If you believe that humanity should band together to defeat evil, bandits, enemies of humanity, pirates, criminals, and the other riff raff trash, then you would see it as the good when your side is recruiting allies in the heart of enemy territory. If you believe you have right on your side, why wouldn’t you also believe that your enemies are only resisting you because they are ignorant and misguided? Why wouldn’t you believe that fighting them, and thus communicating the reality of your beliefs and cause in a way that diplomacy cannot, would not be beneficial to your long term goals in this war through convincing your former enemies that they should not be your current allies?
The Vet for Peace believes that Iraq is a waste of resources or at least whatever gains developed there, wouldn’t translate to the greater war on terror, as he sees and terms it.
That, however, is an arbitrary conclusion based upon arbitrary philosophical assumptions. For one thing, there are many individuals fighting this war and there will be many more individuals fighting this war in the future, both immediate and long term. The Vet for Peace talks about war prospects as if America doesn’t need allies in Iraq nor does America need governing and fighting experience in the heart of the Persian and Arabian historic empires. The people that will be fighting this war, present and future, and the families that will suffer on the front lines, both American and allied Iraqi or allied forces, deserve more from this Vet for Peace than to be discarded for some individual’s notion of armchair micromanagement and strategizing.
You should not discard your allies simply because you think a different front of the war deserves more attention and resources. You can discard them, like Israel discarded many Palestinians that worked with the Jews, Zionists, and Israeli intel agencies, but in the long term, however, whatever short term resources you may have saved by selling the Arabs out to their Arab enemies, will be more than used up on combating a unified enemy that you have not been able to divide because you have sacrificed all the allies amongst your enemies that could have divided those enemies. All the Arabs, all the Kurds, and all the Shia: sacrificed for one Peace advocate’s notion of streamlined warfare.
Declare victory and bring the troops home. As if you either have the power or the right to decide the fates of millions of Arabs and Americans based upon a whim, with no consideration of what the enemy has done or will do to kill the people that you should have been planning to protect but didn’t because you declared victory. Victory is earned and paid in blood, not in whims and boastful proclamations.
There is no compromise between people that don’t see how Iraq is necessary for America’s long term war prospects and those that believe Iraq must be won for America’s war efforts to be improved greatly.
The only “qualitative” difference between the US being involved in European and Asian matters as opposed to nation building in Iraq is that Iraq requires will, resources, sacrifices, and political deals to be made from the current and future generation of Americans. Whereas the US involvement in Europe and Japan was already paid for by a previous generation of Americans. This makes it very easy to support the involvement in Germany and Japan, when you don’t have to pay the butcher’s cost for it, than supporting Iraq, where resources are being re-directed to Iraq from your own little pet projects.
People love having things that they didn’t pay for. Something more expensive, like Iraq, now that is a different matter. It has different “qualitative” aspects, you see.
The rather interesting bit about the argument “Iraq was pre-emptive” while WWII was “reactive” is that the first forces Americans encountered and fought with when they landed on Africa were the French. Not the Japanese, interestingly enough. Not only that, but America, meaning Roosevelt and Churchill, decided to focus most of the resources on the European theater. Europe, which coincidentally, had not attacked America at Pearl Harbor.
American went to Africa, then Italy, then France after Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. America went to Iraq after 9/11 was attacked by Al Qaeda using Saudi operatives, while based in Afghanistan. Japan launched a carrier strike at Pearl from Japan. Roosevelt then went to Africa.
Either these people think they can lie to us and have us swallow their lies, or they are truly as ignorant of history as is required of a person to believe in such fallacious strategies and tactics as “declare victory when you want to and then leave”.
To Jimbo, you have to remember that the Kurds don’t mean a damn to the Vet for Peace so he doesn’t really give a Foxtrot Fauk about the Kurds being wiped out by Saddam’s weapons. Whereas your example of the “neighbor” is about neighbors. People you care about because they live near you and which you know personally. He don’t care about the Kurds. You expect him to think of the Kurds and Iraqis as “neighbors”? People have too parochial of an outlook for that kind of cosmopolitan thinking.
Does your brain hurt after that? Mine does.
Here's my response:
I thought we invaded Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction. They didn't. Why are we still there?
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