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On May 07 2016 07:08 Plansix wrote: We can’t have gone to a country to remove something we were pretty sure wasn’t there to begin with. I mean, sure some of us were mislead, but the people who planned that shit knew WMD were pretty unlikely.
I do believe that they were lying to us. But this many years after the fact does it really matter?
On May 07 2016 07:08 Plansix wrote: We can’t have gone to a country to remove something we were pretty sure wasn’t there to begin with. I mean, sure some of us were mislead, but the people who planned that shit knew WMD were pretty unlikely.
I do believe that they were lying to us. But this many years after the fact does it really matter?
Yes, lying to invade sovereign nations and gain international support and legitimacy for the invasion matters. I understand that people don't like that, but it does. The world is not going to forget the time we lied to them all about WMDs in Iraq for a long time. Decades. Making any excuse or trying to justify does not help.
We fucked up. Me included. We elected shitty people and they did shitty things while all their buddies got rich off war time contracts. Much like Vietnam, we are just going to have to deal with the fact we found the wrong war for the wrong reasons.
On May 07 2016 06:10 andrewlt wrote: Personally, I'm sick and tired of the US getting blamed for everything that I would rather let atrocities happen than have the US get into another quagmire again. Even if it's under the UN, it's pretty obvious that the US is going to do the heavy lifting while other countries will do the finger pointing. And it's going to be "The US is meddling in another country again" and "The UN is just a US puppet" bla bla bla.
Some countries are just not culturally ready to be a developed country. They need to fix their shit on their own terms. Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea advanced economically under dictatorships before transitioning to a more democratic government. At the end of the day, they are not our citizens and the western world shouldn't be responsible to fix everybody else's problems. Let Russia and China accept refugees if they are so great.
I'm not sure if you're just an idiot or the product of a proper American history education.
This isn't me having a go, but describing the US as the magnanimous, well intentioned saviour who who gets blamed when things go wrong requires such strong reality distortion that it's really frightening.
Actually, I take back the idiot part, I think it's probably the US self-characterisation and the way the media portrays even the wars they're critical of.
The current discussion of the OIL is so instructive: Even Bernie, who might be on the more dovish side of of spectrum, describes the Operation Iraqi Liberation as a blunder. Well blunder means a strategic mistake, not something that is fundamentally immoral and wrong.
There were 3 blunders in Iraq
1st) Bad intel/falsified intel. The primary "reason" we were sold to convince us to go was wrong--that of Chemical weapons being or about to be used on citizens and opposing nations. Had this turned out to be true, then no one would complain about fighting in Iraq. Now some say this was a lie, others say it was well intentioned, blah blah blah. Doesn't really matter in the end. The cause for us to go was false.
2nd) Overemphasis on combat and lack of emphasis on governance. The Iraq war was very quickly and easily won. I think it was 2ish weeks before the country was brought to its knees. The "invasion/occupation" of Iraq, however, was still primarily enforced by the military. There was constant "support" or "encouragement" for the iraqi people to fix their government--but what was really needed was for the US to either be the new Iraq government. This meant that the terrorists knew that time was on their side. They had a victory plan--wait until Americans are sick of the desert. The ONLY solution to this is imperial takeover. Iraq should have been annexed and be an extension of the US in the region. There should have been solid plans to stay there for the next 100-200 years because only then will you be able to grow a government, from scratch, with the ideals and attitudes that you want.
3rd) We weren't done with Afghanistan. Now, lets say there were WMDs in Iraq (false information) and lets also say that we were better prepared for occupation and not just country wide security detail (we weren't) those are all well and good until you realize that WE WERE STILL FIGHTING in Afghanistan.
Conclusion: The actual war with Iraq was an astounding success. We took Baghdad in about a week, and we routed their defenses within minutes of enemy contact. It was absolutely everything else that we messed up.
Given how naive and ineffective your definition of success is, I suppose the best I can offer you is this. + Show Spoiler +
Do you recall the plans for Iraq? The months of debates that needed to happen before it got the support it needed?
Get rid of Sadam: Accomplished. Remove the threats of WMD's: Technically Accomplished (technically confirmed to not actually be a threat) Minimum losses in attack: Accomplished.
Then we took over iraq and the goal post got moved. Suddenly WMD's gave way to "stabilize the region" and "not wanting a vacuum" etc... And as the goal post got moved definitions on how we were doing changed ever so slightly.
