Iraq: Moving forward after the 'Three Week's War'.

As of this Christmas, about 18,000 people were killed in alcohol related crashes for the year, 15,000 more than were killed in the WTC.

The connection? I'm not sure there is any.

Wow! When you look at it that way, I guess 9/11 wasn't such a big deal at all!

 

Don't be dense, 44.

Iraq (and the greater "War on terrorism") is directly linked to 9/11, drunk driving isn't.

Would that rate as a non sequitor? Whatever it is, it's not becoming.




Rest in Peace, Jerry

 

First of all, I made no cheer in my post concerning Saddam's upcoming execution. It was merely a statement of fact.

Secondly, I really have lost the ability to care what happens to the 'Iraqi' people. Let them slaughter each other for all I care. Perhaps they do need to fight it out to settle things.

I would rather not see our troops - who I *do* care about - be in the middle of such a conflict.... or a civil war, as that is basically what it is.

IMHO, we've done pretty much all we can for them, and what is happening now is the fault of religious hatred between Sunni and Shi'ites. What can we really do about that?

President Bush's fault was not one of intention - his intentions were good - but his poor insight into the underlying realities between Muslim factions within the Iraqi nation. He will also be forever faulted by is continuing inability to pick his head up out of the sand and admit reality for what it is... He cannot admit the truth, because he is too ideological and proud to admit that he may have made a mistake and that his plan has failed.

However, the current situation and responsibility for what is happening rests on the Iraqis themselves now.

Saddam will die, and it will probably make little difference in the sectarian violence there. It will simply continue on until cooler heads prevail, or that Islamic (see: Sunni vs. Shi'ite) divisions cease to cause military confilct.

Well, that has never happened since the religion was founded, so why would it start now? They've been fighting ever since the beginning of the faith.

 

Don't be dense, 44.

Iraq (and the greater "War on terrorism") is directly linked to 9/11, drunk driving isn't.

Would that rate as a non sequitor? Whatever it is, it's not becoming.

Really? I didn't realize that. (<----and note, that's sarcastic)

Set aside all the hostility in your post, and you certainly missed my point. The focus of my statement wasn't the exact casualty number, but one of perception. What does it mean when 6X more people are killed by drunk drivers in a single year than have been killed over 3 years in Iraq? I agree- absolutely nothing. Hey-480,000 people were killed in the US this year by cholesterol, beating out drunk driving and Iraq combined- many times over. Oops, I certainly don't want to be non-sequitored, so I won't risk mentioning that.

There are plenty of factors that can be examined as they actually pertain to Iraq, drunk driving, or anything that can be studied. Mortality figures might be one of them, but they don't have to be made as part of artifical benchmarks. I mean, in any typical weekend of 2006, cheese killed more people than the Iraqi conflict, and that's 3 days vs 3 years... But ah, crap-there's that non-sequitor again...

Such a concept is no different then when it was editorialized that US involvement in Iraq magically became the second longest conflict the US has EVAR been in after Vietnam....*

* But that editorial had to ignore the time the US spent fighting the Civil War (4 years) because it's too old; the US's time fighting in Korea (3 years) because that was a police action; Afghanistan(5 years) because it has an "international" focus; the Balkans (10 years) because it was a peacekeeping mission; or even the total length of WWII.

But yeah, because if one ignores the Civil War, WWII, Korea, the Balkans, and Afghanistan, the time spent in Iraq represents some concept in relation to some time standard that's supposed to be bad. But why are all those examples ignored because they don't fit the above illustration? The answer is why such a "pronouncement" is practically worthless.

But this just must me being dense, so what do I know? Why, I'm so dense, my screen name should probably be Irridium.

 

Not Irridium. Neutronium.



Kimball Kinnison

 

Let them slaughter each other for all I care[b/]


Hmm wont that spiral out of control and increase terror attacks to the west ?

 

Not Irridium. Neutronium.

