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Topic:
The New Iraq, Five Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Fire_Ice_Death
Registered:
Feb '01
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 10:41am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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You just Godwined your argument, J-Rod. Good job.
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Espaldapalabras
Registered:
Aug '05
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 11:16am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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"Weakness invites agression." That ain't "phantom." That's a truism.
You at least got this part right. The sad thing is by invading we showed ten times more weakness than if we had kept the status quo.
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J-Rod
Registered:
Jul '04
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 11:52am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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You at least got this part right. The sad thing is by invading we showed ten times more weakness than if we had kept the status quo.
How do you figure? How can it show strength to refuse to enforce a cease-fire agreement?
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 12:23pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
- Date Edited:
1/8/07 12:25pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Jabbadabbado
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We got through most of the Clinton administration by recognizing that Saddam's "flaunting" of the agreement was the ineffectual bluster of a dictator who had been marginalized in the geopolitics of the region. I'm happy to give Clinton's late-term wag-the-dog escalation of anti-Iraq rhetoric a place in the hierarchy of indirect causes of our current predicament in Iraq, but I don't understand the argument put forth all the time in this forum that enforcing Saddam's compliance to the letter was an end in itself.
Declining to invade Iraq was not a show of strength or weakness - it was a show of restraint and a reflection of pragmatic considerations - the result of a fairly easy calculation of the costs and benefits of actually pursuing regime change vs the results already achieved in constraining the influence and power of Iraq under Hussein.
Regime change, unfortunately, was a policy begging for an administration to come along that would be uninterested in rational cost-benefit analysis and careful consideration of the full range of consequences.
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Espaldapalabras
Registered:
Aug '05
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 12:33pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Regime change, unfortunately, was a policy begging for an administration to come along that would be uninterested in rational cost-benefit analysis and careful consideration of the full range of consequences.
To me, that is a far sharper critique of the administration than any far left ramblings of a warmonger who lied about WMDs and caused 9/11.
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Gonk
Registered:
Jul '98
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 2:08pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
- Date Edited:
1/8/07 2:10pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Gonk
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Minimal? It was much closer to a complete violation of the cease-fire agreement than to a "minimal" violation. And what else do you do to a violator of a cease-fire agreement after sanctions have proven ineffective (as they always always always do).
Again it's a "complete" violation... why? Because you say so? A complete violation would have been in Saddam was re-arming. A complete violation would have been if he invaded another nation. Or threatened to invade another nation.
None of these things happened. To date the only "violation" I hear of is his failure to account for 5% of his WMDs, many of which had outlived thier usefulness as weapons in 1997, let alone 2003.
Also, sanctions are not always ineffective. Never say never. Economics is a powerful weapon. Economics brought WWI to an end. Sanctions turned South Africa away from apartheid.
Ain't the first time "everyone" was wrong. Leaving Hitler to cross the DMZ was agreeable to everyone but Churchill, who at the time was considered a war monger and kook until it was too late.
Oh, teh Hitler, teh Hitler! Saddam ain't Hitler, man, he's Saddam. And if you're about to say that everyone was wrong about Saddam becuase once in history a lot of people were wrong about someone else in a totally different situation with very few similarities, I don't know what to say.
Yeah, certainly not a country that is considered weak.
I don't even know what you mean by that remark.
Phantom pressure? "Weakness invites agression." That ain't "phantom." That's a truism.
Let me let you in on another little truism. EVERYTHING INVITES AGRESSION! Peace invites agression! War invites agression! Agression invites agression! Why? Because agression totally depends on the agressive person. Smack person #1 on the head and say "Ha Ha, I'm strong" and they will say "all right, I won't attack you". Smack person #2 on the head and they'll just smack right back. Smack person #3 on the head and they'll think "wow, I wasn't even thinking of doing anything. But now I'll wait until his back is turned and then..."
