Aren't some DU'ers confusing Anti- ALL War with Anti-Iraq Invasion?

[KoKo]

I'm finding more and more of my fellow DU'ers using the phrase "anti-war" to describe those of us who were against the Iraq Invasion.

There's a big difference in being a principled pacifist against all war and being against an Invasionthat one feels was illegal based on evidence that was freely available. Those of us who fought so hard with faxes, phones, e-mails to our Senators and Congresspersons, and took time out to protest at the Anti-Iraq Invasion protests were not "Anti-War" we were Anti-THIS WAR at THIS TIME. There were some in the Senate and House who also put forth evidence that this "Invasion" at this time was inappropriate. Senators Byrds and Kerry, are not known to be "pacifists." The United Nations was against "Iraq Invasion," and even some people of principle and conscience in the military and the media were against Iraq Invasion at this time.

I hope that DU'ers who were supportive of Bush's Iraq Invasion will clarify in their posts that they are "Pro-Iraq Invasion" and not keep using "Anti-War" to describe those of us who did NOT want our troops to die there and feel the war was illegal based on trumped up, hyped and in some cases false information.

[Fleshdancer]

1. I'm anti-preemptive war based on lies.

but that's just me.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TLM]

2. They're not confused, they know exactly what they are doing.

Some are trying to blur the line between anti-war and anti-iraqi invasion in order to try and support the claim that Dean is just as bad as the dems who supported the IWR.

It is a ploy.

[LeahMira]

3. I'm anti-war...

... for any reason.

[Wetzelbill]

4. yup, against Iraq War yet I'm not a pacifist

I am against the action in Afghanistan too.

I would have liked to go into Liberia. I'm in favor of peacekeeping missions in several parts of the world. All part of using the military, although not necessarily warfare, I guess.

Big fan of special ops work. Especially in terms of hunting down purveyors of political violence. I'd like to have some Delta and Seal teams to scour Afghanistan and Pakistan in search of bin Laden. We could've nailed him two years ago in Tora Bora if Bush didn't have a "show pony" invasion and blow the whole country apart. Actually, we had a good shot at him before Musharaf had his coup and Pakistan backed out of sending teams in with our boys per Bill Clinton's plan.

Lots of business to do in the world. Instead we have leaders who decided to invent a threat. Great work guys.

[demnan]

9. Well said

I think our handling of Afghanistan has been extremely poor. Special ops just aren't there. And Iraq was just wrong, but I'm not a pacifist if someone attacks us or our allies.

[RebelOne]

6. Anti-Iraq invasion. Can't really call it a war.

But I was not against the war on Afganistan.

[rucky]

7. Another media label?

Thank you for making that distinction. The positions of the candidates are really not as muddy as the critics make it out to be. I'm anti-war, but I realize that it would be political suicide for any candidate to call themselves a pacifist in these paranoid times.

Ignore the labels and look at what the candidates have to say.

Iraq is about preemptive war & the PNAC doctrine. This should be the focus of the debate at this time, & we shouldn't let the media & pundits turn it into a blanket war vs. antiwar debate... and even us pacifists shouldn't take that bait.

This is their favorite smear tactic: "you're either with us or against us" says it all. That's their side who's creating that divide. It's okay to support the humanitarian aspect of the Iraq war & denounce the war altogether. I see absolutely no conflict in doing so. It's still not a reason to invade.

If anybody wan't some ideas about what we could & should have done, hop around www.transcend.org for a bit.

[loudsue]

8. Nice work, KoKo01! That distinction means everything....

And I strongly suspect those who are trying to paint it otherwise. They are doing Rove's talking-points FOR him.

This invasion of Iraq was ABSOLUTE NONSENSE....and the REST of the world KNEW it, too!!!

If North Korea bombed the California/Oregon/Washington Coast, I'd be ready to bomb them right back. In fact, if N. Korea hit S. Korea or Japan (!) I'd be ready to take 'em on. The N. Korean leader is as much of a psychopath as our own leader, and should be stopped if he starts getting trigger happy.

Little boys shouldn't be allowed access to big bombs. The adults need to take charge when that happens. The little boy, Saddam, had disarmed...as well he should. The little boy bush has not, and we see what kind of terror he is wreaking all over the world.

Great post! I'm sick of the newbies here who are speaking for Rove... calling the adults and critical thinkers "tinfoilhatters" and "anti-war peace freaks".

If we're going to stand up to the freepers, this board is a good place to hone our skills.

:kick::kick::kick::kick::kick:

[Scott Lee]

10. Precisely. This is deliberately sidestepped by the antiDeans.

For obvious reasons. I don't know of a single candidate who is anti-war on principle - and if they are there, they'd never get my vote.

[KoKo]

25. Kick!

:kick:

[evil_orange_cat]

11. I'm anti-Bush's-iraq-invasion-for-oil-built-on-lies

If Saddam was a threat and if we had the UN, I would support the war. But he wasn't, and we didn't, so I don't. ;)

But I recognize war is sometimes necessary, but should be a last resort...

[blm]

12. Yes...some are.

On the topic of war support, though, doesn't it bode ill that Dean refused to stand AGAINST Reagan and Bush's illegal wars in Central America that Kerry fought for years to expose?

Why does Dean get a pass on that? Does that show good judgement on his part? Do so many agree with those wars?

[Scott Lee]

16. Way to stay on topic.

The issue in the current campaign is the war going on NOW - as in Iraq.

I was virulently against all the wars you listed in Central America, in fact I haven't supported a single US military action since WWII. But that isn't much in the mind of American voters today.

Dean was on the right side of the Iraq War issue and continues to be so. I'm not sure where Kerry and the rest are, they seem to wander all over the map; led by the wafting of public opinion at the time.

