newguy888 said:
Since when were we made the darn world police?
Humm how about darfur?
How about North Korea?
Remember Stalin??
Cambodia??
Rwanda?
Look I am not going to say he was the leader without warts but he was no threat to america. That is the only reason you fight a war. And sorry but this war has been an utter failure and when we have a congress and president that are working for business and not the american people well things are doomed.
We should have found and killed bin laden and al zwahiri hey what about mullah omar? remember him and then told the world come and screw with us and this is what happens to you. We should have hunted down every last terrorist who went thru the camps bin laden ran and made them sleep a long night.
But we went to Iraq because we could and did it on the cheap. Because Jesus told Bush he should. Period!
Being a cop is a often a thankless job, but I certainly would hate to live in a town without one. Like in the old west.
Tony Blair said it best in his speech before Congress.
We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind--black or white, Christian or not, left, right or a million different--to be free, free to raise a family in love and hope, free to earn a living and be rewarded by your efforts, free not to bend your knee to any man in fear, free to be you so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others.
That's what we're fighting for. And it's a battle worth fighting.
And I know it's hard on America, and in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I've never been to, but always wanted to go...
I know out there there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, "Why me? And why us? And why America?"
And the only answer is, "Because destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do."
Cops don't stop all crime, and sometimes innocent people get hurt by the cops. Still the presence of cops deters criminal from committing crimes.
It is easy to look at all of the US failures to act in places like Cambodia, Darfur, Rwanda, or places where we tried and failed like Vietnam, Somalia, and Lebannon, and conclude that we shouldn't be doing policing. However, people seem to forget our sucesses. There 50 million Korean living in a modern, prosperous democracy because we acted in a police action 57 years ago and remained like cops on the beat. More than 3 million Panamaian enjoy the same freedoms after our removal of Noreiga. The Balkan is still a mess but 25 million folks there at least aren't facing ethnic cleansing and constant war. Haiti remains the one of the poorest countries in the Americas, but they have actually had real elections, and real leaders for the first time in history instead of murderous tin-pot dictators thanks to American intervention in 1994. Even tiny Grenada is better off after one of America's least justifiable invasions.
Regarding Saddam, I guess we debate his threat to the US forever. I'll concede that he wasn't nearly as threatening as I and others thought. However, to say he posed no threat is ignore a numerous facts. He was deemed a sufficient threat that President Bush Sr, President Clinton, and President Bush all bombed Iraq on numerous occassions. The Congress of the US,(by a vote of 360-38) passed the Iraq liberation act in 1988-- here is what it said
Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 - Declares that it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government. . Several years before Jesus talked to Bush.
Finally, while Saddam may not have been a threat to you personally. You were not flying in a airplane patrolling the no fly zone, when on literally thousands of ocassions, an Iraq AA or SAM starts shooting. The folks who were say they felt threatened.