Sarah Palin joins Fox News

[Gfted1]

Wait, what? Saddam wasn't a very nice guy, but it's not like he was a big source of instability in the region.

 

Kuwait?

[Wrath of Dagon]

WMD is a scareword that resonates well with the public if you are thinking about invading. Chemical and bilogical weapons are horrid, but they are not nukes, and nukes constitute the only credible threat Sadam could have posed to anyone, and those it would not have been difficult to keep him from obtaining with a credible threat.

Actually I read one article that said what they were really afraid of was the smallpox Saddam was thought to possess, which they realized after the anthrax attacks US had no defense against. They were even going to order smallpox vaccinations for everyone, until the Disease Control people convinced them it could cause several hundred deaths due to vaccine reactions.

 

As to the other points, no one is disputing the invasion of Iraq was mishandled. There weren't enough troops sent and they failed to control the situation from the beginning, letting things spiral into chaos. Both the military and the civilian leaders bear responsibility for that.

[Killian Kalthorne]

And through all of that we let the bastard Osama Bin Ladin get away. So much for "staying the course." Gods, I hate Bush.

[Pidesco]

Wait, what? Saddam wasn't a very nice guy, but it's not like he was a big source of instability in the region.

 

Kuwait?

 

He got his ass kicked 18 years ago, and no one ever heard from him again. Until Bush's administration decided Iraq might be a nice target, that is.

 

A better example for destabilization would be the Iran

[Gfted1]

Wait, what? Saddam wasn't a very nice guy, but it's not like he was a big source of instability in the region.

 

Kuwait?

 

He got his ass kicked 18 years ago, and no one ever heard from him again. Until Bush's administration decided Iraq might be a nice target, that is.

 

A better example for destabilization would be the Iran

[RPGmasterBoo]

However, I cannot at all agree with your assertion that he was of no threat to the United States. In pure old fashioned terms he was a huge stumbling block to any form of stability in the region. The stability of that region IS unequivocally a threat to world peace due to its effective monopoly of the balance of total oil reserves. Oil reserves which feed China, Japan, and the US and currently define the economic and foreign policy of Russia.

 

But the principle threat he posed was the same threat posed by all such regimes which are predicated upon the constant application of internal terror. That is the perpetration of those terrors, defined as crimes in our worldview, is a direct challenge to the principle of our democratic rights and freedoms. Or as JFK put it more poetically if men in Iraq are being oppressed then we are all being oppressed.

 

This last point no doubt strikes you as fanciful, but it is not mere rhetoric. The post Cold War laissez faire approach to dictators had been shown by 2003 to achieve nothing in reducing their power, and worse than that to encourage those dictators to test the bounds of their confinement. The central cause of the war in my analysis was that

 

- Alternatives to war had been tried and failed

- The results of war were perceived as directly introducing 25 million people to freedom, and sending a clear message to all other still oppressed

- The effort was militarily straightforward and unlikely to be costly to our forces

 

Leaving aside postwar casualties which have been caused mainly by terror attacks we clearly don't control, all the above are entirely true. The only caveat being that through our own internal divisions we have somehow contrived to send the opposite message to all other terror-states.

 

To your first point: reality disproves this. He kept the tensions between the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish muslims inherent to Iraq in check, thus stabilizing the country. He was far more capable than the current government of Iraq, which even with the backing of the US military can't make Iraq into a merely functional state. Unlike them who are seen as a colonial government/traitors he had a modicum of legitimacy amongst the majority of the populace. Saddam also kept Iran in check, which is now heavily involved in Iraq, through terrorist networks, arms deals and so on.

The reserves of oil that Iraq has are the sole property of its people, and the only thing I can derive out of your argument is an assumption that invading a country is somehow okay because it has resources vital to you and your friends. If they wish to hold all the oil for themselves (even though they cant since its Iraq's principal export), that's their sovereign right.

 

 

The second point is perhaps unintentionally hypocritical. The US has a track record of supporting dictatorial leaders, if it served its interests - especially during the cold war. A simple (contemporary) example is Saudi Arabia. That's probably the most despotic and savage country in the world, which keeps its populace living in the middle ages - yet its royal family enjoys full support of the US. Its also the hub of Islamic terror groups, some of which participated in September 11.

