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- Apr 14, 2006
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Would you agree that Saddam's regime was horrendous ?(I believe that when he went to the gallow he was responsible for more violent deaths than any man walking the face of the earth.)
If so would you be willing to sacrifice any American lives for freeing the Iraq people from Saddam and his son rule? Is 100 too many?
No argument here that Saddam was an evil tyrant (although GWB must be closing in on him for sheer number of violent deaths caused). But now you have a war searching for a justification. It was sold to us as a war to defend the US against the weapons of mass destruction allegedly possessed by Saddam and as retribution for 9/11. Neither of the alleged predicates was true, and the evidence is fairly convincing that the Bush administration knew them not to be true prior to the start of the war. (And, frankly, even if Saddam had WMD's, the evidence was insufficient to show that he was threatening to use them on us or crazy enough to even think about it. We have far more WMD's than anyone else and have shown the propensity to use them. We could easily turn him and his country into a parking lot.).
If the war had been presented from the start as a crusade to free the suffering Iraqi's from Saddam's brutal excesses, I would have opposed it, and I'm certain that the vast majority of Americans would also have opposed it. As you note, we haven't gone to war with the generals of Myanmar or the incredibly corrupt and cruel government in the Sudan, or even the crazy Kim. Call me unfeeling, but my main concern is American lives. This is my country and these are my countrymen. I swore to defend this country and these people. I did not swear to be policeman for the world. So yes, the answer is that I would not spend any American lives just to remove Saddam from power (and I'm sure you will agree, we have done far more than that. If removing Saddam was our goal, it was accomplished 4 years ago.)
A second question. The Korean war cost 36,000+ American soldier lives, the war fighting and continuing the protection of South Korea for 54 years has cost, according to my calculation, the US roughly 1 trillion in todays dollar.
Obviously, we can't know for sure but I think the most likely scenario if we had stayed home is this. Kim Jung Il would be the ruler of South Korea, and it would be an economic basket case, and ghastly place to live. Russia would have still collapsed and China and Russia would be competitors but not outright enemies. Our national debt would be 1 trillion less and 36,000 soldier would not have died. Given my perfect crystal ball, if you were Harry Truman would you have still fought the Korean war?
Probably not. Again, perhaps I am morally deficient, but I really don't care enough who is in charge in Korea to spend 36,000 American lives deciding the question.