There, I've said it. We have no choice in the matter anymore. We have to go after Saddam. Just do it now -- don't wait for the UN, don't wait for Turkey, don't wait for anyone. Just go off and start bombing. Why the change from me? Because politically, the other options are all so inpalatable as to make them impossible. Let's go through them: -- Withdraw from positions in the Middle East: terrible idea; gives extremists the idea that Saddam has "won". Leaves a bad man in power in Iraq. Likely to lead to more problems of all sorts in the future. -- Let the inspections continue but keep the troops there: bad idea. Not as bad as withdrawal, but It leaves hundreds of thousands of Americans away from their homes & families as sitting ducks in Saudi, Kuwait, and everywhere else. It's costing us billions to just sit there. Would likely keep the economy in the doldrums for a couple more years, at least. -- Attack someone else: maybe not a terrible idea, but who? Bush can't re-invade Afghanistan, or take on Yemen or the Saudis or Pakistan or whoever. These are all our "allies". Iraq is the only logical bombing choice. I still hate this whole idea of invading Iraq -- I think it's misguided at best, imperialist and long-term disastrous at worst to give up 200+ years of defensive military philosophy to go after a guy who doesn't like us but doesn't really pose a threat to us, either. Bush is without a doubt the worst foreign policy President in my lifetime, and you'd have to go back several generations before you'd find anyone with this bad a mix of ineptitude and vitriolic self-righteousness. But that's beside the point. He put us in this sick situation, and now there's only one way out of it. Go in and get this bullcrap over with.
So the alternative is killing six figures worth of civilians? I don't see the problem with keeping troops there. They're going to be there anyway for the occupation, aren't they? How was this not going to be a long-term assignment? Just because the war is short, doesn't mean the tour of duty will be long. Why not rotate personnel, if it becomes a problem? We're not exactly in danger of losing our military superiority. I totally reject the idea, by the way, that American prestige rests on the actions of George W. Bush. He may look bad if he has to pull troops back, and bring them back in the winter, but that doesn't diminish our country.
Re: Re: The US must attack wow, you can see in to the future? must be cool. who wins the kentucky derby? i wanna win some cash.
Re: Re: Re: The US must attack I knew you were going to ask that. Hey, I really hope I'm wrong. I just don't see how you drop 800 missiles onto a city of over three million, and not get someone's hair mussed. Oh, right. They're all "precision-guided." I wish there was a smiley-face that could show sarcastic disbelief.
Re: Re: The US must attack Christ I hope not, but my presumption (which you can debate) is that inspections are not going to solve anything, really. The only way that this ends without any collateral damage are (a) Saddam gives up -- not likely, or (b) the inspectors give Iraq a clean bill of health -- equally unlikely. Continuing inspections buys time, but it still doesn't end well for civilians. There's virtually no difference between now and later. And I'm sure we will be in this for the long haul, but a peacekeeping force can and should be multinational, which should get at least some of our focus back on the things that matter, like protecting Americans from real threats. If Bush refuses assistance from others after Saddam is deposed, he should be tried for treason. But I don't think even he's that stupid. As sad and scary as it sounds, American security right now does, in fact, rest in the actions of said President. And if terrorists want to come after us, we're screwed whether we attack Iraq or not because he's done a horrific job of protecting us from any real terrorist threats. But with all that said, I fail to see how pulling troops back or just leaving them in Saudi indefinitely helps this situation. It would, for better or worse, help lots of nutcases believe that we are vulnerable. Dan, I know what you're saying and generally I know that I should agree with it. I want Rumsfeld turned over to the Hague for war crimes, and Wolfowitz thrown to hungry wolves. The Bush Administration should be criticized globally because of this. But while in an ideal world this war would still be avoidable, I am looking right now at the cards on the table and not seeing any reasonable solutions to this situation. I don't know, maybe I've just become so defeatist over the whole thing, but at this point I'd take war at 8 and surrender at 8:05 over any of this childish, pandering bullshit we're seeing from both sides now.