In comparison with them Saddam seemed a moderate, secular leader. Why would you "help the oppressed" in Iraq and help the oppression of the people of Saudi Arabia, all the while keeping alive the core of Islamic terrorism and a rotten monarchy?

 

Idealism is nice Walsingham, but its not applicable to US foreign policy. Like any other country its approach is fully pragmatic and will invoke ideals when necessary to justify its questionable actions.

What you list there are justifications for the war, not the cause behind it. Those justifications are brought about to convince the American people, (which are basically well intentioned and taught to value their particular brand of liberty and individual freedoms) that the war is just or at the very least "justified enough". The only way to gain the support of Americans is by putting a straightforward moral core in any deed, and to make them believe that they are "doing the right thing". US leaders know this and abuse it at leisure.

 

The real cause is:

the necessity to secure a dwindling resource for the US, for the future,

to help the military industrial complex and oil companies flourish, since they are heavily incorporated into the american governement

to expand US military presence, and effective rule

and last but not the least, to intimidate anyone who dares oppose the will of the US through a show of strength. This applies to everyone, not just "dictators"

[Pidesco]

Wait, what? Saddam wasn't a very nice guy, but it's not like he was a big source of instability in the region.

 

Kuwait?

 

He got his ass kicked 18 years ago, and no one ever heard from him again. Until Bush's administration decided Iraq might be a nice target, that is.

 

A better example for destabilization would be the Iran

[Gfted1]

The point isn't that he wasn't a force of instability in the 80s, because he was, but rather that he wasn't a force of instability in the 00s.

 

But thats because he got his ass so thoroughly handed to him 18 years prior, not because he saw the error of his ways. Having every aspect of your military decimated coupled with crushing embargos is what kept him in place in the 00's.

[Wrath of Dagon]

And through all of that we let the bastard Osama Bin Ladin get away. So much for "staying the course." Gods, I hate Bush.

We didn't let him get away, he got away on his own, take a look at the satellite picture of Tora Bora.

 

The ironic thing is, all this talk about oil, yet we sit on huge reserves of coal we could easily convert into gasoline, yet stupidly refuse to do it.

[Calax]

... wasn't there a series of aerial attacks carried out by the US on Iraq in the span of four days during Dec 2000?

 

Mainly because Saddam kept doing stuff to the UN weapons inspectors.

[Gfted1]

The ironic thing is, all this talk about oil, yet we sit on huge reserves of coal we could easily convert into gasoline, yet stupidly refuse to do it.

 

 

I think its brilliant. Not only do we sit on our own reserves of coal but oil also. Granted our oil isnt the highest grade (sweet light) and requires more processing, but I would rather buy up and consume everyone elses oil and save our own for the real emergencies.

[Pidesco]

The point isn't that he wasn't a force of instability in the 80s, because he was, but rather that he wasn't a force of instability in the 00s.

 

But thats because he got his ass so thoroughly handed to him 18 years prior, not because he saw the error of his ways. Having every aspect of your military decimated coupled with crushing embargos is what kept him in place in the 00's.

 

 

Not quite, I'd say. It seems unlikely that Saddam would think he could win a conventional war against the US before the Gulf War. What makes some sense is that he figured the US wouldn't respond to the invasion of Kuwait. He figured wrong, of course.

[Walsingham]

You've addressed my points in a thoroughly gentlemanly fashion so I will try to respond in kind. I've only eaten a banana today, so I may not succeed due to hunger-gripes.

 

Firstly yes, the US - and UK - has a tradition of supporting dictators when it suits them*. To an extent we live in the real world and have to do what we can with what we've got, but I do not defend those actions beyond that level. Indeed I had hoped that we might be moving beyond that position, during the heady days when we were part of the only remaining superpower bloc. In basic terms we do not have eat gristle today just because we ate gristle yesterday. Iraq and Afghanistan prove that we had the pure military capability to trounce any second or third ranking pervert's military.

 

Secondly, I suggest that you and I are disagreeing over means and ends. You suggest humanitarian involvement is the means and I the end. I suggest that appeasing vested interests in the military and corporate community was the means and not the end. Perhaps the truth is a mix of the two, but to my mind provided the humanitarian result succeeds I don't see any cause for alarm.

