Would You Support Military Action?

[keylime]

Arend,

 

It would be beyond irresponsible, to simply say to ourselves, "Well, Iraq's taken care, let's take our ball and go home now.". It'll be Vietnam, take 2.

 

Our politicians have a very bad habit of attempting to hamstring military commanders who are on the ground seeing the SITREPS daily and are slowly but surely bringing stability to Iraq. We've done this time after time in our history under the guises of "promoting self-restraint" and "civilian control of the military". Just look at the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the World Wars, and you'll see that we have exercised tremendous restraint until we've had to unleash the horrors of war, and furthermore, has also delayed victory for the sake of scoring a few points.

 

It takes just as much restraint to not act glibly and to simply reduce our horizons to one country. We simply can't view Iraq as the one and sole function of protecting the United States - I refuse to allow myself the naive notion that Russia and Iran are simply progressing themselves under the guise of modernization. Currently, Armenia, Georgia, eastern Pakistan and Kashmir, the Kurds, are the next areas of view , and hopefully, opportunity.

 

If France and the Netherlands are reexamining the troubles of both immigration and Islamization on their societies, why wouldn't the U.S. want to be at the forefront of promoting basic rights and freedoms? You can't go around and attempt to play nice and appease that which is both alien and counterproductive to the stability of the world. It is of only a sentimental notion that integration would provide enough benefits to a nation-state to have them leave their pasts so to speak.

 

Vigilance is the order of the day. I'm not waiting for the "what if", I've already steeled myself to the "when it happens". It frankly pisses me off to no end that we want to pussyfoot around the obvious: granting concession after concession without challenging the foe is paramount to extinction. Why did 6 million Jews have to die needlessly? Why did Poland suffer such loss? What about Czechoslovakia, who got sold out by the Brits?

 

When we are going to stop hiding behind technology, and actually do some of the hard labors required to turn back this wave of hideous destruction that is a lot closer than most are willing to admit?

[cherdano]

Well there are so many things I disagree with in what you said, Dwayne, but let me just ask: Where do you get the idea from that "military commanders ... are slowly but surely bringing stability to Iraq"?

Just give me a source where you got that idea from...

[hrothgar]

Our politicians have a very bad habit of attempting to hamstring military commanders who are on the ground seeing the SITREPS daily and are slowly but surely bringing stability to Iraq. We've done this time after time in our history under the guises of "promoting self-restraint" and "civilian control of the military".

Comment 1: Almost by definition, local commanders lack global perspective. They have an indepth knowledge of a very limited area. They are normally are in a poor position to assess theater operations.

 

Moreover, these same local commanders often have an extremely biased view about whats going on. They are the ones who just spent two / three / X monthes fighting and dying over some godforsaken clump or dirt. They often aren't in a good position to saw that all their sacrifices are for nought.

 

Comment 2: To the extent that the civilian commanders are biasing the system, they are doing so in favor of military action in Iraq. The Bush administration has been ruthless in suprressing dissent within the military. They have forced the army to adopt new vocabulary in the hopes of doing a better job "seeling" the war. Take a look at the uptick in the use of the phrase "El Qaeda" insurrgents a couple monthes back. Our beloved Commander in Chief started requiring that all insurrgents are referred to as El Qaeda.

[Al_U_Card]

The only real problem is that those who advocate killing all of the violent people are themselves against suicide.....otherwise they could start with themselves...

 

The greatest civilizations of mankind flourished while undergoing renaissance and openness (the US back at the turn of the 20th century is in that pile). Why do short-sighted, pig-ignorant, boot-licking excuses for humans insist on killing and destroying? oh yeah, they are short-sighted, pig-ignorant boot lickers. Good luck on judgement day, I only hope that your stay in hell was worth the effort.

[pbleighton]

Wikipedia has this to say:

(The prosecutor of the international criminal court)

the International Criminal Court has a mandate to examine the conduct during the conflict, but not whether the decision to engage in armed conflict was legal.

 

Helene, this refers to a specific mandate for a specific court.

 

The Nuremberg Charter defines “Crimes against Peace” as “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties or participating in a common plan or conspiracy to wage an aggressive war.”, and goes on to say "to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime.”

 

The U.S. is signatory to and subject to the U.N. Charter, which is certainly an international treaty. The Charter forbids one country from unilaterally attacking another except in self defense.

 

It's clear, and quite limited. It doesn't say it's OK to invade when Country A doesn't like Coountry B's government, or thinks that it may become a threat in the future, or doesn't like B's actions, or even if it thinks that B is itself guilty of war crimes. The recourse is the Security Council.

