Posted on 02/19/2003 4:20:58 AM PST by Michael B
Edited on 02/19/2003 6:30:17 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Five important reasons why I don't support a non-UN-backed war on Iraq:
1. Such a war can only lead to an increase in terrorism. The Iraqis, arabs and muslims around the world will see such a war not only as a war on Islam, but also for what it mostly is about - an imperialistic grab for oil. Anyone doubting this need only consider Iraq's history. The CIA played a hand in overthrowing the government in Iraq in 1963 which led to Saddam's party and thus Saddam himself coming to power. The reason was that the government had moved to nationalise oil (exactly the same thing also happened in Iran). Going back further also gives a long history of the colonial power Britain treating Iraq atrociously in order to control their oil.
Anyone still doubting that oil is a motive behind the war need only consider the Bush Administration's deep ties with the oil industry, read about the English and US oil companies already lobbying over who gets to drill the Iraqi oil (Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world), or consider that a result of the war in Afghanistan was the US finally getting to build a pipeline through the country, or that high oil prices are currently threatening the US economy and could be reliably kept significantly lower if the US were to control Iraq's oil.
2. There are no proven links between Saddam and the Al-Qaeda. The best intelligence agencies (those of the US and Britain) in the world have been working flat out to try and find one, yet both reported no link (despite this fact, both Bush and Blair repeatedly cite information discredited by their own intelligence agencies as evidence of a link - if they are so convinced of the case for war they shouldn't need to lie in presenting it). British intelligence reports that even the possibility of a substantial link is unlikely, given that Osama is in ideological conflict with Saddam (in a recent tape Osama termed Saddam and his regime 'infidels').
3. Before the UN sanctions Saddam had created a country with the one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East. At least for his own people he had thus done a better job than most other Middle Eastern leaders, and now we're supposed to be saving his people from him? I'm not saying Saddam is all good, far from it, but he is far from the evil tyrant Bush depicts him to be (i.e. he did not gas his own people as Bush repeatedly claims).
Worth also noting is that the reason an estimated 5000-6000 children die due to starvation and lack of water and medication in Iraq every week is not Saddam or even the UN sanctions, but the fact that the US and UK have blocked the efforts of the oil-for-food program. The two successive UN leaders of the oil-for-food program resigned due to this fact, saying that Saddam had done his best to provide his people with food, and calling what the US and UK were doing 'genocide'.
4. The threat that Iraq poses to us is tiny. Iraq probably still has some 'weapons of mass destruction' of course, but an insignificant amount which pales in comparison to that of many other countries (including of course the US and Britain, but also less stable places such as Syria and the nuclear states of North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel).
Saddam has never been a threat to or threatened the US. This brings into question not only the motives for the war but also whether there is any right by international law to initiate one. Saddam's army was pathetic in the Gulf War and is much weaker now. Even CIA Director George Tenet's believes that the probability of Saddam Hussein initiating an attack on the United States is low, however 'should Saddam Hussein conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions'.
Saddam gives no evidence to being the irrational madman that Bush paints him to be (except perhaps when pushed into a corner as mentioned above and as evidenced by him firing missiles at Israel during the first Gulf War). His war on Iran was backed by the US, as was initially his invasion of Kuwait. If we are truly concerned about chemical and biological weapons, we might ask why the US has recently undermined the Chemical Weapons Convention by restricting inspections in the US, killed the Biological Weapons Convention and refused to sign an International Treaty banning germ warfare. We might also ask why the US had to edit Iraq's weapons declaration before releasing it to the public, removing 150 American, British and other foreign companies from it who illegally supplied Iraq's WMD in the first place.
5. The US has a deplorable record of foreign intervention over the past 50 years. One need only look at all the well documented case of democratic governments that have been overthrown by CIA covert action and replaced with dictators (i.e. Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Iran, Indonesia), or the US's blatant ignoring of the World Court (i.e. in the case of the World Court's ruling of $17 billion in damages to Nicaragua for damages incurred in the US's illegal war on it) and other world organisations' rulings or treaties. Such a country has no right to be playing global cop, and when it does we all end up worse off.
[AM here: I recommend this piece as a rebuttal.]
First, we nibbled away at the extremities: North Africa .. Tunisa, Morocco, Algeria, Sicily.
Then we took on the lesser power, the one most likely to easily fall and give us position .. Italy.
It was only then that we went against the main force of the enemy.
I see much the same here: Afghanistan and the most accessible Al-Qaeda targets .. the extremities;
Iraq ... the lesser enemy, most easily knocked off.