[loudnclear]

13. Yes!

And anti-Iraq invasion with anti-Americanism and anti-semitism.

[tekriter]

14. I appreciate the distinction as well...

What my repub/freeper colleagues in my office fail to realize is that I, as a veteran, a son and brother of veterans, would gladly defend my country against REAL enemies, not those the Bushie feels like attacking. There is a line in the Godfather (the book) where Don Corleone is explaining to Michael that there are "some men in this world who go about, begging to be killed". There are people and countries in this world who would attack us, and a strong defense is the only way to keep that from happening. But I would definitely draw the line at picking a fight with a country that has done nothing to us, like Iraq, for instance. There was NO military justification for this invasion.

Just the other day one of my freeper co-workers got in my face saying if "people like me" had been in charge we'd all be speaking German today. What a crock. Hitler and Germany were a true threat to the safety and stability of the entire world. In a perfect world such people would never come to power, but they do, and you have to be able to protect yourself.

I enlisted in the USAF while Vietnam was still a hot war. My two brothers were already in, the oldest in Southeast Asia on a carrier, the other in the USAF in New York. The Vietnam Wall has not one, but THREE members of my extended family on it.

So I get just a mite peeved when my patriotism is questioned, or that of my family. Yes, I did take my daughter to an anti-Iraq-war rally this spring. Yes, I do think that the entire Iraq invasion was based on KNOWN false information, not just "bad intelligence estimates".

[Wetzelbill]

15. nicely put

[bluestateguy]

17. indeed

I opposed THIS war, not all war. Preemptive wars are only justified when the threat is imminent, which this was not. Right wingers who threaten anti-war protestors with violence make a critical error if they think all of them are pacifists who won't fight back.

[KoKo]

18. Kick!

:kick:

[sandnsea]

19. Confusing pro-war with a vote

Seems to me that's the confusion. Different people voted for and against the IWR for varying reasons. The reasons and views at the time are more important than the vote. Nobody was for this kind of unilateralist failed war policy of George Bush.

[tlcandie]

20. I'm anti-war period. All life is sacred and we need to grow up

and find HIGHER ways to deal with conflict. As I've told my husband when he said he would kill someone to defend me in a heartbeat,

"So do you think that whoever you shoot and possibly kill doesn't have someone who loves them as much as you do me?"

I do not feel that my life is more valueable than another human beings' period.

[truthspeaker]

21. I, too, was anti-THIS-war

at this time, by this president, following drunken-cowboy diplomacy.

I'm no pacifist. In my opinion, there are times when war is necessary to defend our country or our allies from agression. There are even times when it might desirable to use military force to defend someone else from aggression (Bosnia, Kosovo). But this was not one of those times.

Pete Seeger said it best (doesn't he always?):

"I have something I must admit
I'm not really a pacifist
If someone invaded this land of mine
I'd be on the firing line"

This is a deliberate distortion from the BFEE, trying to frame the issue as hawk vs. dove, when it's really foolish-imperialist-idealogue vs. pragmatist. Personally I'd like to see some of the 130,000 US troops in Iraq in Afghanistan and Pakistan instead, going after the Taliban and what's left of Al Qaeda.

[in_cog_ni_to]

22. Yes,

there are DUers are are Anti-ALL-War. However, I'm not one of them. I'm against illegal, preemptive attacks.

[KoKo]

23. Kick!

:kick:

[KoKo]

24. Kick for "After 5 Alive!

:kick:

[quaker bill]

26. I am generally anti-war

But I understood Afghanistan. I also understood our role in stopping genocide in the Balkans.

Saddam however has been a product of our very own messed up foriegn policy. First we overthrew an elected democratic governemnt and imposed the Shah on Iran, the people there eventually rejected his oppression. So, then we armed Saddam to oppose the Ayatolla.

Saddam then uses poison gas on the Kurds. Progressives object. Reagan vetos sanctions, sells him more weapons, and provides agricultural grants that go to build more chemical munitions factories (dual use facilities mind you, pesticides and nerve agents happen to be very similar chemicals)

Then the frankenstein we made slaps back by taking Kuwait. Though there was apparently some truth to Saddam's claim that Kuwait was using directional drilling to tap Iraqi oil.

We were offered the opportunity to step in and assist Saddam with this border dispute, but Bush I declined. "Your border dispute is none of our concern" they said, and war commenced.

Then we send our troops in to destroy the weapons Rumsfeld helped Saddam obtain, which were at least in part, bought with US taxpayers money. But we choose to stop short of Baghdad.

We then call for his overthrow but fail to support the native insurgents who might have succeeded, leading to mass slaughter. Now we call Saddam a war criminal for attacking and defeating the forces we encouraged to overthrow him.

We then sanction Iraq and bomb the country for 12 years. All the while we wonder why Saddam is not being cooperative.

Finally we lie about Iraq's weapons programs and connections to terrorists to create the impression of an imminent threat and invade the country.

Do you get the impression that this guy was screwed the moment he signed on as a client of BFEE?

No doubt, Saddam was a very nasty character. There are quite a few more of them out there. This one had the misfortune to sit on a large pool of oil and had the poor judgement needed to become a client of BFEE. I, for one, won't miss him. But his rise to power was in no small part our doing, and more insulting yet, partly funded with my taxes.

This is where I become rather anti-war.

[KoKo]

27. quaker Bill, that's a good "timeline" to remember in your post. thanks.

:-)'s

[KoKo]

28. Ververs of "Hotline" mentions Osama Ad against Dean on C-Span this

morning. Said a New Hampshire Dem is calling for the Dems to not run attack ads against each other because it's Bush we should be attacking.