 

Peter

[pbleighton]

If France and the Netherlands are reexamining the troubles of both immigration and Islamization on their societies, why wouldn't the U.S. want to be at the forefront of promoting basic rights and freedoms? You can't go around and attempt to play nice and appease that which is both alien and counterproductive to the stability of the world. It is of only a sentimental notion that integration would provide enough benefits to a nation-state to have them leave their pasts so to speak.

 

Vigilance is the order of the day. I'm not waiting for the "what if", I've already steeled myself to the "when it happens". It frankly pisses me off to no end that we want to pussyfoot around the obvious: granting concession after concession without challenging the foe is paramount to extinction.

 

What concessions have we been making?

 

More importantly, it seems from this post and others that you think we are in a war with the entire Islamic world. Is that what you think?

 

Peter

[Al_U_Card]

Its Armagheddon, don't you know?

 

Right vs. wrong, good vs. evil. black vs. white. Christianity vs Islam; for they are diametrically opposed after all......they have nothing in common like

 

patriarchs

 

god-figure

 

peaceful nature of their religious philosophy

 

promise of heaven for good behavior

 

promise of hell for bad behavior

 

rituals and rites to be observed

 

organizational heirarchies

 

oh darn it...they are the same... so they are just fighting amongst themselves after all. It now makes more sense. ;)

[pbleighton]

It would be beyond irresponsible, to simply say to ourselves, "Well, Iraq's taken care, let's take our ball and go home now.". It'll be Vietnam, take 2.

 

The theory of sunk costs is relevant here: a rational person, business, or country does not let sunk costs influence decisions, because doing so would not be assessing a decision exclusively on its own merits.

 

Vietnam was a tragic mistake.

 

Iraq is a tragic mistake.

 

Bite the bullet and come home. We owe them a LOT of humanitarian aid for our war crime, but we can't repay it with the present govenment, and our presence just impedes their (painfully slow) evolution.

 

I was strongly opposed to the war to start with, but I would support staying there, even indefinitely, if there was a convincing argument (meaning logic and evidence) to do so. I haven't seen any such argument.

 

Peter

[kenrexford]

The greatest civilizations of mankind flourished while undergoing renaissance and openness (the US back at the turn of the 20th century is in that pile). Why do short-sighted, pig-ignorant, boot-licking excuses for humans insist on killing and destroying?

What world are you living in?

 

I'll assess a euro-centric world history.

 

Greece. Origin of democracy. Had to fight like hell for it.

 

Rome. Fought like Hell for it.

 

Northumbrians. I have no friggin' clue on that one, but it seems like they fought like hell for it.

 

Reformation. Fought like hell for it.

 

Renaissance. Fought like hell for it.

 

The U.S. at the turn of the century, isolated but still at war with Spain and with native Americans, embroiled in WWI quickly, just out of the Civil War, ready for WWI around the bend.

 

I'd like to see one example of an open renaissance that was not the fruit of kicking someone's ass.

[Winstonm]

I see the pros as being in the class of "what ifs". There could be benefit if..

 

Iran were in the last few months of completion of nuclear arms and had plans for using those weapons aggressively.

 

The downside is to create more hate and alienation in the Muslim world against the U.S - and to risk Russian intervention.

 

I agree that I am not privy to all the facts; unfortunately, believing what our leaders claim comes down to trust, and the present leaders have shown themselves to be untrustworthy.

[mike777]

Well a downside might also include if one of the those Nukes were used by someone. :)

 

But bottom line I do wish there was more debate and information and less posturing by both sides of the aisle on this one.

OTOH in a perfect world we would know the endgame before we pull the trigger, that may be naive and always impossible?

 

As insane as it sounds perhaps going into any, I mean any war is always a case of tinkering, trial and error?

[Al_U_Card]

What world are you living in?

Just the one where in each of your cited cases there were intelligent people who, despite the machinations of the power-hungry, militaristic and inhuman, managed to create out of that chaos the demonstration of the humanity in themselves.

 

Their vision and their success is the kind of world that I want and need to live in. Don't you?

 

 

There is still a chance.

 

The U.S impeaches and imprisons all of the war profiteers and guilty parties for 9-11 and its aftermath.

 

They offer their apologies along with reparations to the Iraqi people.

 

About one in a gazillion.

[Al_U_Card]

Hmmmnn so far it's 18-5 in favor of sanity. About the same % as little dick's popularity rating.....what a coincidence.

[kenrexford]

What world are you living in?

