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Posts: 2397
Feb 6 07 12:09 PM
Quote:char: "Since you made just one cogent point, I will respond to that, Iowan."
Quote:char: "I did support the US occupation and "invasion" (the Northern Alliance did the work on the ground) of Afghanistan, even though I knew Americans would die in the conflict. This was because the 9/11 attacks were launched from Afghanistan, and they were not turning over the likely culprits. Clearly, they would have continued their attacks."
Quote:char: "This was self-defense, and just about every nation in the world supported us."
Quote:char: "The goal of the military intervention was commensurate with the sacrifice. It is true that Bush botched the followup and both Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden escaped (and presumably still live); but the attempt had to be made."
Quote:char: "In Vietnam and Iraq, there was simply no threat to the US commensurate with the sacrifice."
Quote:char: "The harm done to us by the military interventions exceeded by a huge amount any benefit."
Quote:char: "That's it in a nutshell. I am not a pacifist. But if you advocate military action with its attendant casualties, it better be for a worthy purpose, and you damned well better be right about the result. Otherwise, you made an error, no matter how well intentioned you may have been."
Quote:char: "And to stubbornly compound that error at the cost of continued deaths is reprehensible, particularly after it has become clear that the invasion of Iraq increased terrorism and has not had the results predicted by Bush. Your pride is not worth one more death."
Quote:iowan15: "If that minimum wage thingy passes, it will be nice to know you finally got a raise."char: "Yeah, then we could afford shoes.I'm glad I didn't tell you what my salary was when you asked. I would never hear the end of it. Isn't envy a sin?"
Quote:char: "I don't give you a hard time about how you make your living, do I?"
Interact
Posts: 8416
Feb 6 07 2:35 PM
Quote:The War To Save The SurgeBy E. J. Dionne Jr.Tuesday, February 6, 2007; Page A17When political opponents tell you that to prove your seriousness you need to pursue a strategy they know is doomed to failure, shouldn't you be skeptical of their advice?As the Senate considers a resolution to put itself on record opposing President Bush's escalation of the Iraq war through a "surge" of troops, Bush's backers are saying one thing and doing another.They are saying that the resolution is meaningless and that true opponents of the war should prove their sincerity by cutting off funding altogether. But they are doing all they can to keep the Senate from even voting on a bipartisan anti-surge resolution that would send a powerful message to Bush that most Americans have lost faith in his bungled war policy.If you doubt that the war's supporters would love its opponents to put all their eggs in the fund-cutoff basket, consider what it means for them to sound as if the administration's only serious foes were the likes of Dennis Kucinich and Cindy Sheehan...
Feb 6 07 3:55 PM
Quote:iowan15: "If it was self-defense (and I think you're right about that), then it matters not one wit if the world supported us or not."char: "I brought up world opinion to bolster the conclusion, and to contrast that situation with Iraq."
Quote:iowan15: "Well, that's a judgment call, isn't it, char? The goal of the military intervention in Vietnam was to stop the expansion of communism. Apparently, you and other anti-war activists of that day didn't believe the attempt should have been made to stop the expansion of communism. Anti-war sentiment then had little to do with commensurate sacrifice. Anti-war sentiment in general opposed the goal."char: "Let me clear up some confusion you seem to have, Iowan."
Quote:char: "First, the Vietnam war did not stop the expansion of Communism, so obviously it was a poor choice of methods if that was the goal."
Quote:char: "Second, many of the war's opponents were anticommunist and correctly perceived that the war was a very stupid and self-destructive way to go about opposing Communism."
Quote:char: "The conclusions you reached do not follow from being against the US military intervention in Vietnam at all. You basically just made it up for convenience sake."
Quote:iowan15: "According to that premise, no sacrifice was/is justified in either case. That being the case, commensurate sacrifice is a meaningless phrase if there was no threat at all, whether one is talking about Vietnam or Iraq."char: "Whether the threat was nonexistent or small, my logic still holds. Your line here is nonsensical."
Quote:iowan15: "You've said before (in so many words) that we've taken our eye off the ball in the war on terror by not committing enough to Afghanistan and in pursuing bin Laden. Let's say that is the case, for the sake of argument. Despite our taking our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and not going after bin Laden as we should, there have been no serious terrorist attacks since 9/11. That's a huge benefit in my book."char: "That there have been no attacks on the US is due to a number of factors that have no positive correlation with the invasion of Iraq."
Quote:char: "(If you disagree, then please identify why invading and occupying a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 would have prevented a recurrence.)"
