HISTORICAL REVIEW OF IRAQ SITUATION BY RAYMOND S. KRAFT

* Unfortunately, it has been shortened for TER

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat,and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.

At that time the U.S. was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia. Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe.

America's only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel. America was certainly not prepared for war. America had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WWI and throughout the depression, so that at the outbreak of WW2, army units were training with broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have real tanks. And a huge chunk of our navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was actually the property of Belgium, given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).  Actually, Belgium
surrendered on one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next
day just to prove they could. Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany, only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later, and first turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse, in the late summer of 1940.

Ironically, Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the U.S. got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany. Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone... 90% of them from cold and starvation,mostly civilians, but also more than a MILLION soldiers.

Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. And the Nazis could possibly have won the war. All of this is to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs -- they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. And that all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not known yet which will win -- the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies.

The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC -- not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17 year war -- and was followed by another decade of U.S. occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again .. a 27 year war.

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars.

WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 2,200 American lives, which is roughly 2/3 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11. But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia,an America that resembles Iran today.

Remember, perspective is everything, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the U.S. still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The U.S. has taken more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq. The U.S. took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

But the stakes are at least as high ... A world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms ... or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).


It's difficult to understand why the American left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis.

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America, where it's safe. Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

There's nothing wrong with Arabs thinking that they should be predominant in the Middle East -- after all, it's the region to which they're indigenous.  It's no more fanciful than, 55 years ago, during decolonization, when you heard slogans like "Asia for the Asians"  and "African for the Africans."  It'd just which specific Arabs come to the fore which concerns us.

Where I'd part company is the belief that the wildest Arabs think they can conquer the world by some goofball right they think they find by parsing their holy texts and commentaries upon them.  Sadly, these fundamentalist radically politicized Arabs may not be great in number, but they seem to have attained influence out of all proportion to their numbers and cowed their fellow Arabs/Muslins into submission or at least a self-defensive silence.

Just like we "contained" the USSR, we have to contain radical political Islam. This problem awaits it's George Kennan to define the question in it's most important aspects and to recommend some courses of action which do not involve the US fighting endless wars of questionable importance in marginal areas based on BS, spurious rationales which deliver no benefit to the US, and more importantly, no benefit to those states and peoples in whose names these wars ostensbly are fought.  Just like Iraq?

Sorry, no easy or simple words for the nuclear/chemical/bacteriological terrorism issue.  We just have to try to be calm, to think clearly, and not scare ourselves into a panic every single bloody day. And weigh carefully all advice and intelligence and warnings which come our way, from whatever sources.  and in the end, it still might not be enough.

Just like the Cold War.  Remember that? [Though the politial problems of course are not identical].

So, let's keep our powder dry, pick our fights very, nery carefully, and like the Godfather, keep our friends close and our enemies closer.

We do not live in St. Augustine's City of God, but we can still make the best of a bad situation if we try.

up until "Islamic America".  That's quite a tremendous leap and no one can seriously believe that the Islamic fundies are going to take over America.  Especially since the Christian fundies already have.

Never forget that the most radical left wing socialist  America has ever seen (FDR) got us through WWII.  And it took some real courage for liberals like Truman, JFK, and LBJ to stare down the communists during the cold war.  It's unfortunate that they don't make Democrats like they used to.  Iraq is much closer to Vietnam than WWII.  What did we accomplish with Vietnam?  After Nixon cut and ran did the VC take America and turn us communist?  After Reagan cut and ran from Lebanon did Hezbollah take America and turn us Islamic and kill off our Jews?  It's important to go to war only because we have to, not because we want to.

The best parallel to WWII that I can think of is that W's grandfather Prescott Bush invested in the Nazi war machine just like Reagan/Bush armed the Islamic lunatics in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and the Contras in Nicaragua...all who have killed innocent people.

Never forget who attacked us on 9/11.  After Pearl Harbor, if FDR (the flaming liberal who brought us rural electrification, SEC stock regulations, and social security) had gone to war with China instead of Japan our world really would be upside down now wouldn't it?

Not to mention Lincoln, the flaming liberal Republican homosexual.

America has done well when liberals were in power.

But comparing Radical Islam to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union is unbelievable to me.  Those were much worse threats, but our strategies to deal with them were so much better.  I'll procrastinate and follow up  on that later.  

Consequences for the US would be dire if radicals take over some oil producing countries. They could do a lot of damage.  There is no way they will take over the world, or even come close.  Their own religion, unlike the Soviets and the Nazis entails a lot of help from Allah to succeed.  Unless there's a God named Allah, it isn't going to happen.