But the initial reason we went there? The need to stop Sadam from using WMD on his people and on other countries--that got handled in about a week, most of it travel time as tanks still needed to cross the desert.
roflmao, "Suddenly"?! I have a feeling rewriting history is going to be the main theme this election.
I'm talking about as a zeitgeist. The arguments had by people in coffee shops, debates had by social media. Liberals are pretty sure it was a lie. Much like conservatives are pretty sure Iraq was Obama's fault (don't ask me how, I've given up trying to explain).
But I recall the shift, I recall conversations about the war moving from one excuse to the other. The first two weeks were fantastic. Just images on the news of tanks moving across sand faster than the first time you had sex. Soldiers weren't dying yet, there was still a tangible goal (Baghdad), there was still the "but Sadam is a really bad guy, so even if there are no WMD's at least we are stopping him" crowd.
But then we caught him too. And Baghdad. Suddenly we weren't marching anywhere, just sending soldiers to stand around getting shot for 10 years straight. People stopped talking about WMDs, or Sadam, or funding 9/11. It was just soldiers standing around the middle of the desert hoping to come home eventually.
I remember what the nation sounded like when we ran out of media bad guys in Iraq.
On May 07 2016 07:08 Plansix wrote: We can’t have gone to a country to remove something we were pretty sure wasn’t there to begin with. I mean, sure some of us were mislead, but the people who planned that shit knew WMD were pretty unlikely.
I do believe that they were lying to us. But this many years after the fact does it really matter?
Yes, lying to invade sovereign nations and gain international support and legitimacy for the invasion matters. I understand that people don't like that, but it does. The world is not going to forget the time we lied to them all about WMDs in Iraq for a long time. Decades. Making any excuse or trying to justify does not help.
We fucked up. Me included. We elected shitty people and they did shitty things while all their buddies got rich off war time contracts. Much like Vietnam, we are just going to have to deal with the fact we found the wrong war for the wrong reasons.
We technically don't have proof they lied, the WMD's just weren't there. Its not like we have them caught on video cackling about their master plan to trick the world. We could spend billions trying to investigate that, or we could be happy we have term limits and just be more watchful and cautious the next time. Which is what Obama is doing, which is why Isis and Libya are in the state they are in now, its why Russia is willing to annex an EU territory just because it knew it could. because they know that the US doesn't have the stomach to actually make change, to actually get its hands dirty and fix things. They know the US doesn't want to deal with anything that doesn't surrender to short term gunfire. And because of that the US is directly responsible for the millions of people who will be dying in the middle east for the next ten years.
If they lied or were just idiots doesn’t really matter, we still fucked up. Even claiming we “accomplished our goals” in the Iraq war just makes us sound like we are trying to revise history.
On May 07 2016 06:37 Velr wrote: Yeah, if the US or any other biggish power wanted, Isis would just get ran over. But this would mean either serious casualties on both sides or bombing the whole place with total disregard to the people there.
Won't happen, the place is just not important enough.
militarily crushing ISIS would take the US around 50-100 billion dollars; and probably around 500-1000 casualties, maybe less. It wouldn't require ruinous bombing. The problem is what do you do afterwards. It's the long term occupation of something that morphs into a criminal organization that's really hard. And handing it back to the Syrian government is both politically infeasible for the US, and not likely to work anyways.
I'd say people are trying to resolve the conflict, but to do so at an affordable cost, and with an aftermath that will actually stay settled for awhile.
On May 07 2016 07:31 Plansix wrote: If they lied or were just idiots doesn’t really matter, we still fucked up. Even claiming we “accomplished our goals” in the Iraq war just makes us sound like we are trying to revise history.
They lied and were idiots. The day of 9/11 Rumsfeld mentioned and started fishing for Iraqi evidence to present. Oddly enough the meeting was somewhere in the Pentagon I believe. Then the fake Nigerian documents etc. Bush and Cheney, and Co. should be in Prison.
They don't all wear signs saying "we be ISIS members". The instant the US or the EU comes in force, that entire group scatters across the region and just waits for us to leave. Which they know we will because a new way of fighting the West will arise because they moved in next door.
After Donald Trump’s ascent to presumptive presidential nominee, conservative pundit Erick Erickson demanded Republicans apologize to Bill Clinton for vilifying and impeaching the former President for the same behavior they’ve glorified in Trump.
