Makes you proud to be an American!
-- Modified on 1/28/2005 12:01:19 PM
4 more years and next president will do the sensible things. But 100 years more financial disease for this country as a result of the Iraq "Weapons Of Mass Distruction" War. Such a waste of military might. Proud to be human race?
May all of our young men and women be safe and make it back to our wonderful country where we have the right to speak our mind, among many other things. God bless our troops!
4 more years of facing down the enemy's wholesale terrorism, and then the possibility of continuing to exist as the land of the free and the home of the brave. Every powerful and great nation in the history of the world has crumbled when they got soft and careless about their privileges. We can recover from the high financial cost of standing up to a Middle East determined to snuff out democracy where ever it exists. The only sad thing is the loss of our brave soldiers who are fighting with pride and conviction. If, however, you feel the loss of life is too great, stop to think that many many thousands more have died in previous wars with the conviction that they wanted their children and grandchildren to be free, as we are free today. It would be a crime against their brave memory to allow their sacrifices to be a waste. War is always terrible and certainly very ugly, but the alternative is, IMO, unthinkable.
Who is the enemy?
Baathist insurgent seeking to preserve the status quo in a "country" patched together by colonial convenience?
Shiite follower of the radical cleric in the slums of Iraq?
Al Sistani, a cleric and opponent of America who has nevertheless helped moderate the chaos in Iraq?
Iraqiswho just wanna go to work without getting shot?
Tricky business sometimes, identifying the enemy.
If the entire Middle East is, as you say, determined to "snuff out democracy wherever it exists," well,then, do you include the brave and restless young people of Iran who resist their crazy religious leaders? Or those in Saudi Arabia who risk their ill-employed necks in the cause of dissent?
Or the less-than-perfect but more moderate regime in Jordan?
And .... isn't ISRAEL in the "Middle East?" My geography's bad, but just wonderin'.
The "only sad thing" ISN'T the heartbreaking loss of our soldiers. It is also the loss of uncounted numbers of Iraqi lives, and of the lives of Israeli and Palestinian children, and of the dignity of Saudi Arabian subjects who live under the thumb of a sick aristocracy fed riches by the world's dependence (mine included) on its oil.
Why not snuff out the Saudis if the worry is a "Middle East determined to snuff out democracy wherever it exists?"
Why not wipe out the religious rulers of Iran, where revolt against the CIA-installed Shah set the stage for radical Islamic law?
I question whether the endemic sickness of the region is most effectively treated by deposing the dictator of one country, Iraq, and then having faith that this wounded entity will not only HEAL itself but become some sort of magical BEACON for the rest of the region.
But for right now, that's where we're at. I hope and pray for the best. Good things.
So far, I don't understand the claim that war in Iraq is the price for the United States to "be free." Especially when the offending country posed no immediate, physical threat to our freedom, as a few more months of U.N. weapons inspections would have borne out.
I hope the children and grandchildren of soldiers killed in Iraq can someday rightly claim the deaths were in service of our remaining "free."
The sacrifices will have been no less noble if they cannot.
And no less noble if the children and grandchildren must cling to "weapons of mass destruction" as the most-stated cause for which their elders were sent to die.
Except that your analysis is wrong. This war does nothing to ensure our freedom. However, it does take the lives of many brave, young men and women needlessly. Iraqis view the US as a colonial power. Thus the insurgency will never stop. One day, we will leave Iraq. When we do, do you think that we will have left an ally in place? This will only be the case if we install another strong man like Saddam. The Sunnis hate us; the Shiites are only tolerating us long enough to gain political control over their country. But no Iraqi wants a US presence in their country any more than we would want one in ours.
Apparently, the administration plans to conduct covert wars in as many as 10 countries to eliminate the terror threat by the end of the Bush term --including an attack on Iran (See the Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker). Interestingly, young Iranians love the US while the hard line clerics who run the government do not. Attacking Iran risks turning the younger generation against us as well. I hope for the sake of our country that Bush is very lucky and that, somehow, all of this mess works out. But, I am not optimistic.
Anything? Or should we just sit back and wring our hands and sound concerned like many of the European governments?
What I would do is really irrelevant since I am not running the country--what I would not have done is manipulated intelligence and lied to the country to go to war on the false premise of WMD, resulting in the death and dismemberment of thousands of young, brave Americans. I am not a Mideast expert--but then neither are Richard Perle, Donald Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, or George Bush (remember they all relied on the assurances of Chalabi, the opportunist -- now persona non grata –- that taking over Iraq would be a cake walk). Unfortunately, they are the architects of this policy. This foreign policy is like a business being run by incompetent management: If they succeed, they will have done so in spite of themselves.