Re: Re: Re: The US must attack I hope we don't cause 100,000 deaths either (we did not do that in GWI) - but frankly I hope we don't have soldiers lives lost either (obviously lost in grand debate of the point here is the fact that American soldiers lives will be lost - they do matter more you know). In terms of "horrific" job that Bush II has done in going after real terrorist threats - he has done a great job - primarily by loosening the reigns on the intelligence community and special operations forces and letting them and others get down and dirty in going after AQ - but of course many on this board will not give him any credit for that. Of course Bush will get no credit for elimination of the Taliban, capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the AQ operatives and management out of action. No - Bush should get zero credit for that because it simply inconveniences our view of the world. No we should give Hussein and Bin Laden the Peace Prize and convict Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz of war crimes - yea that makes sense. Regarding your final point - a "defeatist" attitude is exactly opposite of what you should have at this point. The minute you view "both sides" (Iraq and US) viewpoints as pandering "BS" is pretty sad in terms of how you view the evil of the Iraqi leadership. The fact you could put both governments in the same logic train is pretty bizarre indeed.
Well, the House of Commons passed its own war resolution, so the game is up. War is inevitable now. Let's hope it's quick and successful. It occurred to me reading Obie's response that I wasn't against the war, but against the war plan. If instead of "Shock and Awe," we were going to invade in a way that wasn't going to level Baghdad, I guess that would be different. But we are going to launch more missiles in two days than we did in the first Gulf War, and I can't get past that. Nothing to do now except hope against hope that the conservatives are right for the first time since Robespierre.
i think you are getting a little extreme dan. there will be no leveling of baghdad. lots of bombs and missles? certainly, but i dont think you are going to see baghdad flattened like it seem you believe. i dont think that is what the bush administration wants, they wanna leave as much public infrastructure left in the country as possible and i think you will see this. there won't be carpet bombing of baghdad.
Re: Re: The US must attack So these precision guided weapons, aimed at military/strategic targets, will have basically the same effect as, say, the Dresden fire-bombings? Damn. Count me out. Thanks for the heads-up.
Re: Re: Re: Re: The US must attack Agreed. No, they don't "matter more". The purpose of a war is to not lose your people while the other side loses theirs, and the extent to which we lose American lives measures our failure / success, but they do not matter more. That's one of the more common misguided statements that people make in these situations. Considering all of the goodwill squandered since 9/11/01, I fail to see how Bush's foreign policy and security policy be considered a rousing success. The Taliban had to go -- as others here had said, Nader would have invaded Afghanistan and been successful. It's good to see the Taliban gone. But Afghans living everywhere except Kabul are no better off under warlords than they were under mullahs. We killed somewhere around 4,000 civilians in that action -- more than were killed on 9/11/01. Since then, we have been grasping at straws in trying to find a new direction, since the public tires of "nation-building". The CIA and military get credit for capturing the AQ people they have gotten. (They get no credit for the ones they haven't gotten, but that's another story.) They are relatively consistent across Presidential administrations. Where Bush has been involved, however, we've not seen nearly as much success. Homeland Security? Tommy Thompson on 60 Minutes saying that the anthrax scare was under control? Bailing out airlines and calling for upper-class tax cuts while the rest of us are being asked to sacrifice for war? Your call, I guess. So I should be saying "hooray for war"? Why? I don't trust Saddam, I think he's evil; but that doesn't give the Administration that we kinda sorta elected the right to lie to us, to lie to the UN, to ignore the UN, or to steamroll our troops into a war we don't really need.
Re: Re: Re: Re: The US must attack "After leaving his United Nations job as head of humanitarian relief in Iraq in 1999, Irish-born Dennis Halliday said, "We've got to classify sanctions as a form of warfare, given that they're producing 5,000 to 6,000 Iraqi deaths a month."" http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/background/gulf_war.html And this is just the first article that was returned when I searched "Iraqi deaths in Desert Storm" on google. I have heard upwards of 500,000 Iraqi deaths due to GWI. The numbers go way beyond just those of the Iraqi military and known "collateral" deaths. Go ahead and blame it on SH, but the US also has a part in the continued suffering for not completing the job the first time around. We just better do it right this time.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The US must attack You're right in that we should have taken out Saddam back in 1991--but the leftists would've bitched and moaned like none other if that'd happened. As for deaths "caused by the sanctions", how about blaming Saddam for spending all the country's money on brand new palaces for himself every month. Alex
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The US must attack Geeze, (reading comprehension check) isn't that, in not as many words, what I just said?