Quote:char: "Bush's failure to commit enough attention and resources to Afghanistan not only let OBL off the hook, it has allowed a resurgence of the Taliban. This is not good. We're losing a golden opportunity, largely because of Iraq."
Quote:iowan15: "I've not argued otherwise. But there's the rub, char. Your opposition to the military intervention in Iraq is based on your belief that the purpose isn't worthy, or at least not worthy enough."char: "Well, that takes in a lot of territory. This war was sold on the WMD threat, with a side order of Saddam's collusion with al-Qaeda."
Quote:char: "Both charges proved completely illusory."
Quote:char: "Obviously, those purposes were not even true, much less worthy."
Quote:char: "Ending Saddam's reign of terror was a worthy goal, but not one that I believe merited the violation of international law, the destruction of a state, and the deaths of so many Americans and Iraqis."
Quote:char: "(Bush must not have thought so either or he'd have sold the war on that basis.)"
Quote:char: "Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror before we invaded, so clearly that was not a genuine goal either. It seems I was right."
Quote:iowan15: "If the cause isn't worthy, no amount of attendant casualties changes that. On the flip side of that coin, if the cause is worthy, then failure to bring about a 'right' result doesn't change the worthiness of the cause. For instance, even if we had only fought to a stalemate or even lost the War in the Pacific in WW2, going to war against the empire of Japan was a worthy cause."char: "We already established that this was not self-defense in Iraq, so the Japan example is irrelevant."
Quote:char: "You keep trying to evade the issue of whether this invasion was justified by its result. It was optional all the way."
Quote:char: "There would have been no penalty to the US for forgoing this intervention."
Quote:char: "Therefore, entering upon it is a move that has to be judged by how it's turned out."
Quote:char: "So far, that is pretty horrendous. By any rational measure, it was a grievous error to have invaded Iraq. By any rational measure, there was no compelling reason to have invaded. Bush blew it, and now he wants to double down to recoup losses. This is dumb."
Quote:iowan15: "And so far, according to you, we haven't been 'right about the result' in Afghanistan. Does that somehow make the attempt unworthy? I don't think so."char: "You have misrepresented what I wrote. We did evict the Taliban and OBL from the levers of state power in Afghanistan, and this was a good thing. It would have been better to have caught them, but that would have required a better C-in-C than we are cursed with."
Quote:iowan15: "Then you, Fonda, and the Dems in Congress should be demanding an immediate and complete withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and passing legislation to that end."char: "I just read an op-ed that explains this line from war supporters. I was wondering why you guys were all singing this tune."The War To Save The SurgeBy E. J. Dionne Jr.Tuesday, February 6, 2007; Page A17""When political opponents blah, blah, blah, blah, blah . . ."
Quote:char: "You don't mean what you say either."
Quote:char: "You're desperate to avoid what constitutes a vote of no confidence in Kerry's old strategy which Bush has dusted off two years later."
Quote:char: "I think every vote in Congress means something."
Quote:char: "I would prefer to see a stronger stand taken, but if the minority would allow an anti-surge vote (they won't) that doesn't include a funds cutoff, that's better than saying nothing."
Feb 6 07 5:53 PM
Feb 6 07 11:46 PM
Quote:char: "Iowan, when you're coming out on the short end of these things, you generally do just what you're doing now: make a lot of wise-cracking non sequiturs and attempt to change the subject."
Quote:char: "First, you are the one making a meal out of the "worthiness" of causes."
Quote:char: "I'm trying to make the point that however worthy a cause, if a war does not advance it, it was likely an error. This is especially true of optional conflicts like Vietnam and Iraq."
Quote:iowan15: "Since you believe that the sacrifice of US troops casualties should be 'commensurate' with the worthiness of the cause, how many US troop deaths were 'commensurate' in Vietnam then and how many are 'commensurate' in Iraq today, char?"char: "No US deaths were justified for the lost cause of keeping Vietnam divided."
Quote:char: "No US deaths were justified for the invasion of Iraq either. We were not threatened and it worsened terrorism."
Quote:char: "This is not because Saddam was a good guy or that Communism was great. It is because in neither case were those wars an intelligent way to reach the goals (when the goals were real, unlike the WMD scam)."
Quote:iowan15: "List those other wholly-unrelated-to-Iraq 'factors' for me, if you please.char: "There has been no repeat of 9/11 because:1) al-Qaeda threw all their reliable US assets into that attack. We can be reasonably sure of this because we've found no others even after the leads we got from the Afghanistan invasion and by other means. They simply didn't have the capacity. That had nothing to do with Iraq."