 

~~

As an aside you bring up an interesting point regarding what constitutes sovereign rights and protection of critical national interest. I've been chewing on this for some time, and I won't pretend I've settled into a position. But i would say that to a degree the question rests on technical and organisational changes. I would say that the accepted version of what sovereign territory is stems from a 19th century appreciation of the baseline operating needs of a nation, coupled to what could be defended. But due to the complexity of modern technology, and the uneven distribution of the resources required for those technologies we find our lives are sustained by transnational infrastructures that can be critically threatened thousands of miles away from our borders. At the same time technical developments in weapon systems mean that a sustainable security buffer giving time to mobilise against horses and muskets can be overflown by a missile in seconds.

 

There's probably something else to that to do with the role of suppliers to these new complex systems being corporations, but then I did say I hadn't been able to think it all through yet.

 

*Saudi have not - to my knowledge - engaged in genocide in the tens of thousands. Perhaps you have a better comparison?

[Pidesco]

*Saudi have not - to my knowledge - engaged in genocide in the tens of thousands. Perhaps you have a better comparison?

 

 

They do it little by little. They are like the national equivalent of cigarettes.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Secondly, I suggest that you and I are disagreeing over means and ends. You suggest humanitarian involvement is the means and I the end. I suggest that appeasing vested interests in the military and corporate community was the means and not the end. Perhaps the truth is a mix of the two, but to my mind provided the humanitarian result succeeds I don't see any cause for alarm.

 

~~

As an aside you bring up an interesting point regarding what constitutes sovereign rights and protection of critical national interest. I've been chewing on this for some time, and I won't pretend I've settled into a position. But i would say that to a degree the question rests on technical and organisational changes. I would say that the accepted version of what sovereign territory is stems from a 19th century appreciation of the baseline operating needs of a nation, coupled to what could be defended. But due to the complexity of modern technology, and the uneven distribution of the resources required for those technologies we find our lives are sustained by transnational infrastructures that can be critically threatened thousands of miles away from our borders. At the same time technical developments in weapon systems mean that a sustainable security buffer giving time to mobilise against horses and muskets can be overflown by a missile in seconds.

 

There's probably something else to that to do with the role of suppliers to these new complex systems being corporations, but then I did say I hadn't been able to think it all through yet.

 

*Saudi have not - to my knowledge - engaged in genocide in the tens of thousands. Perhaps you have a better comparison?

 

What I suggest is the result of my experience. There are still ruined buildings in Belgrade from the US led bombing (euphemistically called humanitarian intervention), which regardless of the justification had rather clear consequences: most of what was destroyed by the US, and indeed most companies and resources of value, (enormous state owned property) were bought by the US itself (at symbolic prices) in the aftermath of the conflict. They and the EU now own more or less everything of value. The US have installed what's effectively a puppet government, which does their bidding at every turn, as long as it can somehow legitimize this to the general populace. Also, the largest US military base (Bondsteel) in Europe was installed on our sovereign territory (without consent of course), which is incidentally of core historical value "our Jerusalem".

 

The results of the intervention cannot be anything but the inherent goals:

-economic control

-political control

-military expansion

Thus the intervention cannot be anything but the means to expand ones sphere of control. Because if the intervention is the end, the US would have once its goals were accomplished - no interest in owning much of our economy and, they wouldn't install a military base of such magnitude (70,000 troops).

 

Applying the same model to Iraq I arrive at the same conclusions. Also, the "humanitarian result" presuming you actually believe that there is a humanitarian crisis often has dire consequences. As far as I'm aware in the entirety of Saddams rule, the number of people killed pales in comparison to the civilian casualties in the events that ensued after his fall. You said its the tens of thousands, (Kurds I presume) yet to this day the minimal estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths post-invasion is 100,000 and goes way above that, up to a million in some estimates.

You could say that the US didn't do it, but the chaos was the result of a US invasion so, truly, how was the humanitarian result accomplished?

 

We have a joke here for that: the surgery has succeeded, the patient is dead.

 

...

 

Your observation on the increasing interdependence of nation states is correct, but the entire world order is founded on nation states, and their sovereign rights. To tamper in their guaranteed and exclusive rights (like the US is doing to Serbia) is to remove the founding stone from the established order and is likely to produce catastrophic results. If the US can and will do what it wants, and intervene anywhere without mandate then fear of it will motivate most countries to try to preserve their power, amongst other ways by acquiring WMD's.

 

*There are no minorities in SA, mostly because Islam has a tradition of assimilating or destroying them. The oppression is one of the Shariah law, oppression of women, extreme poverty, and of total and unchecked, despotic rule of the royal family. Much more than Saddam could ever hope for himself.