Re: Re: The US must attack We killed around 3000 Iraqi civilians during the last war. Of course that was short and this one will be longer, but I don't think we'll be reaching the six figures. I hope I'm right. Saddam kills 3000 Iraqi civilians a month, has been for the past 10-12 years now. It's all documented with the UN. I say we go in and get it over with, but I also say we should've been protesting the UN for letting him stay in power rather than waiting for someone(the US) to do something and protesting that. This war could've been avoided if the people the UN "protects" protested the UN for letting Saddam stay and kill his people. Then maybe the UN would've used some diplomatic(hopefully not military) force in putting Saddam out of power, and this wouldn't be such a huge issue right now. Just my take on all of this.
Re: Re: Re: The US must attack You people really think I make this stuff up? Here. If the Pentagon sticks to its current war plan, one day in March the Air Force and Navy will launch between 300 and 400 cruise missiles at targets in Iraq. As CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports, this is more than number that were launched during the entire 40 days of the first Gulf War. On the second day, the plan calls for launching another 300 to 400 cruise missiles. "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," said one Pentagon official who has been briefed on the plan. "The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before," the official said. The battle plan is based on a concept developed at the National Defense University. It's called "Shock and Awe" and it focuses on the psychological destruction of the enemy's will to fight rather than the physical destruction of his military forces. "We want them to quit. We want them not to fight," says Harlan Ullman, one of the authors of the Shock and Awe concept which relies on large numbers of precision guided weapons. "So that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes," says Ullman. In the first Gulf War, 10 percent of the weapons were precision guided. In this war 80 percent will be precision guided. The Air Force has stockpiled 6,000 of these guidance kits in the Persian Gulf to convert ordinary dumb bombs into satellite-guided bombs, a weapon that didn't exist in the first war. "You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted," Ullman tells Martin. You tell me what that means.
And don't forget that Rumsfeld has mulled over the options of using nukes and chemical warfare. I suppose the US could do what it did in Afghanistan and just lie about how civilians are killed.
Re: Re: Re: Re: The US must attack A lot of death and suffering for those unfortunates who could not evacuate Baghdad before the shyt hit the fan. Bush asks Iraqi military to put down their arms and surrender? Yea right. Fat chance of ever having that opportunity for most of them, and for whom are somone's son, father, or husband forced to fight this fight for their wretched dictator.
Re: Re: Re: Re: The US must attack Well, I'll refer you to your own post: Unless this means "demoralize the military by killing many, many civilians," it doesn't support your point. Division headquarters. Military targets. There would almost certainly be collateral damage, but 100,000 civilians? I don't see that. That would be good for civilians and soldiers. If it works. I think you're misinterpreting the intent of "shock and awe". People have been making much of the fact that there will be significantly more precision weapons (in total number and in percentage) used in the first days of this war than the entire (rather short) Desert Storm campaign. If I'm an Iraqi civilian, I'm hoping that the vast majority of incoming fire is precision. That's their best hope. Collateral damage is unavoidable, but the design of this operation is intended to target the military assets immediately and violently, and demoralize the military specifically because it is precise. Six figure civilian casualties is not implied by this concept. I hate it for the military though. If your estimate were correct, I wouldn't support this particular campaign. I don't want to see the Iraqi military crushed either, necessarily. I hope they surrender quickly. The desired effect is that many military/strategic targets will be destroyed quickly and simultaneously, overwhelming the enemy. If civilians are not targeted, and specifically if the great majority of ordinance can be accurately directed at military targets, then 100,000 civilian casualties sounds very unlikely. Have you seen a reference (besides "electronic intifada") that predicts six figure civilian casualties? I'm just trying to imagine. It took thousands of incendiary bombs dropped over the entire city of Dresden, creating an ecompassing, hellish firestorm that destroyed the entire city, to reach the civilian casualty figures you predict. Help me out here.