Quote:char: "2) US vigilance increased greatly, both here and abroad."
Quote:char: "3) The toppling of the Taliban deprived al-Qaeda of their base and a lot of their personnel."
Quote:iowan15: "So obvious that pretty much every single inteligence organization in the world thought it WAS true that the Iraqi regime had WMDs."char: "Not in February of 2003, they didn't. Don't you guys get sick of peddling this lie?"
Quote:iowan15: "What should have been done about Hussein?"char: "What we were doing before your boy George was hypnotized by the neocons. Contain him and deprive him of the means to threaten anyone outside Iraq."
Quote:iowan15: "So how many more troop casualties are 'commensurate' with the view you've just expressed?"char: "None. We should get out as fast as we can consistent with minimizing our losses."
Quote:char: "The rest of your post was flapdoodle."
Quote:char: "The threadbare prevarications and excuses peddled by Bush and repeated by his dwindling corps of dead-enders have worn thin a long time ago. You guys were just plain wrong about this invasion."
Quote:char: "It was not necessary; it wasn't even a good idea. You were warned by me and many others that it would worsen our position in the "war on terror" and cost the US in lives and treasure."
Quote:char: "But you beat the drums and marched off (metaphorically of course; it was never your butts on the line) behind the Dear Leader with an "R" on his chest, because that's what good little Republicans do."
Quote:char: "Well, it didn't work out so well for the country, did it?"
Quote:char: "(Though it did win you a couple of elections.) And rather than get behind a plan that will prevent more US deaths, you want to back Bush's double-down option because you think there's a tiny chance it might save your egos."
Quote:char: "That's not particularly admirable."
Quote:char: "If you're going to respond to this post, Iowan, could you confine yourself to Iraq rather than bringing in World War II and anything else you think is a sufficiently gaudy distraction?"
Quote:char: "I'm not going to follow you down any more rabbit-holes."
Feb 7 07 9:39 AM
Feb 7 07 5:18 PM
Quote:iowan15: "I understand quite well the point you were trying to make. After all, I'm an Ohio State Buckeyes fan. After the college football national championship game, I was the greatest coach you could fine. Me, and about a milion other Buckeye faithful. Your position is little more than warmed over Monday morning quarterbacking. On Sunday, the play caller is a genius when the play works and, on Monday, he's an idiot if it didn't. But you don' suggest a different strategy. You suggest pulling the team off the field."char: "This is a rather revealing rabbit-hole, so I'll wander down it a few yards. It shows that my analysis of your thought processes was on the money. If the Ohio State players were getting literally killed instead of just figuratively (and it was a pretty definitive butt-kicking), you bet your life I'd have pulled them off the field."
Quote:char: "You seem fixated on the W and L here, but there are larger purposes that escape your notice, such as casualties, and the broader struggle against the terrorists/Islamists, both of which are hurt by our Iraq occupation."
Quote:char: "Another error in your analogy is that I am not Monday morning quarterbacking at all. I was on the Mall protesting BEFORE this mistake was made. I'm not telling you that Bremer could have done this or that and won a championship; I'm saying that this incursion was doomed from the start and the sooner it is ended the better for the United States. Since I (and many others) was right when I advised not invading, and Bush was spectacularly wrong, it seems we have the wrong "coach" in any case."
Quote:iowan15: "OK. So no US deaths are justified. So the troops should be out of Iraq tomorrow since any delay will likely mean more unjustified deaths."char: "That would be fine with me. In practice, the military guys in here will tell us that a disengagement will take a few months for logistical and security reasons."
Quote:iowan15: "And what was the intelligent way to 'keep Vietnam divided'?"char: "There was none. The intelligent way to prevent the spread of Communism in SE Asia would have been to recognize that the Viet Minh were the legitimate national force, and not to have jumped in to salvage part of France's empire."
Quote:iowan15: "What was the intelligent way to bring about regime change in Iraq?"char: "We were doing what we reasonably could. Saddam was not going to be unseated that way, but we have all seen what happened after our ill-considered invasion, have we not?"
Quote:char: "In the meantime, we could have used our might and leverage to advance the cause of democracy in ways that didn't kill a whole bunch of people, including Americans."
Quote:char: "No trophies would have been involved, though, so I don't expect you to have paid much attention to those opportunities."
Quote:iowan15: "What was the intelligent way to proceed with the war on terror (I'm making perhaps an unwarranted assumption that you favor a war on terror)?"char: "The struggle against these religious fanatics is primarily a police matter, now that the only state that overtly supported them is gone. Iraq obviously had nothing to do with the war on terror except to make our position in it much worse."
