Obama - First Black President

[noblemountain]

did anyone else watch that video? if we had those policies in place...we'd be in such a better place right now. that guy in 2012 and i'll campaign for him. lol

[Elvis]

The UN, World Court, etc. are all important. We take them seriously when we want too. Other countries with less guns are continually bitch slapped via the UN (Iraq sanctions). Having no world committee form of oversight is idiotic. That means we just make the rules up as we go (which we do anyways) and justify anything and everything to satisfy our own interests (which we do anyways). Poisoning the wells, etc. etc.

Getting rid of Saddam had nothing to do with his crimes/etc. It just fit the public relations aspect of 'selling' the war to the public. Hence the constant insinuations of ties to Al Qaeda and WMDs and Nukes and blah blah blah. This is all old.

I don't understand why people bring up Saddam's crime like they are UNIQUE. They aren't. Our foreign policy has little to do with moral conscience.

Blah blah we support harsh regimes and despots who blah blah accept US economic and social reform blah blah example blah blah blah Columbia blah blah Saudi Arabia blah blah (the oil goes to London and NY instead of to the people of it's country) blah.

Olde pathetic defense is olde.

[Charla]

Getting rid of Saddam had nothing to do with his crimes/etc. It just fit the public relations aspect of 'selling' the war to the public. Hence the constant insinuations of ties to Al Qaeda and WMDs and Nukes and blah blah blah. This is all old.

I don't understand why people bring up Saddam's crime like they are UNIQUE. They aren't. Our foreign policy has little to do with moral conscience.

But on the other hand, Saddam's crimes were effective at selling the war to the public, were they not? So based on the assumption that the public's approval was indispensable to starting a war (which is debatable, but it's also inherent in the model of political power stemming ultimately from the collective will of the population, a tenet of representative democracy), then his crimes really were one of the central reasons for the war.

However, you're quite right that they weren't unique, and if you ignore the since disproven arguments about WMDs and terrorist support, we would have done far better from a strictly humanitarian perspective to overthrow a more corrupt regime in a less inherently unstable country somewhere else. We, the public, approved of Iraq (more or less grudgingly depending on who you listen to) because our attention was focused on it. As such, it seems that our policy is based in part on moral conscience, but only when in conjunction with our collective attention.

[Elvis]

No, I totally agree in that aspect. It was a good selling point and it worked. I'm simply reconciling the real reason for the war (regime change, oil; typical bleeding heart response) with the fake one.

Clinton worked the humanitarian angle well for Kosovo when it was really about neo-liberal policies we wanted to push through. Not surprisingly we learned our lesson after the bombings and like Iraq the situation became hell on Earth.

[Charla]

I'm just saying that if the administration's "fake" reason was the public's "real" reason, which one is more real? After all, the public is supposed to be in charge here, right?

And now the corollary to all this: if the administration had wanted a war without a humanitarian justification, but they couldn't get anyone behind it, so Congress wouldn't go along, wouldn't that make the public's reasoning more important than the administration's?

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

I'm just saying that if the administration's "fake" reason was the public's "real" reason, which one is more real? After all, the public is supposed to be in charge here, right?

And now the corollary to all this: if the administration had wanted a war without a humanitarian justification, but they couldn't get anyone behind it, so Congress wouldn't go along, wouldn't that make the public's reasoning more important than the administration's?

Right, but if the "hidden intention" was there, why not go America fuck yeah and world police everyone. North Korea, Sudan, free Tibet from China.

You don't just pick and choose who wins humanitarian ass-kicking on their behalf. It's either all in or mind your own business. If Bush was like, listen mu'fucka's we gon' march into Africa seen... step on some bitch ass regimes, march through Iraq, have a falafel in Saudi Arabia and kick it on thru NK and on to Tibet.

Everyone would have been along for the ride. But when you come from oil money and target an oil producing nation with questionable accusations people are going to flip shit and call you for what you are. It's alot more complex than WMD / Dictatorship.

[Elvis]

I'm just saying that if the administration's "fake" reason was the public's "real" reason, which one is more real? After all, the public is supposed to be in charge here, right?

I agree.

And now the corollary to all this: if the administration had wanted a war without a humanitarian justification, but they couldn't get anyone behind it, so Congress wouldn't go along, wouldn't that make the public's reasoning more important than the administration's?