The concept of Jihad has more interpretations than we hear from the radicals.  The informant recruited by the British to infiltrate the terrorists who were going to blow up those planes considered himself to be a Jihadist too.  In his interpretation, it doesn't involve murder.  It involves submission to Allah, following morality that's pretty close to Christianity, and for lack of a better term, evangelism.          

Unlike Nazism and Bolshevism, there is actually an individual morality to Islam which will always dilute the radical elements.  And if there's the reward of 79 virgins in heaven, there's also the terror of hell.  

The difference between WW2 and Iraq?  One was a sound strategy, the other is blunder.  We could sacrifice as many men in Iraq as we want, and it won't matter.  Unless we commit genocide there on a massive scale.  We're not offended enough with Iraq to do that.

Congrats, you have to be the 1st person to equate Iraq to Viet Nam. It certainly provides a context to your other views.

"Never forget who attacked us on 9/11." After reading the rest of your post, I wonder who you think attacked us?

Do you have broadband or dial up at the mental hospital?

You got me, I thought they just had the laundromats.  Saddam must have attacked us because our RepubliCON leaders keep mentioning him and 9/11 together.  

We have broadband and you'd be surprised how many quality providers are willing to do outcall to our mental hospital.  Keep supporting the party of "family values".  2006 will be a good year oh say around November.

Happy hobbying,
Tiger

At what point did Arabs/terrorists make world-domination their goal? Where the hell did this idea even come from?

To me, it seems like the terrorists's actions are more about striking back at real or perceived insults. Every time the West sticks their nose into Middle Eastern business, they get all bent out of shape and try to punch us in the nose.

The strategies that terrorists are currently using will never allow them to take over America. It's more like the mosquito strategy, where if you sting the large target enough times, they'll leave.


What about the conservative notion that we haven't lost as many lives in Iraq as in WWII. I find that idea to be very disturbing. By that logic, we can lose 50 million lives in Iraq and it would still be a worthwhile goal.

The lives lost in WWII were not lost in vain. The Nazis had a goal of world domination. The Nazis had a prototype bomber which had the range to reach America. In 1942, German U-boats had delivered Nazi saboteurs to New York and Florida. Their goal was to sabotage the factories which were building the American war machines. Japan had also launched balloons filled with the Anthrax bacteria into the jet streams. These balloons were to explode over the western coast of America and release their payload onto livestock and people. These were actions of countries intent on dominating us. What exactly did Iraq do to threaten us? I don't care if the losses in Iraq are 2200 lives or 1 life, those lives were lost needlessly against a country which has never done anything to threaten us.

This author is mistaken on so many points it's hard to figure how to respond. But a few issues:

- Germany did attack us prior to Pearl Harbor. The USS Reuben James was torpedoed and sunk  while escorting supply fleets in the North Atlantic in October 1941.

- Ireland was not a US ally in WWII. Ireland was neutral in the war.  

- similar to the Bush administration, the author keeps trying to tie the Iraq war to 9/11. but even as W has now admitted there is no connection.

- the Iraq example is the best example to contradict his idea that a democatic process in the Middle East will lead to broad cicil rights, etc. Iraq had democratic elections and put into office an Islamic theocratic government with ties to Iran. You can expect more of the same or worse if we insist on similar "democratic" reforms in Egpyt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Some mosquitos!

Where do you get your info that the Nazis had a goal of world domination?

Did that liar FDR say it?

Because Hitler never, not even once, said (in public) that they wanted to take over the world. The Nazis never killed a single soul inside the US, but the US declared war on Germany anyway. What did the Nazis do to us? Nothing.

Sure, the other guys bombed Pearl Harbor, but that wasn't Germany and we probably deserved it. We must have pissed the Japanese off, we piss off everyone, right?

The Nazis may have had some fantastic plans, with the prototype bombers and rockets and other cool stuff but they hadn't DONE anything to the US on or before 12/7. So what gives?

I'd like to live where some of you guys do because sometimes reality really sucks.

I have differing viewpoints on this war because not only do I hate war (as most people do) and think Bush told a lot of lies and a lot of my friends have died over there, but I also was in the military and saw what we did for liberating people in a suppressed society. Different war, of course.