Edited January 19, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[Gfted1]

Huh, theres no more Yugoslavia. You learn something new every day.

[Zoraptor]

The most amusing bit of geopolitics of the last two years was watching various western diplomats squirm when asked what the difference between Abkhazia/ South Ossetia and Kosovo was and trying to see them avoid the really obvious difference, ie "well, Kosovo is our client..."

 

Not quite, I'd say. It seems unlikely that Saddam would think he could win a conventional war against the US before the Gulf War. What makes some sense is that he figured the US wouldn't respond to the invasion of Kuwait. He figured wrong, of course.

He had good reason to think that as he was told that "the US has no opinion" on Kuwait and Iraq's border dispute when he asked prior to invading. He hadn't counted on Saudi Arabia throwing a wobbly, as a combined Iraq/Kuwait could challenge their dominance of OPEC and nearly match their reserves and production capacity

[RPGmasterBoo]

The most amusing bit of geopolitics of the last two years was watching various western diplomats squirm when asked what the difference between Abkhazia/ South Ossetia and Kosovo was and trying to see them avoid the really obvious difference, ie "well, Kosovo is our client..."

 

Not quite, I'd say. It seems unlikely that Saddam would think he could win a conventional war against the US before the Gulf War. What makes some sense is that he figured the US wouldn't respond to the invasion of Kuwait. He figured wrong, of course.

He had good reason to think that as he was told that "the US has no opinion" on Kuwait and Iraq's border dispute when he asked prior to invading. He hadn't counted on Saudi Arabia throwing a wobbly, as a combined Iraq/Kuwait could challenge their dominance of OPEC and nearly match their reserves and production capacity

 

You're well informed.

 

Commendable.

[Wrath of Dagon]

I think Yugoslavia is a different story. There was no threat to us from Yugoslavia, and we had good relations before the conflict. The public in the US never supported that war, and most of the Republicans in Congress were against it, while the Democrats only supported it because Clinton was from their party.

[Gorgon]

I don't know if I would call that a war as much as bombing run diplomacy.

[Wrath of Dagon]

It was an air war, not a ground war. I read Clinton and Albright thought Milosevic would fold as soon as they started bombing, but they miscalculated and it turned into a protracted operation.

[Gorgon]

The only casualties suffered on the American side were due to accidents, I think you call that punishment.

[Meshugger]

I have been watching Fox News on a webstream for kicks while at work, and I have to say there is a whole lot of commentary going on even in the 'straigth news' sections, especially when the subject is Obama.

of course there is. that doesn't make it "right wing" or any other wing unless you're trying to compare to something hard on the left (even centrists are "right" of "left").

 

^meshugger: anthrax spores live decades, if not centuries, according to wiki. the chemical stuff degrades, however, so any sarin gas won't be around after only a few months.

 

taks

 

Oh, my bad. Did they find any anthrax though?

[taks]

Oh, my bad. Did they find any anthrax though?

dunno, i was just pointing out that the bio stuff can last a while, spores and bacteria in particular.

 

taks

[Walsingham]

@Rpg master

 

I don't want to sound like a total c***, given you actually live in Serbia, but I have to work with what I know. That is all that bombing was carried out against a backdrop of freaking ethnic slaughter. Now, I don't happen to agree with airpower's usefulness at a strategic level, and you reinforce that, but that doesn't affect one the Iraq invasion one iota. The invasion occurred in part precisely because standoff bombardment was proven to achieve little.

 

To a ddress your second point, you quite correctly hold up casualty rates in Iraq. We obviously disagree in large part due to a disagreement in the nature and scale of those casualties. I can say that if I saw the rates as you put them I would probably regard intervention as a much more serious mistake. However, I do not. To the best of my understanding casualties among Iraq's civilian population do not exceed 150,000 and more importantly those casualties are largely a product of terrorist action not coalition forces. Some hold us accountable for those casualties in any case, but I consider those people misguided at best, and racist at worst by implying 'natives' only do what the Great White Man encourages them to do.

 

If I am trying to explain myself I should add that I am aware of the frightful cost in civilian casualties that arose from the liberation of France in WW2. More than 300,000 according to my friend, the historian Duncan Anderson. Yet this is not regarded as a bad thing to have happened.