Again, I agree w/ that notion. All conflicts are sold to an extent. A leaked document during the first Bush admin. designated that the US should "fight much weaker enemies, and that victory must be rapid and decisive, as public support will quickly erode. It is no longer like the 1960s, when a war could be fought for years with no opposition at all."

Google: "1989," "Zalmay Khalilzad," "Defense Planning Guidance," and "New York Times."

Other aspects of the document:
▪ Pursue the "military-technological revolution" to preserve its superiority in the latest weapons systems (e.g., smart munitions)

▪ Sustain the "forward" presence of U.S. ground, air, and naval forces in strategically important areas, to validate commitments, and to provide a capability to respond to crises affecting significant interests, such as freedom of the seas and access to markets and energy supplies

▪ Preserve a smaller but diverse "mix" of survivable nuclear forces to support a global role, validate security guarantees, and deter Russian nuclear forces

▪ Field a missile defense system as a shield against accidental missile launches or limited missile strikes by "international outlaws"

▪ Maintain a capability to reconstitute military forces in the event a regional hegemon threatens to become a global threat

▪ Find ways to integrate the "new democracies" of the former Soviet bloc into the U.S.-led system

▪ Work with allies in NATO Europe and elsewhere but be ready to act unilaterally or with only a few other nations when multilateral and cooperative action proves too "sluggish" to protect vital interests.

National Security Archive, George Washington University :The Nuclear Vault: The Making of the Cheney Regional Defense Strategy, 1991-1992

[Plow]

quoting directly from the video:

"What are we missing? A functioning executive to translate will into action.

Because we don't have it, every time we lead one of the efforts, we have to whip ourselves into this 'imminent threat' thing.

We haven't faced an imminent threat since the Cuban missile crisis, 1962.

But we use this language from a bygone era-- to scare ourselves into doing something because we're a democracy and that's what it takes.

And if that doesn't work, we scream 'He's got a gun!' just as we rush in.

Then we look over the body and we find like an old cigarette lighter and we say... 'Well, Jesus it was dark.'"

[Lordender]

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y11.../hahahazi6.jpg

lol found that on MMO champion

[Demosthenes11]

The UN, World Court, etc. are all important. We take them seriously when we want too. Other countries with less guns are continually bitch slapped via the UN (Iraq sanctions). Having no world committee form of oversight is idiotic. That means we just make the rules up as we go (which we do anyways) and justify anything and everything to satisfy our own interests (which we do anyways). Poisoning the wells, etc. etc.

Getting rid of Saddam had nothing to do with his crimes/etc. It just fit the public relations aspect of 'selling' the war to the public. Hence the constant insinuations of ties to Al Qaeda and WMDs and Nukes and blah blah blah. This is all old.

I don't understand why people bring up Saddam's crime like they are UNIQUE. They aren't. Our foreign policy has little to do with moral conscience.

Blah blah we support harsh regimes and despots who blah blah accept US economic and social reform blah blah example blah blah blah Columbia blah blah Saudi Arabia blah blah (the oil goes to London and NY instead of to the people of it's country) blah.

Olde pathetic defense is olde.

that's the whole point. I'm not arguing we should have gone into Iraq. I'm simply stating that arguing about going into other countries like the Congo but not Iraq is hypocritical and likely stems from the "fuck bush" bandwagon.
I think everyone was missing the beginning of that all there and confused me with someone that wanted to go into Iraq (well at the time I did, but I was young and uninformed <3)

And purely from a curiosities standpoint, I've never seen any kind of proof that the war had anything to do with oil. Our gas prices certainly never benefited, we never got richer off of any of it, I'm not even sure we control the supply of it there today.

I believe whole-heartedly Bush thought disposing Saddam and invading Iraq was the right thing to do - there are a lot of good personal interviews with him that speak volumes. There were a lot of hasty conclusions drawn before invading that were the big mistake. I don't think Bush lied when he said they had WMDs, because the whole US (including John Kerry) thought they had WMDs. Bush is a shitty president not because of misleading the public or doing stuff just to be an asshole, but because there are a lot of things he did not fully think out or think of the ramifications of certain actions if they were to turn in such a way.
That and a few liberal/neocon policies of course

[Elvis]

There's plenty of money that has been made in Iraq. Plenty of examples, but let's look at a direct one - the 100 Orders by Paul Bremer under the CPA. Order 81 in particular.