You and your wacky Scifi terms. Geez, we might as all take names from some E.E. Smith fellow. I think he wrote those funny books as well.....

 

Funny? How can you * laugh at prose such as this:

That was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1947, as part of Gray Lensman. (It was actually a tongue-in-cheek part where Kimball Kinnison was writing a space opera as part of his cover for an investigation.) Incidentally, it is also one of the earliest recorded uses of the term "neutronium" (the earliest being in 1931).

Kimball Kinnison

* Insert the word "not" here.

 

Sure, but what has he done lately?

(I mean setting aside the fact that he has been dead for 40 years now, but a solid blast by a Neutronium ray should bring him back to life.)

 

Hey, you owe him a debt of gratitude.

After all, aren't you a cop? E. E. "Doc" Smith is the guy who discovered how to make powdered sugar stick to doughnuts.

Kimball Kinnison

 

I would rather not see our troops - who I *do* care about - be in the middle of such a conflict

But it's the fact that your troops were there in the first place that stirred up the conflict. Sure, the religious fighting between the Sunni's and the Shi'a islamic militants has been going on before March 2003, but US presence agitated the bee's nest, so to speak.
I clearly do not support the war but I certainly support the troops and would love it if your troops and ours could come home. But my opinion is that they should stay and deal with what they've 'started'. If you go in an over throw a government then it's your duty to establish a new STABLE one.
That's just what I think anyway.

 

There are plenty of factors that can be examined as they actually pertain to Iraq, drunk driving, or anything that can be studied. Mortality figures might be one of them, but they don't have to be made as part of artifical benchmarks. I mean, in any typical weekend of 2006, cheese killed more people than the Iraqi conflict, and that's 3 days vs 3 years... But ah, crap-there's that non-sequitor again...

Such a concept is no different then when it was editorialized that US involvement in Iraq magically became the second longest conflict the US has EVAR been in after Vietnam....*

* But that editorial had to ignore the time the US spent fighting the Civil War (4 years) because it's too old; the US's time fighting in Korea (3 years) because that was a police action; Afghanistan(5 years) because it has an "international" focus; the Balkans (10 years) because it was a peacekeeping mission; or even the total length of WWII.

Well how brave of you mr44, when you are guilty of such comparisons when it fit the overall agenda. Who was among those, I wonder, who in late 2003 compared the Iraqi insurgency to the post-war Wolverines in Germany?

I haven't read the article in question that you refer to, although some of your examples are strange: you mention Korea although the Iraq conflict has or will obviously, last longer than the time spent fighting in Korea. You mention WWII although you feel fit to involve time the US was not involved in it: well fine, but that would mean WWII actually began in 1931, before Hitler even came to power. You use the civil war although Iraq will soon have lasted 4 years itself.

My earlier post shows the foolishness of the stance in the direct opposite direction. More people died from drunk drivers over the past year than died during the Iraq war... but then more people died from drunk drivers over the past year than died in 9/11. Are you suggesting that people dying from drunk drivers is somehow EQUALLY as relative as 9/11 and the Iraq war? This same 9/11 that "justifiably" altered US foreign policy to allow for pre-emptive war? That gives George Bush that sympathy card so that those like you can throw up your hands and say:

"Oh, what was to be done with difficult Iraq? Invasion was just as likely to work as well as the 2002 status quo, despite the opinions of France, Russia, Germany, India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, China... et all. Invasion was not perfect but how else were we to bring Saddam to complience?"

Which of course ignores that the complience of Iraq was never really the point. If it was, the inspectors would at the very least have been allowed to do thier job. Not to mention considering the amounts that were thought to be left, the US could have forgone holding Iraq to account considering 95% had been uncovered. What was left to prove after so long? And to whom?

 

Since I've always advocated the opposite of what you are attributing to me, I don't think your above post is accurate at all. What I've always called for is for people to support their points with illustrations so that debate topics stand or fall on their own.