But if you disagree with the way the President and his people are doing so, it's a lot more useful if you offer ideas about what you would do rather than just critisize. Anybody can complain (I've done it myself numerous times 
) but coming up wih an alternative is something else altogether.
-- Modified on 10/6/2005 10:46:56 AM
Very very well said.
I have very, very strong opinions on many facets of this and don't want to embroil the board in the divisiveness of getting into all that...
But I think your analysis misses one key point. It took us 46 years to get out of occupied Europe. It's been 50 years now and we're still in Korea--in fact about 1/10 of our entire Army is there. It's been over 10 years, and noone--not one person on either side of the aisle--has even proposed drawing down our forces in Kosovo in the next 20 to 30 years. We've provided over 2 billion a year in military aid to Israel for about 47 years.
I challenge you to come up with an example where we, or any country, has been able to invade another country, establish a true democracy, and leave in less than 50 years. Nothing happens in 4 years or 10 years on a global scale. To think we can invade a country the size of Iraq, rebuild it, and leave in half the time it takes to design and build one leg of a light rail system in Minneapolis... that really puts it in perspective.
The idea that we'll be out in 4 years flies in the face of thousands of years of consistent military and political history. As a combat veteran and fairly senior military officer, and peace keeper/observer in my past, I can tell you with complete and total certainty that we are decades away from military withdrawal, and if not, we will repeat "Vietnamization" all over again.
I'm not saying we should leave, I'm just saying we should be honest with ourselves about the task ahead and not pretend we're 4 years from the finish line.
-- Modified on 1/31/2005 11:31:58 AM
Isn't the biggest reason we kept such large forces in Europe for so long because of the Cold War? I suspect we would have been out of there (at least for the most part) long ago if it wasn't for the need to guard against Soviet agression. Similarly, I don't think our troops are in South Korea to prevent the internal collapse of that country into dictatorship but to stand against the hostile and paranoid dictatorship in North Korea.
However, I do have to agree with you that if we are going to do this job right in Iraq, then we will need to be there for quite some time. We've already seen it will not be quick or easy.
I think we would be foolish to assume that the convictions and perserverence of the enemies of Iraqi freedom are one bit less than that of the North Koreans or the Soviets. In fact, this situation has a religious and an "anti-occupation" component to it that in many ways intensifies the resistence compared to draftee-enforced communism.
History has shown that the resistence to change, especially to democracy and a rule of law, is always underestimated because it "couldn't possibly be as bad as the other times"... and it always is.
I am proud to be an American, but not because of these pictures. These pictures remind me that we invaded a sovereign nation that, no matter what the administration says, did not pose a direct threat to the U.S. I respect the men and women that serve in the military, although we have taken advantage of the sacrafices they are willing to make by being in the military. They have become pawns in a war of ideology. While I respect their commitment to our country, these pictures remind me of what's wrong with the U.S.
Pictures of American soldiers helping tsunami victims remind me of what's best in Americans.
just my opinion, and I know many disagree...
Every major intelligence agency, inclunding those of France, Germany, Russia, and China, believed Iraq had or was actively pursing WMD. Obviously there were serious flaws in their conclusions but given what the prevailing opinion was, should nothing have been done? Iraq clearly did have an active WMD program at one time, had defied numerous UN resolutions to come clean about everything, had used chemical weapons both internally and in its war with Iran, and had also attempted to arrange the assassination of former President Bush some years ago. I have precious little interest in waiting until another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor before we deal wtih those who clearly mean us harm.
and, most of these wmd's were thought to be mobile...i.e, you could just drive them over the border into syria. Anyone who does not think that Saddam had bad intentions towards US and other free countries interests is delusional
I just happen to disagree that "bad intentions" is a reason to invade a soveriegn nation. And while other countries thought that Saddam may have had weapons programs, they were willing to do the due diligence to make sure. We didn't, and look what happened...
It never stops amasing me how easly the Bush adminastration managed to convince the adoring throngs that Al Qudia and sadam were one in the same ! If you stick your head a little in the sand im sure it will break thru to china ! There are oppressave regimes all over the world, Mostly in the middle east and far east but dont forget about Africa. How about Pakastan , ... Many allies are close to as big of assholes as sadam was. Even Bush's own report said no wmd no alqudia connection . Stop watching Fox "news " and you might see that !!!! Intelagance can clearly be made to fit what you want it to .