of my mom's was killed by the useless and cynical Desert Fox operation (I recently read or saw - perhaps on the recent Frontline program - that Clinton was made aware of this woman's death as she was a prominent artist).

Many bad things might occur should we go to war, but I still support it for reasons which are better enunciated here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8531-2003Feb26.html

Mr. Loney - I don't know you. I like some of your writing and appreciate the smart-ass persona you've cultivated, but this last post - like many you have on this subject is, frankly, disgraceful.

 

Mission accom....oh crap

 

I thought that it was to liberate Kuwait from Iraq.

 

The cruel fact is, we've had the anonymous testimony about Iraqi outrages before, and it turned out to be crap.

The other cruel fact is, there's no internal resistance worth speaking of, and it's pretty easy for external resistance to demand the use of the US military to free their country. I didn't bring up the Cuba example at random. There are still people who want a full-scale invasion to depose Castro. For all I know, it's still our official policy. And it would be bad for both countries. Very, very good for the exiles, but for the United States? Not worth it.

EDIT - left out this para, to distinguish Cuba from Iraq....To liberate Iraq, which is under a crueler leader, but has a larger and far more diverse population, a huge chunk of whom wouldn't trust us with a dead dog? To undertake such a campaign for human rights purposes, we have to be absolutely clear in our objective, our plan, and whether we will do less harm than good. We flunk on all those, just like we flunked on the Bay of Pigs, and would have flunked if we followed it up with invasion.

I'm totally, totally in favor of liberating captive peoples worldwide. I'm totally, totally in favor of running a foreign policy completely based on human rights. And I'm totally opposed to using human rights as a flimsy transparent pretext for war. No Iraq war plan, for example, would let Turkey anywhere near the border, if they were concerned about civilians.

You mentioned the cynical and useless Desert Fox campaign. Well, Desert Rat, or whatever we call this, will be exponentially more cynical and useless. Anything less than six figures' worth of civilian casualties will be an absolute triumph, if not a miracle. I don't subscribe to the "destroy the village in order to save it" theory of human rights.

Your concern for the citizens of Iraq is undoubtedly sincere, but from where I sit, you're being played like a banjo.

Is now a good time to point out that Dick Cheney was in favor of lifting economic sanctions on Iraq in the 1990's? No? Okay, let me know when, then.

 

I hate when I type to fast and put Iraq in places I meant to put Kuwait....return to your regular programming please.

 

Because those who do speak up and attempt to lead an internal resistance are shot and their families are sumarily billed for the bullet. We are lucky here in the US, we can criticize anything and everything about this country and the only thing that happens is that we argue with those who don't agree with us.

The Gulf war cost roughly 35,000 non-military Iraqis their lives. You honestly think that 10x that many will die this time around?

 

I'm opposed to a pre-emptive war on Iraq and my response to all of his (very good) questions is yes. I'm also opposed to Hussein's human rights abuses and would love to see him and his cohorts appear before an international criminal court. I'm not someone who thinks the US is inherently evil. Hell, I would have loved to have seen Bush senior order our troops to have saved the Kurds and the Shiites back in '91 when we had the chance.

But the questions in this article imply that the new regime will necessarily be free of human rights abuses. We don't know that. The US has supported human rights abusers before and just because the cold war is over that is no guarantee that it won't support them in the future.

The questions also imply that these abuses are taking place right now. I realize they have taken place in the past, but Hussein is politically shrewd and he knows damn well that if that kind of thing leaked it would strengthen the coalition against him and that's the last thing he wants to do now. So having the inspectors in Iraq may also be inadvertently preventing humans rights abuses (I realize having the UNSCOM folks there didn't accomplish this, but UNMOVIC is a different beast now that it has Bush's saber-rattling to accompany it.) If anyone has any links to info on currenthuman rights abuses I'd love to read them. The past victims tended to be mostly Kurds and Shiites and these two groups are mostly protected by the no-fly zones.

 

I told myself I shouldn't post because I didn't have time for this but . . .

This (edit - the assumption that people who come forward to talk about their experience of Saddam's atrocities are simply lying) is the aspect of your postings that I find disgraceful.