For example, how did I use the "werewolf" comparison? ("Wolverines" were from the movie Red Dawn, which I'll admit is an 80's icon) It was certainly never to compare the groups ideologically, but rather to illustrate that there are historical examples of select groups continuing to fight after combat operations are concluded. There are certainly more differences between the Nazi Werewolves and the ethnic/religious fighters in Iraq, but that was never the point of the comparison, which you are failing to address now.

The rest of your post supports the exact idea I wanted to illustrate. As you point out, I suppose someone could hypothetically start the WWII clock at 1931 to make some point about combat. Of course, the obvious fact is that fighting had not broken out yet, and it's generally accepted that the "war" part of WWII began in 1939, but these would become obvious in relation to the point the person wanted to make. To quibble about it is just as pointless as labelling the Korean conflict a "police action" so it isn't included in other comparisons like Iraq.

My focus isn't the numbers. Yeah, after 3 years in Iraq, the US death toll surpassed that of the WTC attacks. Ok... What point does that illustrate? It's one thing to say "Iraq is taking longer because the characterization of the opposition was misread, so let's examine X, Y, and Z." It's another to make a random comparison. Is there really any comparison between the two, or is the number itself supposed to make Iraq "bad?" Because in that same period, some 57,000 people died in DUI crashes, 54,000 more than 9/11. During a similiar period, almost 34,000 US troops died in Korea, or 31,00 more than 9/11. For this year, Feb was the month that saw the most police officers killed in the line of duty in the US, when 1 officer was killed every 39 hours, a figure that mirrors Iraq.

But what do any of those statistics mean on their own?

 

What point does that illustrate?

The point it is meant to illustrate is that this particular detour of the War on Terror which was supposed to prevent attacks like 9/11 has itself added up to the cost of such an attack.

 

Saddam is dead.

They're showing the Iraqi ex-pats in Michigan dancing in the streets on TV. I doubt it will have much of an effect on the overall situation in Iraq itself, with maybe a small uptick in violence by Sunni militias for a while.

 

the biggest anticlimax in history.

 

Saddam's dead! Hooray! My world has changed--wait, no it hasn't. And people are still dying. Well, I guess his death didn't mean that much after all.

 

CNN is reporting that pictures and video will be available soon...

Someone mentioned in the other forum how amazing it is in the modern day that we have such a rapid release of information to actually visualize history as it unfolds... it is indeed remarkable.

 

It bothers me that they had to go all the way back to 1982 to find a crime for which he could be convicted and executed. I think that makes it clear that they were looking for an excuse to kill him more than they were out to get "justice".

M. Scott

 

Especially since the US government concluded, in a DoD report in 1990, that Iran was more likely responsible for those crimes. Of course, the DoD was playing politics as Iraq was an ally, but I lol nonethless when I think about it.

Yay, now democracy and peace and McDonalds and baseball and apple pie and all the other glories of freedom will finally be able to come to Iraq! Right? Right?

E_S

 

*sigh*

U.S. troops still being injured and dying? Check.
Iraqi civilians still be injured and dying? Check.
Civil war still ongoing in Iraq? Check.
Bin Laden still at large? Check.
Still no link to Saddam and al-Qaeda? Check.
U.S. forces still stretched too thin in Afghanistan? Check.
Taliban returning and record opium profits? Check and check.

Yay. Go us. Mission accomplished.

 

What exactly would an Iraqi McDonald's serve? "The WMD! A pound of meat with four slices of cheese, BBQ sauce, and a thin slice of lettuce. Get it now before the inspectors find it first!"

 

Clearly if we westernize them with morbid obesity, hypercholesteremia, diabetes mellitus, and other cardiovascular/endocrine diseases, the world will be a shiny happy place.

 

I think it is indeed a bit too much to expect that Sunni and Shi'ites not blow each other up to pieces, that's for sure.

 

Does anyone think the death of Saddam will change any thing at all?