In a Friday blog post on The Resurgent, headlined, “Republicans, Apologize to Bill Clinton,” Erickson recapped Clinton’s extramarital affair while in office and his eventual impeachment by House Republicans before comparing him to the presumptive GOP nominee.
“On the campaign trail, Trump was more a pathological liar than Bill Clinton ever was,” he wrote, noting the billionaire “smeared” his opponents’ wives and families, pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories, and “peddled malignant, false stories” about rival Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) father.
“Republicans owe Bill Clinton an apology for impeaching him over lies and affairs while now embracing a pathological liar and womanizer,” Erickson wrote. “That apology will not be forthcoming. In fact, for years Republicans have accused the Democrats of gutter politics and shamelessness. Now the Republicans themselves have lost their sense of shame.”
Erickson, a ringleader of the now-unmoored #NeverTrump movement, closed the post by concluding the angry Republican electorate has made “a terrible miscalculation.”
On May 07 2016 07:31 Plansix wrote: If they lied or were just idiots doesn’t really matter, we still fucked up. Even claiming we “accomplished our goals” in the Iraq war just makes us sound like we are trying to revise history.
They lied and were idiots. The day of 9/11 Rumsfeld mentioned and started fishing for Iraqi evidence to present. Oddly enough the meeting was somewhere in the Pentagon I believe. Then the fake Nigerian documents etc. Bush and Cheney, and Co. should be in Prison.
Its about cost effectiveness though.
do we spend X dollars mounting a case against them that might or might not pan out.
OR
do we spend Y dollars just letting their terms die out and just never let them come to a place of power again.
If you're goal is to hurt them because you hate what they did and want some form of cathartic release from the act of hurting them in some tangible way--then that's a different discussion altogether.
On May 07 2016 07:31 Plansix wrote: If they lied or were just idiots doesn’t really matter, we still fucked up. Even claiming we “accomplished our goals” in the Iraq war just makes us sound like we are trying to revise history.
I would say its more omitting history than it is revising history. The war was easy, the occupation was hard. The war was about two weeks, the occupation was about 10 years. So its really more about what we are specifically talking about more than anything else.
I think you are confused. No one here is saying we are/should charge Bush and Cheney. I am not even saying that. We elected them. We gave them the power to take us to war and the immunity from prosecution if they were wrong. We believed them. That war was popular at the time. Everyone supported it at the time.
We have no one to blame but ourselves. And I didn't vote for them. But I am still to blame.
On May 07 2016 08:23 Plansix wrote: I think you are confused. No one here is saying we are/should charge Bush and Cheney. I am not even saying that. We elected them. We gave them the power to take us to war and the immunity from prosecution if they were wrong. We believed them. That war was popular at the time. Everyone supported it at the time.
We have no one to blame but ourselves. And I didn't vote for them. But I am still to blame.
I disagree; someone here is saying they should have been prosecuted, Stealth said so a few posts up: "Bush and Cheney, and Co. should be in Prison."
Two of Donald Trump's defeated rivals said Friday that they will not support him in the general election, predicting disaster for the party and asking conservatives to focus on electing Republicans to offices down the ballot.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, whom Trump had treated with utter contempt during primary season, announced his decision in a Facebook post. Dismissing Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as an "untrustworthy liberal politician," Bush said he would "support principled conservatives at the state and federal levels, just as I have done my entire life." To Bush, that does not include Trump.
"The American Presidency is an office that goes beyond just politics," Bush wrote. "It requires of its occupant great fortitude and humility and the temperament and strong character to deal with the unexpected challenges that will inevitably impact our nation in the next four years. Donald Trump has not demonstrated that temperament or strength of character. He has not displayed a respect for the Constitution. And, he is not a consistent conservative. These are all reasons why I cannot support his candidacy."
Earlier on Friday, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) sent reporters a statement explaining his own reasons for rejecting Trump.
"I absolutely will not support Hillary Clinton for President," Graham wrote. "I also cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as commander in chief."
On May 07 2016 08:23 Plansix wrote: I think you are confused. No one here is saying we are/should charge Bush and Cheney. I am not even saying that. We elected them. We gave them the power to take us to war and the immunity from prosecution if they were wrong. We believed them. That war was popular at the time. Everyone supported it at the time.
We have no one to blame but ourselves. And I didn't vote for them. But I am still to blame.
My apologies, there must have been a misunderstanding as I too have this mind set. We are in agreement.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wgqmxGW.jpg)