Iran ... it's entirely possible that, after the fall of Iraq, Iran will fall under the weight of revolt from within, thus not requiring any action other than support on our part.
From there, we have the central position and can go just about anywhere and do pretty much as we please.
I don't view this as jumping off a cliff, but rather climbing from one point to another, building on our last success to set up the next.
As my wife would say "Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can; it's seldom in a woman, but never in a man."
(Not that I necessarily agree with that .. being in the latter category myself .. but, still, it makes its point.)
My (limited??) understanding on the Iranian situation is that they have a large number of people in Iran (mostly students, but also some people with "connections") who are working to overthrow or remove the current government -- my guess is that we are (covertly) aiding these folks -- one threat at a time --Saddam is highest on the "scary" list right now
ZOT!!!
Am I to assume all your objections would vanish, if the UN were to back military action in Iraq?
What a hypocrite. If you'd said you would NEVER support a war on Iraq for any reason, you'd at least get points for consistency from me.
But your very first point was that the UN hasn't given "permission", as if we needed it in the first place. If all the pampered thugs in the UN were in favor of this, I suppose you'd go along with them? Hmmm?
I agree. It is as tiny as the smallpox virus, a molecule of VX gas or the Plutonium atom itself.
Then they have already won.
If the aim of terrorism is to influence behavior through the threat of violence and we do nothing to oppose it, then they are now in control of our foreign policy and defense policy. There is now only one way remaining to show them that they are not...
ten percent of the world's oil will be under the control of the Great Satan, dealing a death blow to OPEC.
You hit the nail on the head. To avoid fueling the left's criticism, these goals are purposely mis-understated, but are probably part of the main reasons for going into Iraq.
In addition, we are putting every tin-pot dictator in the region on notice that you will not be safe in your palace if you choose to bring your jihad to our shores.
And, we'll have a lot of tanks and guns and troops pointing at Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia to back it up.
American Imperialism? You betcha. And we need a lot more where that came from. 9-11 changed everything.
Look for a big change in the our attitude toward are "friends" in Saudi Arabia when we no longer need their oil or their bases.
We don't care one way or another if you are convinced of the need to go to war; indeed, I assume that there is nothing which would convince you to go to war. And we can assume that there is nothing that would convince you to intervene if you saw a person getting mugged or raped in a side street. Intervention might cause more muggings and rapes, after all...namely YOURS.
Yours is the mentality of a person who has already tasted defeat and found the flavor of boots more tolerable than the feel of scraped knuckles. You believe that because you find defeat palatable, that others should, too.
The simple FACT of the matter is that we have been at war now since Iraq invaded Kuwait in the early 90s. Iraq started the war, and we opted not to finish it because the liberals whined then about how "brutal" we were to those who had raped and pillaged Kuwait, to those who had set fire to what remained of her wealth, to those who in an act of spite wasted a nation's precious resources by pumping crude into the Gulf; how terrible we were to those who hoped to foul nations' water supplies with oil before fleeing northward with their weapons and captives so as to live and fight another day against a weaker enemy. And now, after about 12 years of continuous Iraqi cease fire violations, Iraqi bribery, blackmail, threats, and stalling, all accompanied by the steady repetitious cicadalike whining of liberals that the sanctions were killing the children... we now have liberals wanting the sanctions to continue while an endless circle-jerk of inspections accomplishes exactly nothing other than to give Hussein more time to kill.
Now we are resolved to finish that which should have been finished not in the name of the UN but in the name of something higher, our country, our names, the only names that ever count. And the average Iraqi is going to be very glad to see us.
1. Such a war can only lead to an increase in terrorism. The Iraqis, arabs and muslims around the world will see such a war not only as a war on Islam, but also for what it mostly is about - an imperialistic grab for oil. Anyone doubting this need only consider Iraq's history. The CIA played a hand in overthrowing the government in Iraq in 1963 which led to Saddam's party and thus Saddam himself coming to power. The reason was that the government had moved to nationalise oil (exactly the same thing also happened in Iran). Going back further also gives a long history of the colonial power Britain treating Iraq atrociously in order to control their oil.