We tick people off in little ways we don't even know about. And nations provoke other nations without even realizing they've done so. It's all a hodge-podge of chaos, and even the law of the jungle doesn't apply. We stumble into war, and we stumble into peace with the same logic. The best we've got is to try and navigate it with laws that can manage the world best -- and the best way is not to go all paranoid that if you don't crush this insignificant ruler of Iraq then people are going to notice, let alone care.
I've already explained this. Based in large part on Saddam's defiance of the West, terror groups began to believe that we were (as Saddam had already called us in '90) toothless dogs. It simply furthers the myth that we are unwilling to defend our position. (See 9/11)
The terror groups were based on Saddam's example? PPOR.
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J-Rod
Registered:
Jul '04
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 2:56pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Again it's a "complete" violation... why? Because you say so? A complete violation would have been in Saddam was re-arming. A complete violation would have been if he invaded another nation. Or threatened to invade another nation.
It certainly was close to a complete violation. He was re-arming. He had stockpiles of contraband conventional weapons that the weapons inspectors never found. He had medium and long range missiles. Missiles capable of carrying WMD's. He routinely fired at coalition aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones. He regularly kicked the weapons inspectors out of Iraq and always put conditions on their inspections. Not to mention over 500 canisters of undeclared WMD's.
None of these things happened. To date the only "violation" I hear of is his failure to account for 5% of his WMDs, many of which had outlived thier usefulness as weapons in 1997, let alone 2003.
Then why did he have them if they were ineffective? Sarine gas has no shelf life until it is mixed.
Also, sanctions are not always ineffective. Never say never. Economics is a powerful weapon. Economics brought WWI to an end. Sanctions turned South Africa away from apartheid.
The sanctions from WWI lead directly to WWII. And while sanctions were effective in Africa, it was used not to attempt to suppress a dictator bent on war but to change policy.
Oh, teh Hitler, teh Hitler! Saddam ain't Hitler, man, he's Saddam. And if you're about to say that everyone was wrong about Saddam becuase once in history a lot of people were wrong about someone else in a totally different situation with very few similarities, I don't know what to say.
It was a very similar situation. Both countries were suffering under failed sanctions and the military leaders of both nations were violating treaties negotiated to prevent further war.
Yeah, certainly not a country that is considered weak.
I don't even know what you mean by that remark.
I meant that Kuwait is not perceived as a strong nation.
Let me let you in on another little truism. EVERYTHING INVITES AGRESSION! Peace invites agression! War invites agression! Agression invites agression! Why? Because agression totally depends on the agressive person. Smack person #1 on the head and say "Ha Ha, I'm strong" and they will say "all right, I won't attack you". Smack person #2 on the head and they'll just smack right back. Smack person #3 on the head and they'll think "wow, I wasn't even thinking of doing anything. But now I'll wait until his back is turned and then..."
True. But bargaining from a position of strength is always more effective than bargaining from a position of weakness, desperation, or lack of will.
The terror groups were based on Saddam's example? PPOR.
The terror groups, Osama specifically, believed they were fighting an enemy with no will to defend itself in a long engagement. Beginning with Saddam and ending with the bombing of the USS Cole we did nothing substantive to those that attacked us.
Consider this: The terror group that bombed the African embassies...how degraded were their capabilities by the end of Clinton's second enlistment as Commander in Chief? Or the group that bombed the Marine barracks? Or the group that bombed the WTC in '93? Or the group that bombed the USS Cole? Or Saddam's own capabilities?
I mean did he really need that aspiran factory?
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Ender_Sai
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Feb '01
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 5:12pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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J-Rod, when I did my thesis I wrote it on al-Qaeda and as such, I did tremendous amount of research into the writings and extrapolatable thought process of Usama bin Laden. I'm therefore not convinced you're posting based on what bin Laden necessarily said, did or thought but rather what someone's interpreted those things as.
