Iraq: does it accomplish anything in "The War on Terror"

[lostinacause]

Getting past they way Bush behaved in the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq through to an election that happened too early; what are your opinions on the potential that actions in Iraq had and what should have been done to make things better?

[LynnTheDem]

1. Oh yes; it's INCREASED terrorism and INCREASED the threat of terrorism

And pretty much every think tank, including rightwing ones, every ME expert, every terrorism expert, and bush's own Pentagon & US State Department reports say so.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED and bush keeps his PERFECT RECORD for f*cking up EVERYTHING he touches!

Edit to add; bush's invasion of Iraq had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with his "war on terra"; they are 2 very separate things. But the effect of his illegal war of aggression on Iraq has INCREASED terrorism & the threat of.

As always, bush made things WORSE.

WHat should have been done??? First, Americans should have used some bloody COMMON SENSE. Some 2600 Americans were killed on 911. Yes and an average of 3000 American kids are murdered EVERY YEAR by their American parents. Where's the "war on murdering American parents"???

Second, Americans should have again used some bloody COMMON SENSE and discussed WHY 911 happened and HOW to prevent future 911s and OPENLY discussed FACTS, not the bullshit immature ridiculous "they hate us for our freedoms" rhetoric that even little schoolkids around the world laugh at us over.

Third, we should have accepted the Taleban's offer to hand OBL over to Pakistan for public trial. IF the Taleban then did not turn OBL over, THEN we could have taken military action AND had the support of the world.

Iraq was NEVER anything to do with any "war on terra".

[lostinacause]

2. You didn't really answer the question

What I was asking is; if done right could have action in Iraq made the world or America safer?

[LynnTheDem]

4. I DID answer you; NO because NOTHING COULD have been "right"

about ILLEGALLY INVADING & OCCUPYING a nation that had been doing NOTHING WHATSOEVER to ANYONE, and the invasion of Iraq HAD NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO with bush's "war on terra".

FACT; Iraq was NEVER a threat to America or to the world, so how could ANYTHING we could have done to Iraq made us "safer"?????!!

[purduejake]

6. Well, we could have flown over Baghdad and dropped...

aid packages... not to mention other cities in the country. Maybe that would have helped the people while still capping Saddam's income.

edit: it would have also increased our image and took away some of OBLs power, but instead we did EXACTLY what he warned people in the region about.

[LynnTheDem]

10. If we were gonna do that, why not do what the entire world wanted us to do

and relax the non-weaponry US-enforced sanctions against Iraq? As even the rightwing thinktanks admit, we could EASILY have made Hussein a FRIEND and ALLY of America's again, with a little honey, instead of the bully-belligerance bullshit.

Or gee, instead of telling Saddam Hussein he could remain in power if he DISARMED his "WMD", bush coulda said "be nice to your people & allow genuine free elections" or we'll invade.

But NOT ONCE did any rightwingnut pundit or bushCabal member EVER demand Hussein BE NICER to the Iraqis. In fact, Hussein offered to hold open elections, but bushCabal WANTED to invade & occupy Iraq.

America wants Iraq. Full control of. And there is only ONE REASON for that, and we all know it, even those who still refuse to admit it. Operation Iraqi Liberation.

As you pointed out, EXACTLY what OBL warned of; we gave Osama street cred.

[bowens43]

13. No. There is no RIGHT way to invade and occupy

a country that did you no harm and presented no threat.

[Casandra]

9. Well done!!!

Amen....Good message! You said it like it really is. I love to see this kind of clarity on the real issues.

[LynnTheDem]

11. Thanks! And welcome to

DU! :hi:

[Old and In the Way]

3. Yes, it will sell lots more weapons for war profiteers.

Is the world better off? Of course not.

A 100,000 innocent Iraqis killed because Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction; he didn't have anything to do with 9/11; he didn't have an army that could threaten anyone.....but he did have a lot of oil in the ground.