Where is the mass increase of terrorism after we invaded Afghanistan and removed the most Islamist and extreme of all the arab regimes, the Taliban? Removing a secular piece of shite like Saddam will be viewed as a positive move among arabs, especially his own oppressed citizens. If Arabs are wary, its only because they are understandably worried about collateral damage, but they still want Saddam out NOW. Read here about the Iraqis who want the invasion NOW When the Enemy Is a Liberator-NY Times. How will it be imperialist if we don't stay in Iraq? We did not take the Iraqi, Kuwaiti or Saudi oil fields in 1991 Einstein! If we truly are the evil imperialist nation you see us as, those fields would be ours now, but they aren't are they? Saddam came to power by systematically murdering the opposition and in a famous televised display ordered Baath party members out of the room to be executed while he smiled and smoked a cigar. What does Britain's past colonialism have to do with the price of eggs? The artificial past borders imposed on Iraq by Britain will create some ethnic conflicts, but widespread arab outrage on the street? I don't think so.
2. There are no proven links between Saddam and the Al-Qaeda. The best intelligence agencies (those of the US and Britain) in the world have been working flat out to try and find one, yet both reported no link (despite this fact, both Bush and Blair repeatedly cite information discredited by their own intelligence agencies as evidence of a link - if they are so convinced of the case for war they shouldn't need to lie in presenting it). British intelligence reports that even the possibility of a substantial link is unlikely, given that Osama is in ideological conflict with Saddam (in a recent tape Osama termed Saddam and his regime 'infidels').
It's public knowledge that Saddam funds terrorism in Israel and pays bounties to the familes of homicide bombers. It's also public knowledge that Iraq tried to assasinate President Bush. Now if one tries to assasinate a foreign leader as powerful as the president of the United States, you have to understand that if you succeed, the US will come after you big time. Did Saddam care about the incredibly severe consequences? No. Think he cares about the consequences of using WMD against us or helping others do the same? No. The links between Al Qaeda and Iraq have been shown and will be further proven. The US and UK have not lied regarding intelligence they have released. The biggest worry is that Saddam will in the future pass his WMD weapons on or use them for terrorist blackmail. After 9/11 this is simply not tolerable. The primary reason saddam is about to be reomved is his continued efforts to develop and conceal WMD programs. That in combination with his nefarious past and his links to terrorist groups is all the reason in the world we need to disarm him and remove him from power. It has been proven Saddam has not disarmed and has continued to conceal his programs while he funds terrorism.
3. Before the UN sanctions Saddam had created a country with the one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East. At least for his own people he had thus done a better job than most other Middle Eastern leaders, and now we're supposed to be saving his people from him? I'm not saying Saddam is all good, far from it, but he is far from the evil tyrant Bush depicts him to be (i.e. he did not gas his own people as Bush repeatedly claims).
This is the dumbest and easiest comment to refute. Saddam is a mad man near the level of Jeffrey Dahmer. His mother attempted to abort him. He was abused as a child, tortured animals for fun, shot at a teacher, and killed his first political opponent at the age of 20. He is a cruel sadistic man who has regional and global dreams of domination. He supresses the truth, he tortures his people, he executes those who speak out against him or cuts their tongues out, he has professional rapists on staff to intimidate others, and he uses the oil for food program to build lavish palaces numbering close to 100 now that also likely conceal WMD programs. Meanwhile he claims the UN and the US have starved him although his army is well fed as is he. He has embezzeled billions from his people. He riggs elections so 100% of the vote is for him. He builds sculptures and commisions paintings of himself much like big brother. He exectuted his own son-in-law. His people fear him and want him gone. To suggest Saddam is not so bad is either a sign of complete ignorance , evidence of utter stupidity, or you are a bad liar.
4. The threat that Iraq poses to us is tiny. Iraq probably still has some 'weapons of mass destruction' of course, but an insignificant amount which pales in comparison to that of many other countries (including of course the US and Britain, but also less stable places such as Syria and the nuclear states of North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel).
The threat of WMD attacks is very real and very very dangerous. It is not tiny. And Saddam is not allowed to have ANY WMD programs nor weapons at all. With the exception of North Korea, none of the nations you mentioned have demonstrated irresponsibility nor used those weapons against their own people. To suggest that the US should be disarmed first is a false and stupid argument. Iraq MUST disarm according to the UN.
5. The US has a deplorable record of foreign intervention over the past 50 years.
You mean deplorable like winning WWII, stopping Hitler and Japan, winning the Cold War causing the fall of communism, freeing Kuwait, and stoping 'genocide' in Kosovo?. Are you arguing an isolationist policy where we should never defend our oversea interests or protect our own nation?
I just wish whoever this is who continues to literally beat their head up against a brick wall with these peacenick posts every morning could get it through their thick, albeit whinny skull that they are wrong and arguments like yours are right.
I especially loved this line: we now have liberals wanting the sanctions to continue while an endless circle-jerk of inspections accomplishes exactly nothing other than to give Hussein more time to kill.
LOL.....TRUER words have rarely been spoken!
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