For example, you say that Osama saw America was weak and thus planned attacked, which is false hoc logic. Osama had not only been ideologically opposed to the US since about 1979 or so when he "came of age" as an Islamist; but he had been tremendously bolstered by the result in Afghanistan. So, more accurately, Osama bin Laden thought he could take on America because the Afghan Arabs and the mujahideen had "beaten" the Russian Army into submission. Not because he thought America was weak.
It's things like this which make trusting pundits on talkshows, who generally are far less expert than they pretend, a risky move. Remember, some of these pundits held, and possibly still, hold the view 9/11 was motivated by a jealousy of American ideals and a hatred of freedom. 
And J-Rod, for the love of God, point to UNSCR 1441 more often. People who think Saddam wasn't in violation of his obligations under UNSCR 660 and subsequent relevant resolutions cannot contend with the fact that under international law, he very much wasn't. That does not, by and of itself, justify the war because there is a tremendous amount of responsibility to actually plan when military action is involved and thanks to a handful of ideologues in the US government, there was nothing resembling a plan.
And I can tell you as an internationalist, a foreign policy professional and student of international relations that the Iraq War will be regarded as a new Vietnam; a policy failure of tremendous proportions brought about by neoconservative idealism which conflicted with reality, neo-imperialist arrogance and chronic shortsightedness. Even if a case could be made that Iraq was NOT pre-doomed to failure in theory, failing to account for how Arabs would think (instead of assuming they think like Americans) is unforgivable in itself.
DM; I have made the point that Saddam was much like Tito, in that the regime he presided over kept those base tensions at bay. When Tito's regime was dismantled - well, you know what happened to the former Yugoslavia, right? 
And to be fair, we need to thank the British AND the French for trying to impose a Westphalian statehood system on the MidEast where it clearly didn't belong.
E_S
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Fire_Ice_Death
Registered:
Feb '01
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 5:22pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
- Date Edited:
1/9/07 12:18am (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Mr44
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J-Rod, how do you get Hitler from Saddam? Saddam was no Hitler. He wasn't even a Pol Pot. He was Saddam Hussein, was a man that thought he was greater and more powerful than he really was. He was a pathetic dictator that was slowly fading into oblivion. To even think he could be another Hitler is just laughable and shows how ignorant you are of your current events.
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Septhaka
Registered:
Nov '06
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 5:31pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Below I repeat a post I made earlier in this thread. Political reconciliation in Iraq is simply never going to happen. Never ever. It never has. It never will. The unity government established in January 2006 has failed - it was destined to unfortunately. Breaking up Iraq and dispensing with the arbitrary regional demarcations made by the victors at the end of the first World War is the only option if we want to attempt substantive decreases in regional strife.
Disregarding all the US politics, the alleged objective of the invasion of Iraq (at least the one thats still being discussed) is to establish a stable democracy in Iraq. I assert this objective was dead on arrival and will not be achieved no matter how many troops you send to Iraq. If the Bush administration and the Pentagon had spent some time reviewing history they would have realized Iraq, as currently configured, can't exist in a stable, peaceful condition no matter what type of government emerges or you install.
The Shia/Sunni conflict has been going on for 1400 years and there is no path to resolution for them. And I mean no path. As wise as Muhammad was allegedly, it did not occur to him to set forth a clear succession plan after his death. The schism in Islam that resulted gave rise to the opposing Sunni and Shia factions. The only way both can have peace is to not interact with one another. However, due to Iraq's configuration, they are forced to interact which had led to continual carnage since the end of World War I when the current state of Iraq was created. Prior to Saddam, the leadership of Iraq has bounced back and forth between Sunni and Shia elements - changing hands as the result of uprisings, assassinations, and coups. The conflict was alive and well under Saddam too. As a Sunni dictator, Saddam exacted a heavy toll on the Shia majority. The only reason the death count is higher right now is because both sides are fairly evenly matched in their guerilla/terrorist warfare style currently whereas under Saddam the Sunni had the Iraqi army under their control for which the Shia were no match. With Iran bankrolling the Shia and Saudi Arabia bankrolling the Sunni, there is no end in sight to the carnage we are currently seeing.