I do not necessarily agree with some of the author's comments, but there are certain terrorists groups -- martyrs -- that believe in taking over the world. It's not to say they will, but believe me they have planted the seeds in youth. I actually spoke to a few young men while in the middle east (that are probably part of Al Quida now) about their opinions on Israel and the Western influence. What first was a good judgment call by some Islamic people who are only trying to defend themselves against opposition, others have made it a priority to misinterpret the Koran. Revenge is usually a reaction to defending one's family or making an extreme statement(or so interpreted by some).

If you've studied or read passages from the Koran, you will notice that it states (and I'm paraphrasing) not to hurt women and children. Terrorits could care less who is hurt if it helps their cause. I have had conversations -- and spent time -- with some Islamic people who are caring, friendly and nurturing people. Like any religion, you cannot assume all people are alike.

Which is wrong (depending on whether you interpret the Bible to be true or have a more scientific mind)?

1)  People who steal land away from other people
   who have resided, planted roots and families
   there for years?

2)  People who believe that God gave them the
   land to occupy and multiply?

My first intuition (even though I grew up as a Christian) is to give their darn land back. My second -- at this point in time -- is to share the land and tolerate each other's religion. Of course, we know because of so much bloodshed spilled, it's hard to ignore the latter.

So, what is the solution? Personally, I don't think this type of war will be resolved no matter who interferes/helps, but finding peace would be a nice solution. Any takers?

Hugs,
Ciara

-- Modified on 9/4/2006 12:11:53 PM

-- Modified on 9/4/2006 12:13:32 PM

and although Ireland wasn't necessarily an ally, there were Irish soldiers who participated in the war. Go see the graveyard in Salerno, Italy.

Hugs,
Ciara

While Ireland was officially neutral, individual Irish people have allied themselves with different parties.  There were Irish immigrants in the US military as well as Irish saboteurs working in US factories to hurt our war effort only because they hate the fucking Brits so much.

Yup, excellent point on Democratic elections.  Radical right wing lunatics have won elections in many places: Hamas won in the PA, Hezbollah has members of parliament in Lebanon, Amadinejad won in Iran, and lunatics have a lot of members of parliament in Pakistan.

Do we really want to give power to the people when the people support extremism.  Democracy has one major fault: tyranny of the majority.

you take whatever lesson you are predisposed to from them.

Comparisons to WW2 are frivolous in that everybody agrees that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11; and regardless of the motives, there were no WMDs.

More to the point, WW2 was entirely determined by manuever warfare.  We have done everything we can in Iraq by that means, 3 years ago.  

Now we need a political solution.  You can force people to DO things at the point of a bayonet; but you cannot force them to THINK things.

The second we leave, the place will collapse.  The decision to invade committed us to an indefinite presence, and indefinite cost; or it foreordained that we would live with the consequences of the chaos we created.

If hornets are bothering you, make sure you are getting the nest they're coming from, and that you get them all.  Don't go around beating hornets' nests indiscriminately, as we are doing.

technically we really did piss off the Japs. We had imposed a trade embargo against them and they had been starving for oil, mostly because of their aggression in Asia and because we and the Brits saw them as a threat.

I'm not excusing their agrression against us at PH, just explaining their reasoning. It wasn't a total out of the blue attack. We should have seen it coming and many did, but that whole thing has been beaten to death in any number of ways orver the years. No real agreement among historians as to the U.S. culpability in the surprise.

and Tokyo Rose was a US citizen.

The fact is that Kraft is way off on this easy fact, and his analysis is equally shallow.

Many people are far too prone to shove any situation into a pigeonhole, and ignore the facts.  

What exactly are we trying to accomplish in Iraq, and how are we going to do it?

Wasn't it obvious that removal of Saddam was going to create a power vacuum that was a cure probably worse than the disease?

Wasn't it obvious that the Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis and Iranians would compete for power?  And that we would have to be involved in that, and nobody would respect us as if we were a referee?  And that it would be very likely that this would embroil the entire middle east, and block the production of oil?

Of course it was obvious.   The Republicans knew it as much as anybody.  The reason they did it had nothing to do with the advantage to the USA, and everything to do with the advantage to the Republicans.  The only program they have is fear of the bogeymen du jour.

I can't believe how anyone (left or right, rep or dem) can say Iraq is not a threat to U.S.  In light of 9/11/2001 any country that is sympathetic to terrorists is a threat to us.  Iraq and many other countries fall into this category.  How can anyone not understand that?  The debate then is how to handle these threats, because they do exist....and Iraq was one of many regimes that supported terrorism.  The situation in Iraq now is a mess, but Saddam is gone and we just have to take our chances that the next dictator is less brutal.  Let the politicians argue over how to withdraw and save face, but to say that Iraq is "a country which has never done anything to threaten us" is beyond ignorance.