Just the one where in each of your cited cases there were intelligent people who, despite the machinations of the power-hungry, militaristic and inhuman, managed to create out of that chaos the demonstration of the humanity in themselves.

 

Their vision and their success is the kind of world that I want and need to live in. Don't you?

 

 

There is still a chance.

 

The U.S impeaches and imprisons all of the war profiteers and guilty parties for 9-11 and its aftermath.

 

They offer their apologies along with reparations to the Iraqi people.

 

About one in a gazillion.

Let's have some ice cream and listen to the Monkeys and tickle each other under the bed sheets, while we are at it.

 

Do you think that there were no intelligent people with humanity in the midst of the chaos when these enlightenment periods were not under way? Of course there were, intelligent and humane people hiding in the shadows and being tortured if they spoke up.

 

The hunger for power, the tend toward militarism, and acts of inhumanity do not come from global societal success, they are necessary attributes precursor to and sustaining of global societal success.

 

"Their vision and their success" is also a part of the kind of world that I want and need to live in as well. I'm just not so naive as to think that I can sing a song to accomplish that success. At some point somewhere someone who wants to grab things away from me must be beat down or threatened with a beat-down, because they will no more listen to anything reasonable than would the idiot on the street in my town would if he was given a big gun and a pile of money in front of him.

[luke warm]

If you attack another country which has not committed an act of war against you, it is a war crime. It's pretty simple.

this is obviously false

Wikipedia has this to say:

the International Criminal Court has a mandate to examine the conduct during the conflict, but not whether the decision to engage in armed conflict was legal.

well yes, that makes perfect sense... how can one have a war crime unless there's a war? when saddam invaded kuwait it was an act of war... his treatment of the kuwaitis after the invasion could indeed be considered war crimes, but not the invasion itself

[pbleighton]

As insane as it sounds perhaps going into any, I mean any war is always a case of tinkering, trial and error?

 

Which is a good argument against optional wars such as Iraq.

 

We had NO idea what we were doing in Vietnam, and we have NO idea what we are doing in Iraq.

 

Peter

[Winstonm]

Well a downside might also include if one of the those Nukes were used by someone.

 

In my mind this was included in aggressive use - whether Iran itself used them or supplied them to others for use.

 

I wonder how hard it would be to smuggle a nuclear device into a country and successfully detonate it - seems to me an incredibly difficult task.

[mike777]

Well a downside might also include if one of the those Nukes were used by someone.

 

In my mind this was included in aggressive use - whether Iran itself used them or supplied them to others for use.

 

I wonder how hard it would be to smuggle a nuclear device into a country and successfully detonate it - seems to me an incredibly difficult task.

I would think that would be the easy part, hard part is getting a working one.

Technically you would not even need to get onto usa soil for it to cause devastion in a border town.

Note a bomb could go off in port or in the air without ever clearing inspection or customs here in the USA.

[BebopKid]

Beyond that, so what? This is a real world we live in, not a fairy-tale world. Some of us have power. We use that so that someone else does not. That's not very nice, but such is life. A nice lion will starve.

I'll also add that in the U.S. unlike many other countries, the entire military is volunteer and staffed by brave people willing to stand up and go forth.

[DrTodd13]

They are pulling the same crap now that they did 5 years ago to motivate invading Iraq. It was all lies then and it is all lies now. The IAEA says that Iran is only enriching to levels suitable for power generation. There's a huge difference between 4% U235 and 95% U235. Moreover, the Iranian President doesn't have that much power and the real power brokers in Iran don't seem to have any interest in developing nukes or launching a war against Israel. We all hear that their President has said he wants to wipe Israel off the map but I have heard that this is a convenient mistranslation. Undoubtedly, he doesn't like Israel and wants it not to exist but as far as really threatening war I have my doubts he has said that.

 

I have several close Jewish friends and I believe in Israel's right to exist and even believe that the Muslims are the main instigators in that conflict. What I don't like is the seeming influence of the Zionist lobby that got Congress to remove the statement from one of the Iraq funding bills that Bush cannot attack Iran without express authorization from Congress. I think some people in high places have dual loyalties. There's absolutely nothing in Iran that is an imminent threat to us.

[rbforster]

I wonder how hard it would be to smuggle a nuclear device into a country and successfully detonate it - seems to me an incredibly difficult task.

About as hard as smuggling 10 tons of cocaine into the US? I sure hope it's harder to get a working nuke, but I'm not keeping my hopes up. At least if Iran launched their nuke on a good old fashion ICBM we'd know who shot it and which country to reduce to radioactive slag. A bomb going off in a big city leaves us with millions of dead people and no target (or rather too many targets).