The best you can try to achieve in Iraq while keeping the country intact is civilized oppression. This is basically what we are trying to achieve - a strong enough Iraq police force and military to herd the religious war being waged. The following document does a fairly good job of detailing the current situation and the fundamental structural flaws of Iraq. http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr168.pdf
We can discuss gear and troop levels, etc. but all of that is peripheral to the primary problem facing the global community. The real solution is a complete recongifuration of Iraq. Turkey annexes the Kurdish northern region of Iraq. Have the Sunni province of Al Anbar annexed by Saudi Arabi who have the oil resources to soothe the loss by the Sunni Iraqis of the oil reserves in the south that will be lost by turning the remaining Shia country into its own country. There is the risk that this resulting Shia nation will seek to combine with Iran but I think the likes of Moqtada Al-Sadr and his ilk would rather not share power with the religious and political pantheon of Iran. This is the long-term solution. It is not perfect. It will have challenges. But it is the best hope for reducing the carnage we will otherwise see and preventing that carnage from escalating across the larger region.
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Jediflyer
Registered:
Dec '01
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Date Posted:
1/8/07 6:10pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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I thought I'd post a link to this interesting article about the differing views of Senators McCain and Hagel.
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Gonk
Registered:
Jul '98
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Date Posted:
1/9/07 8:30am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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It certainly was close to a complete violation. He was re-arming. He had stockpiles of contraband conventional weapons that the weapons inspectors never found. He had medium and long range missiles. Missiles capable of carrying WMD's. He routinely fired at coalition aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones. He regularly kicked the weapons inspectors out of Iraq and always put conditions on their inspections. Not to mention over 500 canisters of undeclared WMD's.
PPOR. The contraband weapons were not listed as weapons that he had to account for, first of all. Second of all, these were second grade weapons. Nobody was selling him the reams of top-grade supplies he had enjoyed prior to 1991. "re-arming" is not buying a bunch of AK-47s and RPGs. He'd never be able to invade Kuwait with that stuff again, let alone fight the US. And when the inspectors left until 2003, they were not kicked out, they left of thier own accord.
And as for those undeclared 500 canisters... where ARE they?
Oh right, he ditched them in Syria and Iran... never mind that he didn't even have diplomatic relations with those countries, oh no. Never mind using them in his own defense, oh no. No, he sent them to Syria because he wanted to make the US look bad more than save his own neck. Yes, Saddam the coward thew away his best weapons and went to the hangman that much quicker because he'd rather make the US look bad than defend his own regime.
It's all about the convenient argument.
Then why did he have them if they were ineffective? Sarine gas has no shelf life until it is mixed.
There's no proof he had Sarin gas. The only WMDs that have been found that were unaccounted for was degraded shells from the first gulf war. Of those, the triggers for the mixing in the sarin shells no longer worked.
Oh, you say, "but the triggers could be easily replaced!".
Well if it's so easy why didn't he DO that? He was "re-arming" according to you, remember? Yes, Saddam was so dangerous and so effectively re-arming that he couldn't replace the triggers on his own degraded shells. The answer to why he had them if they were ineffective is obvious: he didn't have the paperwork anymore. They were a bunch that were misplaced. If the Soviet Union can misplace tons of thier military hardware, why can't Saddam Hussein have a paperwork error where his people mis-number his WMD shells that are many years old?
The sanctions from WWI lead directly to WWII. And while sanctions were effective in Africa, it was used not to attempt to suppress a dictator bent on war but to change policy.