[LynnTheDem]

5. Gee, maybe we could have stolen Iraq's oil in a NICER way.

*sarcasm*

*and NOT directed at you, Old (I agree with your post 100%)

[neweurope]

7. It's the wrong premise. A "war on terrorism" is nonsense.

There has always been terrorism - in all countries and all ages. There will be terrorism until our world is heaven on earth because there will always be the oppressed and enraged. Terrorism is nothing new. If somebody really wants to fight terrorism it is with peace, with supporting the poor of the earth, with equality. Instead we, the Western countries, mine included, but the US always most of all, do our very best to exploit the Third World.

People have always been dying because of terrorism. Now for a change it hit the US. 2600 people died there of terrorism (whose terrorism, sorry, we don't even really know). It was a solitary occurrence (all the "terrorists"-alarms since have been trumped up to get certain laws passed - there was never ever anything real about it).

This fact is being used as a sham to take away your civil rights (and mine, too, since the EU caved in to US-pressure) and to further the insatiable geopolitical ambitions of your country. The whole world sees and knows this - even school children in Germany protested against the war in Iraq. And because everybody sees this war as a crime the potential of those actions is creating more terrorists - world wide - than ever before and moreover enlarging the difference between Christians and Muslims; fundamentalists on both sides, so far not really of much importance, are gaining ground. The world has become much more unsafe and I am afraid of a nuclear war.

What should have been done better? You should have stayed the hell out of other people's country. Instead you're just preparing to bomb another one and plans are being made to even bomb three if I'm not mistaken - Iran, Venezuela, Syria.

--------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[LynnTheDem]

8. RIGHT ON, NewEurope!!!

EXACTLY right on!!!

And bush is just DOING IT AGAIN; he wants to hire the group listed as a terrorist organization on the US State Dept, the MEK, to go into Iran and stir up trouble, with the goal being the overthrow of Iran's mullahs.

Or using the US State Dept-listed terrorist Nicaraugan paramilitaries, who already had been used by America in the US-sponsored terrorist deaths of 30,000 Nicaraguan civilians (and which found us indicted & guilty at the World Court) in Iraq to put down the rebels.

HELLOOOOO AMERICA!!!

THIS is why 911 happened!

Stop hiring terrorist thugs rapists murderers to do America's dirty work of killing innocent people in other nations so America can then turn on the terrorist thugs rapists murderers and steal whatever resources America was after in the first place! It makes the surviivors of the nations hate our guts with damn good cause, and it makes the terrorist thugs we back-stabbed hate our guts with good cause.

OSAMA BIN LADEN; CIA-trained, America-supported & armed & financed. The BA'ATH PARTY in Iraq; CIA-installed, America-supported & armed & financed. The murderous SHAH OF IRAN; HO CHI MINH; PINOCHET; BATISTA; STALIN; SADDAM HUSSEIN; it just NEVER ENDS with America.

They don't "hate us for our freedoms", they hate us because we insist on KILLING OTHER PEOPLE'S KIDS and STEALING other nations' resources, and supporting & using terrorist thugs to do so.

[neweurope]

12. Let me return the "Right on", LynnTheDem. You have stated exactly

why peoples all over the world don't like the US. And this is NOTHING new, this has NOT started with Bush and Iraq. Bush is only WORSE than he predecessors - Pinochet and Batista as you rightly pointed out were sometime in the past.

By the way: All of this was accomplished with US-troops. I'm under the impression that in the US it is considered "unpatriotic" to not support the troops. How can this be? The troops were created to protect your soil - that's ok with me. But in fact they have been used time and time again for "KILLING OTHER PEOPLE'S KIDS and STEALING other nations' resources" as you, LynnTheDem, rightly pointed out. So how can it be honorable to support them?

I find it impossible to despise Bush for what he's doing in Iraq - and at the same time to support the troops who are Bush's weapon in devastating that poor country.