Simply false. The Kurds have resisted the Baathists at various points in the past 30 years (A lot of what Saddam is about is Arabizing Kurdish territories) and have paid a heavy price. They're doing relatively well right now. The Shiites rose at our urging post Gulf War and were brutally supressed. Saddam imposes a brutal Stalinist regime much worse than Castro's and you're quite the armchair quarterback to demand internal resistance. I also assume that some exiles hope to seize powere should regime change occur and it's very much to the Administration's credit that they're stiffing people like Ahmed Chalabi by announcing plans for some sort of military governorship of Iraq post war. YMMV whether we can pull this off or if it's a good idea.

I don't think we're in this solely or even primarily for human rights purposes.

Our dealings with the Turks bother me (of course the Turks complain that we act as mouthpieces for the Kurds) as the Kurds have been as screwed as any ethnic group around - they had every qualification for post WWI Wilsonian self-determination. That said, if you thought about your last sentence in this paragraph for even a few seconds, you'd realize why it's absurd.

I do not believe there will be anywhere near 6 figures casualties. I made a cursory and unsuccessful search for analysis of air warfare done, I believe by the Washington Post's Vernon Loeb. Bottom line is that the trend from Dresden to Vietnam to Gulf War to former Yugoslavia to Afghanistan is one of dramatic reduction of collateral damage (easy to say when you're not on the receiving end).

From where I sit you're either unwilling or incapable of reading the sheet music.

It's a free country so point out what you wish. You assume I worship at the alter of Cheney. Related to collateral damage above, seems to me sanctions target civilians w/ little effect on military.

 

1. "Six figures" would be 3 times 35K, not 10 times. Home schooled?
2. Since that war was fought to expel Iraq from Kuwait, and this war will be fought to expel the Iraqi gvt. from Iraq, it's not irrational to think there will be more civilian casualties.

But, slate.com had an article yesterday arguing civilian casualties will be less than most expect.

We'll see.

 

www.amnesty.org/

 

Civilian casualties could be 350K or higher.....if Hussein orders the release of chemical or biological weapons against US troops in close proximity to civilian areas. The casualties then could very well be catastrophic.
Does that mean that that you take no action at all though?
No civlian casualties is always the goal but unfortuonately that goal is not realistic. Non-combatants will die from collateral damage, post war shortages of food, medicine and water, and possibly (hopefully not) the random targeting of NBC weapons in an urban area. Our job to make sure that we minimize casualties in every way. If I was still in the army my main problem would be the whole "human shield" concept. What the hell am I supposed to do if a line of Iraqi infantry was advancing towards me and firing from behind a line of unarmed non-combatants walking hand in hand towards my position. They told us in the army that according to the Geneva convention the "human shields" were no longer non-combatants because they had chosen to interpose themselves into a combat situation. SOP would be to direct fire against armed combatants while trying to limit casualties as much as possible. However, the priority would be on the preservation of the lives of my soldiers. It would still be a difficult thing and any pause may have severe consequences for troops on the ground.

 

It's happened before.

Which is why they don't want us anywhere near the place. I didn't exactly mean internal resistance AGAINST the US forces.

If it makes you feel better, we won't do jack for them this time, either.

And you're quite the optimist to say it's not necessary. The situation all but demands internal resistance, otherwise it becomes a war of conquest.

It's not so much that we'll lose - we won't. It's about whether as soon as we leave, it goes right back to the way it was. Or worse - the Islamic Republic of West Talibania wouldn't do anyone any favors.

And given that we have no intention of democratizing the place, I don't see what else we will get. What with there being no internal resistance to Saddam, and all.

Only if you assume there are no Kurdish civilians.

And, if all we were doing was air warfare - come on, we're talking about levelling the place. What do you think "Shock and Awe" means, ventriloquism?

No pleasing some people.

 

That's exactly right man.The liberals have no cares for the Iraqis at all. As I have said before, it is my suspicion that the liberals simply want to roast Bush whenever possible. I wonder, why don't the Iraqis deserve a chance at freedom? By "containing" Saddam and allowing inspections continue endlessly, the liberals are condemning the Iraqi people to a life of oppression.


EDIT- In regards to the "Shock and Awe" tactic,: Shock and awe is a tactic that will be used to shock the Iraqi MILITARY into submission. You say it is going to be used to "level the place," by which you mean civilian targets. That isn't the case here at all. We are going to use thousands of precision weapons as well as some massive daisy cutter bombs that pack a wallop to hammer the Iraqi military into submission. The power of the air war should instill an amount of awe in the republican guard units. We hope to unleash a great amount of firepower in a short amount of time to "shock and awe" the Iraqi military.