The WWI sanctions didn't lead to WWII, what are you talking about? The REPARATIONS in the treaty of Versailles led to WWII. That's a totally different thing. Start learning some things -- the sanctions and blockades of WWI strangled Germany into defeat. They could not get the supplies they needed because the British were styming them. The Germans simply could not get everything they needed to continue the war through thier single effective trade line down through souther Europe and the Ottoman Empire -- especially once that Empire collapsed. But once the war was over, regular peacetime trading resumed: it was a totally different situation. British and French were once again permitted to sell food to Germans and buy it from them. It's a totally different thing you're talking about, the difference between not allowing anyone to trade and forcing someone to pay a war bill.
It was a very similar situation. Both countries were suffering under failed sanctions and the military leaders of both nations were violating treaties negotiated to prevent further war.
First of all you're factually wrong on the first count. Germany was not suffering under failed sanctions. There were no sanctions in place. You're confusing the concepts. Even under Adolf Hitler, Germany was allowed to trade wherever it pleased. That leaves your second point of comparison, violating treaties, which is so broad the comparison utterly collapses. They were totally different treaties violated in completely different ways. Adolf Hitler violated Versailles to the point that the treaty was useless long before the war even began. The treaty that Saddam signed was mostly adhered to because Saddam didn't have the capacity to surmount it. And one of the reasons Hitler was able to rebuild and Saddam was not was the very sanctions you so deride, since Hitler did not have to contend with sanctions (and had a lot more indigenous industry).
I meant that Kuwait is not perceived as a strong nation.
Well what's that got to do with anything?
True. But bargaining from a position of strength is always more effective than bargaining from a position of weakness, desperation, or lack of will.
First of all the US was never in a position of weakness versus Saddam. They had proved everything they needed to prove in 1991. There was nothing about the US position that seemed either weak nor desperate. And as for lack of will, the degree to which an agressor bets on that does so at his own peril.
The terror groups, Osama specifically, believed they were fighting an enemy with no will to defend itself in a long engagement. Beginning with Saddam and ending with the bombing of the USS Cole we did nothing substantive to those that attacked us.
That doesn't prove anything. PPOR that Osama was inspired by Saddam's not accounting for his 5% of WMDs, his firing back at Coalition troops or the UN inspectors leaving his country.
Consider this: The terror group that bombed the African embassies...how degraded were their capabilities by the end of Clinton's second enlistment as Commander in Chief? Or the group that bombed the Marine barracks? Or the group that bombed the WTC in '93? Or the group that bombed the USS Cole? Or Saddam's own capabilities?
I mean did he really need that aspiran factory?
None of this has anything to do with what I asked you to prove: that being that terror groups were inspired by Saddam non-100% adherence to the Gulf War treaty.
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J-Rod
Registered:
Jul '04
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Date Posted:
1/9/07 10:25am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Click here.
And when the inspectors left until 2003, they were not kicked out, they left of thier own accord.
In 1998, Saddam called off all cooperation with the U.N. weapon inspectors, eliminating all further monitoring of the nuclear and biological sites. After their departure, the United States and Great Britain launched "Operation Desert Fox" to destroy potential weapons of mass destruction facilities from the air.
You don't even have your facts right.
I'll get to the rest later.
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
1/9/07 11:15am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
- Date Edited:
1/9/07 11:16am (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Jabbadabbado
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Operation Desert Fox, as we all know, was launched to degrade the public's capacity to pay attention to the Clinton impeachment process/Lewinsky Gate, as was the "Iraq Liberation Act."
No one (but the neocons) really gave a damn about regime change back then. The Republicans were interested in it only inasmuch as they could use Iraq policy to beat Clinton over the head. The main immediate effect of Operation Desert Fox was to further weaken international support for economic sanctions against Iraq.
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Gonk
Registered:
Jul '98
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Date Posted:
1/9/07 12:01pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Three Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
- Date Edited:
1/9/07 12:02pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Gonk
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Read what you just wrote J-Rod. Nowhere does it say that Saddam kicked the inspectors out. It just says "after they left". You said they were kicked out. That is not what happened.
So my facts ARE just as straight as before you made that post.
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