[Al_U_Card]

At some point somewhere someone who wants to grab things away from me must be beat down or threatened with a beat-down, because they will no more listen to anything reasonable than would the idiot on the street in my town would if he was given a big gun and a pile of money in front of him.

This is the only part of your quote that troubles me. Misperception is a result of manipulation and not wrong-headedness. We have to wake up and be aware of how we are being coerced. When we are the bully how do we justify threatening the beating when we are trying to steal someone's lunch money?

 

.

http://takingaimradio.com/mp3/takingaim070814.mp3

 

Quote:

That’s the furniture of control, the operational means through which the rulers conduct their affairs. So there is a conspiratorial character to the way in which they rule, because they cannot say to the American people, [e.g.] ‘We want to obtain the resources of Indochina. We want to displace the French colonial control of Indochina. And in order to accomplish that, we’re going to generate events that are of our own making such as the Gulf of Tonkin.’ When we were told, were we not?, that the North Vietnamese had fired on an American ship. They would have had every right to do so. These were US destroyers, a naval armada, in territorial waters of Vietnam. Oh, fie! They fired on these intruding forces – but in fact, it never happened. Nobody is in dispute any more about the fact that this was an invention.

 

And that’s the pretext and that’s the rationale, that’s the justification for visiting a devastating war on this suffering people, that transformed their country into the landscape of the moon, that killed between three and four million people, that entailed intelligence operations of our special forces that are now unfolding in Iraq before our eyes but which in Vietnam, in such things as the Phoenix Program, required the systematic murder of 60,000 people on the ground: village leaders, students, trade unionists, people who were of those oppressed people in Vietnam, physically liquidated. Talk about state terror. So that is the nature of rule in an economic and political order that is essentially the domain of pirates whose proper flag is a skull and crossbones.

[TimG]

At least if Iran launched their nuke on a good old fashion ICBM we'd know who shot it and which country to reduce to radioactive slag.

Hyperbole aside, why would it be right for the US to reduce the entire country to radioactive slag?

 

Iran has something like 70 million citizens. Would they all be responsible?

 

Perhaps there is a good argument that they are all responsible. Sort of in the same way that all US citizens are responsible for the current military actions in the middle East. Those of us who are opposed to the actions, can voice our opinions, but when it comes right down to it, we are making the actions possible. And, must bear some of the responsibility.

[kenrexford]

Misperception is a result of manipulation and not wrong-headedness.

I'm not all that certain that I am misperceiving the big picture.

 

A lady at my bridge club is about to turn 100 years of age. So, she was alive before WWI. What has the big picture been in her lifetime?

 

When she was born, a few European nations were in control of almost everything. The colonial powers were largely places that wanted to be in control of almost everything, but they lost at some point.

 

The powers in Europe fought amongst each other and some power arrangements seemed to shift slightly. This allowed some new powers, old powers long forgotten but resurfacing, to gain new powers.

 

A generation later, this new power tilt boiled over, and millions died. Power shifted in a major way. Power vacuums developed, with sources for very old power having some breathing space.

 

The new powers pushed at each other while vacuums started to fill. One large area of relative power vacuum, at one time an area of extreme power, has tried a new tactic.

 

What I see in this story, so far, are a few things.

 

Power moves. It may seem to increase or decrease in specific areas, but it seems relatively assured to emerge.

 

Powers end up fighting, and lots of people die as a result.

 

All power is used to the benefit of those holding the power and to the detriment of those not having the power. That seems to be because power is the most important asset, one that cannot be shared effectively.

 

Within the range of power-holders, some are more troubling than others.

 

The effects of power concentration in an area seem to be most disturbing when the power must also be used internally.

 

Dogs fight over food. Most dogs are otherwise fairly nice pets, but they do fight over food. The nice dog that does not fight over food goes hungry.

 

Some dogs have fought too much, having been trained by their masters to kill senselessly. Those dogs are usually subject to extreme rules by the government and often must be put down. You just cannot trust a dog that bites for no reason.

 

Yet, dogs always have a reason. Ultimately, however, that does not matter.

[Al_U_Card]

Sadly, but realistically, the US is just following in the footsteps of its predecessors. The Maine, Pearl Harbor, The Gulf of Tonkin, 9-11. The powers that be exercise their control to further their ends and are very sanguine about it. The US was founded in an attempt to restore a certain measure of power to the people. Unfortunately, it was a noble experiment that appears to be in failing health.