Iraq War Is ‘a Nightmare’ - Page 6 - PhillyBlog

#51 (**permalink**) 10-17-2007, 11:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seand

You think that because you think of excercising power by invading and overthrowing governments. Thats a fools gambit. Backing up even a largely unsucessful AU mission with cash and air support would even at its worst save possibly tens of thousands of innocent lives and be a great PR move. Currently the US is held responsible not just for the people that we or Blackwater mows down but for all the suffering caused by every car bomb attack in Iraq in the minds of most of the Islamic world. By stepping in directly and saying "we'll take over control here" - we acepted resonsiblity for the horrors being commited against civilians by all sides in Iraq - at least according to how most of the Islamic world looks at it. Invading Iraq is the biggest PR blunder imaginable if you are trying to undermine the popularity of Islamic extremism. Every night on Al Jazeera and 6 other satelite stations people watch untold suffering in Iraq and hold the US directly resposible for that suffering.

Contributing cents on the dollar for an operation manned by African Union soldiers changes that nightly news footage to the US supporting a coalition of African soldiers stopping Arab Muslims from slitting the throats of their darker skinned also Muslim neighbors.

Which footage do you think makes more effective propaganda for the US long term in an ongoing ideological struggle against violent radical Islamicists?

The image of Arab militias pulling darker skinned Darfurian Muslims out of their evening prayers to slit their throat BTW came out of today's newspapers.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline...-govt-tro.html

I'm not a dreamy idealist. Financially supporting the odd "Well, Duh!" truly broadly supported international humanitarian intervention against heinous ethnic mass murder is sometimes the kind of good propaganda we really need to undermine the message of Al Queda and their ilk - and it doesn't require US soldiers fer chrissake.

I think you Adlerian are the one who has a naive verison real politik based on model of "empire" that is outdated for how you excercise power most effectively in today's global economy.

You're talking nonsense and that's all you've done.

If you ever experience true danger or had any clue about what being in a war zone is like you'd be singing a different tune. It's obvious to me that you get your politics from television.

Your ideas represent the modern American and so the country might as well hang it up. The only hope would be if we were attacked on some massive scale.

seand · #52 (**permalink**) 10-17-2007, 11:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheAdlerian

You're talking nonsense and that's all you've done.

If you ever experience true danger or had any clue about what being in a war zone is like you'd be singing a different tune. It's obvious to me that you get your politics from television.

Your ideas represent the modern American and so the country might as well hang it up. The only hope would be if we were attacked on some massive scale.

I think the armchair general is grumpy about how utterly unconvincing his arguments sound even to himself and is resorting to petty insults.

Your "if we only cause yet more massive carnage to Iraqui civilians they will all suddenly stop hating each other and come to focus on loving us and our Western ways" sounds like some really informed military strategy, I must say.

markedixon · #53 (**permalink**) 10-18-2007, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seand

...in the minds of most of the Islamic world.

Non-Muslims aren't too impressed either.

#54 (**permalink**) 10-18-2007, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seand

I think the armchair general is grumpy about how utterly unconvincing his arguments sound even to himself and is resorting to petty insults.

Your "if we only cause yet more massive carnage to Iraqui civilians they will all suddenly stop hating each other and come to focus on loving us and our Western ways" sounds like some really informed military strategy, I must say.

I'm grumpy because you like so many people have no scope or patience. You have no interest in spreading the exact same benefits to others which our founders brought to us, which was achieved by murdering people with crude weapons.

I've long suspected that America is over. It's filled with greedy cowards who don't understand crap and repeat what they hear on TV.

Three cheers to the states!

...and, as Voltaire used to say.

Destroy Infamy!
(although no one will.)

Voodoo · #55 (**permalink**) 10-18-2007, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheAdlerian

Three cheers to the states!

...and, as Voltaire used to say.

Destroy Infamy!
(although no one will.)

Is this a concession speech?

I really hope so. You lost this debate a long time ago.

seand · #56 (**permalink**) 10-18-2007, 12:21 PM

You cannot violently impose from above either a sense of national identity or a desire to live in a true multi-ethnic democracy. You can't force people with no experience of respect for the human rights of rival groups to embrace the concept at gun point.

Iraq was never about offering freedom to the Iraqui people. It was about offering lucrative miliatary and reconstruction contracts to friends of the administration. We went to war for the graft and padding of contracts the invasion made possible is the sad truth of the matter.

On an a side note, now that we are in this mess there has been some indications that despite the current Iraqui government's insistance on a strong national government that hey just coincidentally they would control the police and army and all the profitable to operate ministries - groups of both Sunnis and Shiia are talking about moving toward a looser federalist arangement and at least talking to each other. Iraq may actually make progress toward some kind of stable political entity eventually. Its probably many bloody years down the line and it will happen if it does in spite of the efforts of the Malaiki government we currently supporting at great expense but it is a new glimmer of hope.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/10532902.html
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world...ng_Maliki.html

#57 (**permalink**) 10-18-2007, 05:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo

Is this a concession speech?

I really hope so. You lost this debate a long time ago.

My correct assessment is being validated daily as we lose the war, get nowhere with changing the government, and let our soldiers die unavenged.

The average American has no passion for these thing because they're abstractions and if I've "lost the debate" (which never existed), that's a sure sign that I've won it.

#58 (**permalink**) 10-18-2007, 05:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seand

You cannot violently impose from above either a sense of national identity or a desire to live in a true multi-ethnic democracy. You can't force people with no experience of respect for the human rights of rival groups to embrace the concept at gun point.

You repeatedly make proclamations of fact without any examples from history. You're just, as most Americans, operating off your feeling and making stuff up that you feel is right sound like fact.

There are countless countries which used to exist, with separate cultures, that were forcibly absorbed into some larger and stronger country. There were also large and strong countries broken apart and made weaker by force. Let your lack of knowledge serve as proof that the tactics worked well.

markedixon · #59 (**permalink**) 10-18-2007, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheAdlerian

There are countless countries which used to exist, with separate cultures, that were forcibly absorbed into some larger and stronger country. There were also large and strong countries broken apart and made weaker by force.

So, what you're mourning is the fact that we're not effective at attacking and absorbing? And that this signals a readiness to be attacked and absorbed? Eat or get eaten. That sort of thing?

#60 (**permalink**) 10-18-2007, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by markedixon

So, what you're mourning is the fact that we're not effective at attacking and absorbing? And that this signals a readiness to be attacked and absorbed? Eat or get eaten. That sort of thing?

More or less.

The larger issue for me is the lack of interest that I see in spreading the freedom which we all enjoy. It also seriously annoys me that so many liberals defend Islam when there's no way in hell they'd want to live like that. It's ok because said people are "foreign" and secondly because the average person is too intellectually lazy to learn about it.

I was just speaking to a vehement atheist friend of mine the other day who was defending Islam and declaring the US "immoral" for it's military actions. He was just mumbling crap that he read on the net or stuff parroted from the Daily Show. This guy has a 170 IQ, by the way, and would last about two minutes under Islam and he does drugs, drinks, and lives with a woman.

WTF!

I believe that Americans are currently a stupid lot with no significant value system and so cannot muster the energy to fight any longer. You can even see this in the way people put down oil. They don't even know that it's the most important stuff in the world and that civilization as we know it could not exist without it.