Wow, is this guy _way_ off on his history and current events.

First, the Germans did so well at the begining of WW2 because they had a massive technological edge over everyone else in the world.  The Allies won mostly through the US supplying overwhelming numbers (the Sherman tank, for example).  

Wahhabists are not a nation state with an army larger and more technolgically advanced than their enemies.  Thus, the comparison to Nazism is very much off.

Second, Iraq was a _secular_ dictatorship.  Saddam was supressing the Wahhabists.  By knocking off Saddam, we freed them to work towards the goals this author fears.

Third, the Saudis are not the rationalists.  They are the Wahhabists.  In Saudi Arabia, the schools are litterally run by Wahhabists.  More Saudis are Wahhabists than any other nation.

Fourth, nothing has done more for radical Islam than the Iraq war.  Before the war, the US was an "evil boogieman" that was far, far away.  Radical Islamic whack-jobs were preaching that the US is gonna come get them, but most of the people in the middle east ignored them.  Now that the US is the "big, bad boogieman" who's standing at their front door, radical Islam is _FAR_ more popular than ever.

Fifth, he uses the same rhetorical bullshit that devout Christians use to Atheists: "You better be right or you're going to hell!!"  They forget that if they are wrong about religion, they are just as screwed.

If this author is wrong and the Iraq war is a huge boon to the Jihadists (which it has been), we are just as screwed.

Sixth, the "reformation" was winning in the muslim world before the war.  Most Muslims liked things like TV, cars, dancing, music, not stoning women to death.  Yes, there were exceptions, but the 'modern' world was winning overall.  Iran was well on the way to dropping the Ayatollahs, for example.  There also was a _pro-US_ rally in Tehran after 9/11.  Then we invaded, and set the whole thing back 100 years.

Finally, he utterly fails to supply any reason why the current strategy will work.  Nor does he supply any changes in strategy that might work.  Basically, he's saying "all you liberals should shut up".

-- Modified on 9/4/2006 6:29:19 PM

You are so right.  The Iraq war has made everything worse.  Iran was about to go under before we invaded Iraq.  They were minutes away from being toppled!  We set it back 100 years.  It was so close.  There was a pro democracy (not USA) rally and everything!  And as we all know, fascist dictators always fold up tents when there is a rally.  It scares them.

Most Islamic nations really liked us before Iraq. They never mentioned the USA's presence in Saudi Arabia or the existence of Israel.  It didn't bother them at all.  In fact, 9/11 was probably a massive Bush conspiracy.  Watch "Loose Change" if  you don't believe me.  Any terrorist action is our own fault. And they have never had any kind of systematic brainwashing from childhood in these countries.  Israel technically doesn't belong on a map.  And the USA is kind of a great "Satan". Kind of.

Islamic nations like Afghanistan and Pakistan were really modern nations.  The modern world was "winning".  I saw a photo of OBL with an Ipod the other day.  I hear he watched Whitney Houston's reality show when it was on Bravo.  I don't know if he liked "Queer Eye" or not.

And they are nothing like Nazis.  Sure they are both fascists who rule through intimidation and horrific violence.  But totally different.  And they both dig the Jews.

We blew it by engaging them.  If we just sat back and did nothing.  We would have won.

My intuition also is to give the land back.  I don't think trying to keep it is going to be successful.  

How can it be solved?  We could try to understand the Arabs and Jews instead of stopping our thoughts at the word evil.  Use the word if it fits, but don't stop studying them.  It might not create a solution.  

It would help to disrupt the cycle of vengeance that keeps pouring kerosene on the fire.  

We could attempt to disarm both sides.

Three out of four of those are not tenable.  So, you're left with trying to understand the Arabs and Jews and try to find a remedy.    

Some problems, however, have no solution.

I'll stick by what I said: radical Islam isn't going to take over the world.  It's not going to be dangerously expansionistic unless it forms a "monolith."  That is, if you see a coherent effort to "purify" Islam the way the Nazis and the Soviets murdered dissidents to become totalitarianist.  Unless the radicals do that first, they won't form the command structure to do much expansion.  

It can still do a lot of harm, though.  