This is no different from what we did in Honduras under the Alliance for Progress policies. See: "Snow Peas export," "Honduras." The point is that these countries serve a specific role subordinate to OUR interests and not their own.

Unsurprisingly, the 100 Orders violate international law. And yea, I'm sure all the people in power believe in what they are doing.

[archibaldcrane]

I'm simply stating that arguing about going into other countries like the Congo but not Iraq is hypocritical and likely stems from the "fuck bush" bandwagon.

Most of Saddam's atrocities and death toll stemmed from his genocide/gas campaigns against the Kurds in the '80s and the Iran/Iraq war in the '80s. After the first gulf war, we had decimated his military, established no-fly zones to protect Kuwait and the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, and pretty much hamstringed any significant aggression that Hussein could manufacture, either outwards or inwards.

Comparing a 2002 Iraq to a current Darfur or (I don't know much about it but) Congo is absurd. Hussein did really bad shit over a decade prior to '02, but was basically neutered in his "evil-doer" capacity for the decade before we invaded. If you want to make the argument that we should've invaded Iraq in 1987 or something, fine, go nuts. But comparing a neutered dictator in Iraq to current genocide (or mass-killing, if you prefer) in Africa is no comparison.

Saddam wasn't even able to commit genocide when we invaded his country. He was under control. Our mission was not a humanitarian one (and thank god because the civilian death tolls from our actions would make such a claim completely laughable). Don't compare 2002 Iraq to current day African nations where mass-killing is taking place.

They aren't comparable.

[Churchill]

Going into Darfur or the Congo or North Korea or Venezuela or Iraq or Afghanistan are all pretty much equally unacceptable.

[Elvis]

I already posted this a couple pages back but we can also bring the bombing of Afghanistan - which exacerbated the preexisting starvation crisis - into the mix. We knew what would happen if we carried out the bombardment. There are plenty of reports covering that - I quoted 2 integral NY Times articles - and the Bush admin. made a few damning statements that clearly show they knew (anticipated) the starvation getting monumentally worse. I believe it became known as the 'silent genocide.'

There was no humanitarian agenda. It was just a marketing ploy. We need to reconcile what the government says with the facts (past/present/future).

[Dimmauk]

attempting to find something now to try bush on when he wasn't impeached at all is laughable and a total waste of time/money/resources.

Repeal his shit and move on - it's not like congress had nothing to do with it.

Clinton lied about a Blowjob, and we wasted the money.

Bush lied about WMDs, Torture, Spying, and we don't want to waste the money?

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

If Bush lied about Iraq so did Clinton and Gore.

[noblemountain]

also too...don't forget that we were hitting targets in iraq under clinton too. i joined the army while clinton was president and i was by no means "bored".

what churchill said is right...you either invade ALL those countries or NONE of them because you can't pick and choose which battles you want because those countries are "more important" or "less important". that video made a great point about us having an amazing military force...but no peacekeeping force at all. you can't expect the same guys to do both jobs and be successful.

i understand that we're always going to be the UN's big stick. when someone needs taken down or dealt with, we're going to be the ones that have to lead the charge...we just need to put the force into place that can handle the "after".

[Dimmauk]

If Bush lied about Iraq so did Clinton and Gore.

What Clinton did, and what Bush did are completely different.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

What Clinton did, and what Bush did are completely different.

How so? Bush, Clinton, and Gore all claimed Iraq had WMD's. Just because Bush acted on it, had the Republicans not castrated Clinton he probably would have to, does not make it any less of a lie.

[Dimmauk]

How so? Bush, Clinton, and Gore all claimed Iraq had WMD's. Just because Bush acted on it, had the Republicans not castrated Clinton he probably would have to, does not make it any less of a lie.

Clinton's airstrike's were backed by the U.N. and were directed at biological plants and factories. And when the Airstrikes happend, the GOP said it was only a diversion from the impeachment trial about getting a blowjob. Clinton also didn't go to War with Iraq.

Bush's Invasion and War on Iraq and its cities was very different than U.N. backed airstrikes.