Communism is bad...when people compete in the market for sales they also develop new, better, technology. This isnt appearant in communism. They also believe you need to have a Dictatorship before communism but of course if you give 1 person so much power he wont step down in the name of communism nor will people contest him. Why do you think communism is so good?

Right off the bat, I never said I thought communism was so good.

Secondly, that sounds like the communism being told as the only way people in the western world know as the crap and mismanaged system it has been used as. Communism "is" bad because all attempts at using it to date have failed due to poor leadership and greed.

-Dagolar

Spuzzum's views are pretty much the same as mine, too. The only reason I'm not joining in very much is because I don't want to get involved in long, wordy arguments that take up lots of my time. =P

Spuzzum wrote:

But the UN never attempted to dethrone him; the UN tried to rein him in, and the US went along with that policy for nearly 12 years. If reining him in isn't working, then what?

And what indications do you have that it isn't working? Iraq wasn't even mentioned in the news until Bush declared his war against this so-called Axis of Evil (which was probably the least appropriate name his advisors could have come up with).

Just because something isn't mentioned in the news doesn't mean it's not a problem. In fact most of the conditions that spawned the terrorism of September 11 weren't very well reported until after the incident happened. If anything we've learned that we can't wait for something to become a headline before acting on it. "Iraq Has Nukes" is not a front-page headline I ever want to see.

The indications that containment isn't working come in several forms. First, we know that Saddam continued his weapons programs from 1991 to 1998 right under the noses of the inspectors. Then inspectors were kicked out, and he had 4 years to do whatever the heck he wanted. Not until late in 2002 did they return.

Second, Saddam continues to pose a significant threat absent those weapons by his support of terrorism. Iraq houses terrorist training camps, including a group allied with al Qaeda (and more recently, some of al Qaeda itself), and has been encouraging suicide bombings in Israel by paying $25,000 to the families of the bombers. Granted Iraq is not alone in these conditions, or similar conditions, but if we're committed to wiping out terrorism, Iraq is the most logical point to follow the operation in Afghanistan.

You keep using the word "unilateral" as if it's true. We have a coalition of nations standing with us on this.

I hate to say this, but most of the nations that support the United States are only doing so to avoid damaging future relations. Chretien is a spineless suck-up -- despite ridiculous and outright insulting treaty violations by the United States -- Blair only wants the U.S. to sweeten up trade arrangements, etc.

It's my understanding that this isn't actually true of Blair; he's supporting this on principle because he believes it's in the best interests of his nation's defense. Britain is a primary terror target too.

I can't back any of these up with hard facts -- aside from the treaty violations -- but you can't back up the weapons of mass destruction with hard facts either:

Hard fact is that Iraq had those weapons in 1998, and has not accounted for them since. If they were willing to account for them, they would have done so by now.

Has the possibility of selling the weapons to foreign nations been considered? I certainly wouldn't want to tell the U.N. that I had sold weapons to, say, China, since that would make the anti-Commie Americans get livid. Until you can say where the weapons are, you don't have grounds to invade the country.

Actually that's not the case; if the weapons were sold to another country (and there's no reason to believe they were), there would be a paper trail and it would be all the more vital to get ahold of that information. Furthermore, Iraq could have produced documents to that effect months ago to take pressure off the regime. Why would Iraq not want to admit selling weapons to China? China doesn't have significant trade with them; it wouldn't hurt Iraq. And China likely has all of those weapons already, but China is more or less a rational actor in the world scene, and Iraq has not been.

I also find it highly trite to consider it moral to enter another country by force, slay its regime, and implant your own carefully doctored regime. That's what the British did with their colonies, you know. I'll probably get at least one person extremely mad by saying this, but you're becoming the very thing that you fought so hard to separate from.

On the contrary, the US fought for independence because the colonies were badly run. Plus, you're making a bad analogy in that this is not imperialism or colonialism: We're aiming to do exactly what we did in 1945.

It was perfectly moral to depose the regimes of Japan and Germany by force in 1945, and replace them with democracies. Both nations function as respected members of the world community in their own right now, and they could hardly be called puppets of the US.

Yes, Saddam is a dictator. But you can't presume to say what the people want. What one of the populace may say when they sneak out of the country does not represent the whole -- obviously, if he/she snuck out of the country, he/she wanted to leave enough to do it. What about the other people who still remain?

Well, there happens to be this: The atrocities of Saddam's regime are not disputed: torture, the rape of female relatives, the maiming of children. Children's eyes are gouged out in front of their parents to get a parent to talk. There are men on the government payroll whose job description is solely to rape the wives and mothers and daughters of prisoners.

If we oust that, and replace it with a regime that doesn't do that, it's a net good, and in that the largely unknown opinions of the residents of Iraq don't make a difference because the improvement is objective. It's at least a net good if the war isn't damaging enough to undo all that good, but then it's hard to come up with a defensible argument that civilian casualties will be very high.

Lummox JR

Lummox JR wrote:

It was perfectly moral to depose the regimes of Japan and Germany by force in 1945, and replace them with democracies. Both nations function as respected members of the world community in their own right now, and they could hardly be called puppets of the US.

I don't really want to get involved in this, but didn't Germany and Japan actually invade other countries in the first place? In this case, the US is the invader. I fail to see the relation between WW2 and the current situation with Iraq.

Lummox JR wrote:

Crispy wrote:

I don't really want to get involved in this, but didn't Germany and Japan actually invade other countries in the first place? In this case, the US is the invader. I fail to see the relation between WW2 and the current situation with Iraq.

