Sorry, but something about your scoreboard turns me off.clifp said:Here is a letter to the editor I am working on. It is my attempt to answer the question.
"liberty".
Total Deaths Deaths Per Millions Freed People Liberated
Million Americans per American Death
Civil War (Union) 350,000 15,975 3.9 11
Korean War 33,651 224 20.3 603
Iraq War 3384 11 26.8 7920
What sort of letter would the platoon leader or the CO be expected to write? One that kvetched about being little bitty cogs of the machine, or one that said their loved one died while pursuing a goal that they deemed worthwhile? The instructors don't hand out the boilerplate CDs at infantry officer's school.savedapile said:try to tell one of these parents or spouses that their loved ones death was worth it. If you can do that also post it here. I am curious.
mathjak107 said:in order to be a true muslim you must follow the koran. from what i have had read to me from the koran, democracy can't exist following what is written. there is more to democracy than elections. human rights, tolerance of others, womens rights etc it all goes against whats written. . these things make up a true democracy.
samclem said:Turkey is the best exampe we can hope for of a nation with a majority Muslim population that respects individual rights and has a secular government.
clifp said:Here is a letter to the editor I am working on. It is my attempt to answer the question.
Seven score and 4 years ago our nation was engaged in a great civil war, testing our national will. Much like today, a war of words was also waged between those who declared the war lost and demanded an immediate peace and those grimly determined to persevere in order to achieve victory for freedom.
eridanus said:You're comparing the United States Civil War to the Iraq war? This is a joke, right?
eridanus said:Except for the military coups once a decade, it's a shining beacon of Democracy in action.
clifp said:I am comparing the sacrifice American have made to free the slaves to those we have made to liberate Iraq. Now obviously there are many differences. But the Civil war like the majority of the US war had national security component (secession) and moral component (abolishing slavery) The opinion of almost all whites of the day (even Lincoln himself according to Goodwin latest book Team of Rivals) that blacks were capable of handling freedom and democracy, was about on par with the "Muslim countries can't have a democracy" elitist crap I'm reading here.
Why do you think it is joke?
clifp said:If you eliminate any country that has experienced a coup from being a democracy, I think you are pretty much down to the US, Britain, Canada and few commonwealth countries, Switzerland, Sweden and few others, you certainly eliminate France, Germany, Japan and anybody in South America..
I think that you give W and Company too much credit. If it was a resource grab, you would think that they would have arranged it so gas would be below a dollar a gallon.bosco said:The Iraq War, on the other hand, is a resource grab and act of unmitigated imperialism.
bosco said:since we're into uneducated prejudice, how about
bssc said:If it was a resource grab, you would think that they would have arranged it so gas would be below a dollar a gallon.
It's a very good post.Cute Fuzzy Bunny said:Heres the thing.
Who exactly would that benefit?
Nobody except the average josephine. On the other hand a lot of people are making some pretty good money in the oil biz these days. And a whole lot of people from this administration will be working for them in a couple of years, if they arent already.
Not that theres anything wrong with that.
In any case, in answer to cube rats original question (and how they heck can a young babe have a son old enough to be a soldier?)...
The primary concern is the proximity of radical nutjobs to the greater middle easts oil supply and Israel. Saddam was a fine buffer, disallowing radical religion and terrorists in general within his sphere of influence. Due to a number of issues, including his invasion of kuwait, and the politics thereafter...he wasnt really able to defend his own country.
In his absence, and without institution of a better buffer, its plausible that radical religious elements would seize much of the regions oil supply, lean on saudi arabia to fall in line, and start pushing the israeli's into the ocean. In that scenario, we end up going to war, its a much larger one, with possibility of nuclear exchange since the nutjobs dont have as much restraint as the soviets or chinese have. In fact, they'd like to die, en masse, and take us with them.
So the decision was made to insert US troops early, prop up iraq until such time as they can once again stand alone in a manner compatible with our meddling influence and hopefully avert a larger regional affair of likely greater consequences.
Unfortunately, the administration didnt want to tell the public "we're going in there to prop up our oil interests and political interests because we fracked around with saddam so long he cant hold up his own country anymore", so they made up a bunch of BS 9/11 stuff and WMD stuff, which let them get their foot in the door.
All that having been said, we walk away now and we've essentially accomplished nothing. In fact, we may easily accelerate the very process we wanted to avoid.
But theres no public sentiment to do otherwise.
I know this viewpoint is oft pooh-poohed. I suppose we'll know in time. Within 5 years either Iraq will work things out and resume their buffer role, the nutcases will take over but we'll successfully negotiate a reasonable peace, or we'll be engaged in world war III with tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties.
We'll see.
Rustic23 said:Why are we in Iraq….. because we invaded it! Now there are all the reasons stated why we did that, but, I think there is another. Remember 9/11, well afterwards I think the administration looked around and asked ‘What are our options?” I think they looked around and saw several countries supporting terrorism, Iran, Korea, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, to name a few. They saw in Iraq a power that every intelligent agency in the world believed to be a threat. What better way to send a message to other countries, than to ‘wup up on Iraq’. Congress agreed willingly and so the message was sent. It appears several countries got that message. Libya decided it was not in their best interest to continue seeking WMD’s, Pakistan decided helping the US was a better option that opposing the US.
So there you go. It is never said, and it may not even be true, but I think that is one of the reasons we went into Iraq. If it is, you can see why a premature pull out would be a desaster. All those countries that got the message would get another message. ‘America can not tolerate a long war’. Attack America, take the counter attack, fight a prolonged propaganda battle, and America will sue for peace.
CubeRat_____Many of the units in Iraq have created e-newsletters that go a very long way towards telling it like it is. They make much better reading than the accounts brought to us by our media. You might want to see if your sons unit has such a letter. Some of them are quite sophisticated as you might imagine given the times we live in.cube_rat said:My son is somewhere in this f___ed up mess. I rarely pay attention to the news stories about Iraq because I can't dwell on the dangers my child is around on a daily basis. I would literally be a basket case if I watched CNN, or other news outlets.
clifp said:I think there is a large element of truth to this, although war in Afghanistan made the point to Pakistan pretty clearly. It seems to me that after Afghanistan, when we looked at the future source of 9/11-like threat which include all the countries listed, you quickly come to the conclusion that AOS (all options stink) applies to all of the trouble spots. We can't invade North Korea because they may have nukes and Seoul would devestated by North Korea artillery. Iran is to big, we have no logistical bases close by, it isn't hated by enough people, and it would piss off Russia etc. Iraq was a country we had been engaged in a low-level war since April of 1991 (when Iraq started shooting at planes patrolling the no fly zone) we had good knowledge of their defenses and capabilities, and Saddam and sons were truely evil. Now going to war in Iraq stunk but it stunk less than the options of doing nothing or going after other bad guys/threats.
brewer12345 said:So basically you are saying that the Merkin gummint decided that something had to be cut off, and they were not about to chop of either of their own testicles so instead they whacked off their left foot? Yeah, makes lots of sense.