Of course no soldier can choose which country he must attack and devastate. But US history shows that sooner or later he WILL have to attack and devastate innocent people's countries for the sake of your upper class. So how would a VOLONTARY weapon of the US wealthy NOT be guilty (in case of a draft it'd be different - not totally but to a large degree)?

Some days ago somebody here announced that he joined the Navy (for getting into medical school or the like). He naively hopes that he won't have to do any fighting. Even if he doesn't - as one of many little wheels that keep the US war machinery running he's just as guilty as if he personally fired off a gun at an Iraqi (Nicaraguan...) child. And everybody who supports this soldier is just as guilty in my eyes. A president cannot fight a war alone. Hitler to my knowledge never killed anybody with his OWN hands.

I really don't get it.

Honorable in my opinion it would be to create a situation where young people can learn free of cost so they don't have to risk their - and innocent people's - lives for a little education.

----------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[Lexingtonian]

14. yes and no

It's easier to think about Iraq from supposing, in accord with the preponderance of the evidence, that it is a remarkably exact recapitulation of the Vietnam war. And the 'War on Terror' has significant parallels to the 'Cold War'- to the reactionaries (and there is some truth to this) these two 'Wars' are merely last fights in the old order of the world. The War on Terror reminds them of the Arab breakin into Europe, their taking of Spain and defeat at Tours and Poitiers and expulsion from Spain, and the Crusades. To these people the Cold War was Europe's last war with marauding Asian steppe peoples-preceded by the incursions of Huns, Avars, Mongols, Magyars, Turks.

The 'War on Terror' has two major sides. One is the reactionaries of the U.S. and Europe, the other the reactionaries of the Islamic world. In Iraq they've both found some arbitrary, lawless, battlefield on which to take out their frustrations with Modernity on others of their reactionary ilk and prove their worth to their society by defeating (pseudo)historical enemies. Both sets of people are feeling obsolete; they treat the world as a bustout opportunity and Death is the god they prefer to worship to. Of course, they talk about higher morality and Freedom to the cameras.

Having said that, Iraq has not done much for the fighting Islamic extremists (aka 'terrorists' in Bushese) and not much for the American Right in effect. Like Vietnam, there are simply too many of each side for there to be victory won on the battlefield. One side is going to decide it's not worth it, pack up, and leave- and it's not the natives. But, like Vietnam, the point of the fighting is ultimately as a frustration outlet for the Stupids on each side- and I'm talking about civilians and government officials, not the fatalistic military folk doing what they're trained at and tasked to.

If the U.S. had run its invasion as merely a political operation to remove Hussein, and done so astutely, chances are that the U.N. and elected governments proper would be running Iraq right now and much would be forgiven/forgotten. But no, the Bushies had to grab at the oil and military bases and lording it over the Ba'athists too, had to try to remake Iraq in their own image. That defines them as fools and idiots. Part of the idea was probably to lure in and destroy as much of Al Qaeda as possible by being offensive (not that they could avoid it, being Republicans), but the lure-in part has worked a good bit better than the destroy part of it.

The U.S. killed a couple of Al Qaeda people close to bin Laden in Afghanistan and captured a couple of others in Pakistan. OTOH, Saudi Arabia is almost given up as a place to base U.S. troops and the question in Iraq is only when the American military leaves, not if. I really have no idea why bin Laden hasn't attacked Washington or New York again, as if assassinating any American politician were really so difficult to pull off; I guess it would be because bin Laden is waiting for the American withdrawal.

So- invading Iraq did achieve 'something'...it has poisoned the American Right's appetite for warfare a good bit, at a hugh cost to Iraqi civilians. It has rallied Islamic reactionaries in the rest of the Islamic world to bin Laden's side. Why that set of 'achievements' is claimed to be worth spending $300-$400 billion on, I couldn't tell you. But then again, governments run by reactionaries have never had much to show for themselves other than corpses, destruction of materiele and wealth, and they do spend all their time living in the past.