-- Modified on 9/5/2006 8:23:58 AM

that's one reason why the U.S. didn't take Saddam out a lot sooner. Special Ops could have long ago but were prevented from doing so. Even though he was a tyrant, the economy would have suffered and so on (like you said).

Enjoy setting fire to your strawmen?  Now, how 'bout addressing anything I actually said with something remotely resembling a fact?

caused us to (1) take him out, and (2) by invasion instead of assassination?

how do you expect anybody to keep track of all these facts without a notebook?   Are you handing out notebooks?

What about feelings?  What about the feelings of people who like to see other people get in a fight because they're bored?  Don't you ever consider anybody's feelings?  Don't you ever get so bored you just want to see somebody splatter?

I.e., (1) who is wrong, and (2) what are we going to do about it?

A lot of American views come from the assumption that commercial transactions are voluntary.  We don't stick by that 100%, but we do stick by is about 80%, while most of the rest of the world sticks by it about 5%.

So when we build MacDonalds throughout the world, or embargo Japanese oil, we think we're within our rights, while much of the rest of the world doesn't buy into that.

So as you point out, there are people who think, well, Americans are selling us hamburgers, but not selling us oil, so let's do a sneak attack on them and kill a bunch of bystanders.  Sure, if Americans did the same thing, we'd behead them if we caught them, but wasn't it an American who said "consistentency is the hobgoblin of little minds, I mean lawyers"?

At Pearl Harbor, we're all pretty clear about who was wrong and what to do about it.  At the WTC, we're all pretty clear about who was wrong; we're not at all clear about what to do about it.

Where we're not clear about what to do, it's a very good thing to have a president with big furry dice that he can roll in Cabinet meetings, and then he can make fun of reporter's fashion sense instead of answering questions, because he is smart enough to know he's gonna look bad if he tries to think about what he's doing.

I'm sure, GFD, that had a Democrat been President at that time he'd have seen it coming and talked the Japanese out of bombing PH. And, the Japanese wouldn't have been unhappy about the oil boycott, because there wouldn't have been one. They would have been happy about everything. And, oh yeah, a Democrat would have persuaded them not to rape and kill 300,000 civilians in six weeks in Nanking in 1937. Or the Democrat would have damn sure done something about it, maybe an oil boycott or something, I don't know.  Plus, Hitler would have been rendered peaceful by the Democrats brilliance, maybe Joe Kennedy would have gotten sent over there to straighten it out so all we'd remember about Hitler is that he was the guy who had the goofy little mustache, kind of like Saddam's. If there was a war and a Democrat was in, it's be over long before three years went by. And there wouldn't be 2800 American kids dead either. And the Depression? What Depression? It would have ended 8 seconds after a Democrat was sworn in..........

I completely agreed with your brilliant, enlightened point about Iran on the verge of revolution.  How the modern world was "winning" over fundemental Islam.  How we made them mad by invading Iraq and they wouldn't be so angry and at us if we didn't.  And Islamic fascism is different from Nazi fascism.  Very different!

No strawman.  I brought up your points and agreed with them.  I didn't think they were incredibly stupid and incorrect at all.  You're not a knee jerk reactionary liberal ideologue who vomits back the latest DailyKos blog.  I got your back!

-- Modified on 9/5/2006 1:08:46 PM

I provided examples of several hostile acts against the US before Pearl Harbor.

The Nazis were allied with the Japanese and war was not declared on Germany until after Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was considered an attack by all Axis powers.

Try looking at the big picture sometime. Look at a person's actions as well as their words.

is that they just charged around kicking ass and taking names.  

Like them, we have a massive technological superiority.  What I can't understand is why we don't charge around more than we do, kicking ass and taking names.

I mean, we can't be as smart as the Germans, and invade places that have some redeeming social value, like France, Denmark, Italy, Austria.  These are places where there are some fuckable women.

Instead we go places like fucking Afghanistan, and Iraq.  I mean, these are places where the women are SO UGLY they throw sacks over their bodies.

So what is the lesson here?  I sure don't know, but it's damned expensive, and what do we have to show for it?  For the taxes I'm paying, I expect the administration to supply me with my own little sex slave.  Doesn't have to be big, 5' and 70# is OK, as long as she's cute AND compliant.

Found this on The hufingtom Post, of all places.

Basic point -- the linkage between Islam and fascism is not intellectually or historically sound, those who promote this linkage do it either out of ignorance or because it serves to  obscure the reality of our current less-than-great policies with regard to that awful part of the world.

I knew this post would stir some controversy.

Hugs,
Ciara