Iraq invaded Kuwait

True, but Iraq was defeated, and punished for the invasion. Dead issue.

and the Gulf War never technically ended

Technically, maybe. But technically, we're all going to die anyway so what's the point of bothering about anything?

The Gulf War did end, whether there was a technical state of war or not. If it didn't end, it can hardly be called the shortest war that the US can been involved in can it?

the conditions of the cease-fire have been violated flagrantly for 12 years.

I'm not sure what conditions you mean...

I agree with you 100%, AbyssDragon. The justification of "freeing" the Iraqi people from Suddam is a weak attempt by the U.S. to display sympathy. I agree with you on that point completely.

-Dagolar

Yup. Good point. I'll shut my mouth from here on in. More read less type, yes. Thank you for the inspiration.

-Dagolar

AbyssDragon wrote:

Well, there happens to be this: The atrocities of Saddam's regime are not disputed: torture, the rape of female relatives, the maiming of children. Children's eyes are gouged out in front of their parents to get a parent to talk. There are men on the government payroll whose job description is solely to rape the wives and mothers and daughters of prisoners.

If we oust that, and replace it with a regime that doesn't do that, it's a net good, and in that the largely unknown opinions of the residents of Iraq don't make a difference because the improvement is objective. It's at least a net good if the war isn't damaging enough to undo all that good, but then it's hard to come up with a defensible argument that civilian casualties will be very high.

You are correct here... I doubt few would disagree with these statements. However, I think it's clear these have absolutely nothing to do with America's war on Iraq. Not only have these atrocities been going on for some time now without any opposition here (in fact, we funded Iraq for awhile in the early part of Hussein's reign). In addition, atrocities just like these go on in hundreds of places around the globe, with little recognition to America. Indeed, parts of Africa have been in brutal civil wars for decades now with absolutely no American involvement in any way.

Well, it's undeniably true that the world is mostly full of craphole dictatorships where people suffer greatly. But many of those don't support terrorism (many don't have the means) and don't pursue nuclear weapons, and don't threaten us. We tend to leave other nations alone most of the time and use diplomacy most of the rest, and hope those will work.

I do think the atrocities of the Ba'athist regime have something to do with the war in Iraq, in that they're one of the reasons Iraq is "low-hanging fruit". Among countries that sponsor terrorism, Iraq is also actively developing nasty weapons, and has plenty already; it's already in a state of war and in consistent violation of the 12-year cease-fire; it's a neighbor to many other important points of interest (not necessarily targets) that can be influenced by a US presence and a change of regime; it's fairly secular and therefore somewhat fertile for a planted democracy (if carefully tended); and because of all the horror that happens political prisoners, a group that doesn't even exclude Saddam's own family, there's a strong moral case for going in.

Anyway, we've had several opportunities to remove Hussein from power but have neglected to do so. We could have done it ourselves in the Gulf War, and we could have supported the anti-Hussein rebel groups in Iraq further (we did support them a little, but withdrew it.. making them our enemies now as well).

This is absolutely true. And wasting those opportunities, blowing them as badly as we did, was a series of vast mistakes we must not repeat. They certainly contributed to the swath of neglect we heaped on the terrorist problem.

In short, I think arguments like this (whether designed to do so or not) simply mislead people from the real issues. They have nothing to with why the war is being waged. Their only purpose, if any, is to be after-the-fact justifications when the original justifications (links to terrorism) were found greatly lacking.

I think the point is rather that this is just another dimension to the issue. Yes, the real reason the war is being waged is that it's really just a battle in a long-term war, as large in scope as the Cold War. Yet there are plenty of other reasons to do this, including as you mentioned that we failed to do so before--and look how it all turned out. Those other reasons could be looked at as justifications, and in fact are often offered as such, but in truth one person might find a different set of reasons more compelling than another, and the case really has to be considered as a whole.
To put it in perspective, imagine if Ireland was developing nukes. Some sections are simply overrun with the IRA (a terrorist entity), and Britain would be in considerable danger. That Ireland doesn't torture its citizens wouldn't take away from that danger, but that Iraq does makes the case against Saddam all the stronger.

And I don't put much stock in the idea that the links between Iraq and terrorism are lacking, let alone greatly lacking; Iraq has been in bed with international terrorism for decades, and that's simply common knowledge. So has Syria, Iran (especially Iran), and Libya. Whether the specific terrorists who struck on September 11 are involved with Iraq (though they are) is a side issue to the fact that they're still terrorists who mean us harm, and we can't afford to have those terrorists smuggling in VX. The chance of that is greatest with Iraq in play, which happens to be in the international doghouse anyway, so it's a logical next step against terrorism.
Of course, one is free to disagree with the long-term war, or with the particular choice of steps in fighting it.

Lummox JR

Dagolar wrote:

Argue much better? Heh. If you really read what Lummox is saying about the war on Iraq, he sounds like the ass end of the United States propaganda machine farting wildly. Whether what he is saying has backing or not, it's all U.S. based and all U.S. opinion. It is highly biased and I don't really take it seriously. If I want to listen to everything that Lummox has to say, I'll turn on CNN at 10:00 sharp.

This is the second time you've mentioned "the United States propaganda machine". The first was a cheap shot and I dismissed it without a reply, but this time you've combined it with a nasty insult. Disagree with me as much as you like, argue the point till you're blue in the face, but DO NOT drag this down to that level. Shame on you for that.

Future posts with that same cheap shot or any insult will be deleted on sight; I don't want to squelch debate, but I'm charged with squelching nastiness and insults and I can darn well do that. Keep yourself civil or do not post here.

Lummox JR