Quote:char: "We needed to press Egypt, Saudi Arabia (those of us in the reality-based community know that the 9/11 hijackers came primarily from those countries and none came from Iraq), Pakistan, and our other "allies" to loosen up and allow a faster progression towards democracy."
Quote:char: "We needed to continue the police and intelligence work that has been capturing significant numbers of terrorists"
Quote:char: "(unfortunately, Iraq has aided the recruitment of too many more to keep up with)."
Quote:char: "We needed to be seen to be a responsible world power, and not step into the role that Osama bin Laden wrote for us by invading another Islamic country, this time without authorization from the world community or sufficient reasonable justification."
Quote:char: "We needed to commit more resources, military and financial, to the rebuilding of Afghanistan."
Quote:char: "And of course, we needed to lean on Musharraf to at least try to catch OBL."
Quote:char: "What we did not need was to waste tremendous resources to kill large numbers of Arabs and produce the images that al-Jazeera is delighted to beam into the homes of hundreds of millions a day. That, Iowan, was surpassingly stupid, as I told you before your Dear Leader did it."
Quote:iowan15: "Well, which is it, char? Did al-Qaeda lack the capacity and assets for further attacks, or is it clear that they would continue their attacks?"char: "I think they lacked the capacity then, but with a nation at their disposal, they may very well have regained it. If you gave this any thought, I believe you would have reached the same conclusion."
Quote:iowan15: "Which intelligence organizations, specifically, denied that Iraq had WMDs?"char: "The only one that was actually there, the inspectors, were telling us that they'd found nothing and needed a few more weeks to confirm that there was nothing. You know this."
Quote:char: "You just didn't believe them, but you were wrong. Even by Powell's speech at the UN the WMD fiction was unravelling. Hardly anyone outside the US believed him, because their own intelligence agencies were telling them that Powell was lying. As it turns out, he was."
Quote:iowan15: "Contain him militarily?"char: "We were containing him militarily, at no loss of life to us. Don't you remember?"
Quote:iowan15: "But if we had succeeded, then we would have been just plain right about the invasaion. Yes, I understand your calculus, char. Victory means that the cause was worthy and defeat means the cause wasn't worthy. Got it."char: "I'm pretty sure you are not as stupid as you are pretending to be."
Quote:char: "When you pick an unnecessary fight and you lose, that was a really dumb mistake. Your mistake."
Quote:iowan15: "That remains to be seen."char: "The losses in men, honor, prestige, treasure, and influence are so great that it is difficult to imagine any result that could justify them now."
Quote:iowan15: "To which 'plan' do you refer, char? The plan for an immediate withdrawal? Hillary's plan to not set a timetable on withdrawal and to also set a timetable of January 2009 upon her inauguration? Or is it Obama's plan, to start withdrawing troops by this May and the withdrawal to be complete by March 2008? Or is it Feingold's plan to defund the whole shebang? Or is it the plan to pass a toothless resolution opposing the surge? Which of those plans will prevent more US deaths and how?"char: "Any plan that reduces the numbers of Americans fighting Iraqis is better than Bush's. I'm more concerned about moving in the right direction than the exact speed."
Quote:iowan15: "Neither is defeat [admirable]. But you don't seem to mind that."char: "It's all about the Ws and Ls to you, isn't it?"
Quote:char: "There are some things more important than bragging rights, but I've given up trying to explain that to you."
Quote:char: "I heard everything you're saying now in the 1960s and early 1970s, and all it was was a deluded rationalization for throwing more lives away. "Losing" in Vietnam turned out not to be half the disaster that the war itself was."
Quote:char: "This is not a football game."
Quote:char: "If it were, the coach should be fired for his performance and the athletic director fired for scheduling it."
Quote:char: "George H W Bush was not a particularly good President and made some big mistakes himself, but he at least knew better than to wade into Baghdad without a plan and without enough troops trusting that everything was going to turn out fine."
Quote:char: "We have to start using our brains here and try to figure out how to minimize the fallout from our mistake."
Quote:char: "Kidding yourself that it was not a mistake is just pathetic at this point."
Feb 7 07 6:24 PM
Feb 8 07 12:00 AM
Quote:char: "More Americans have died in Iraq than died in those 9/11 attacks, but being a Republican means never having to admit your mistakes."
Quote:char: "As for the dead Iraqis, you simply label them as the "enemy" and appear unconcerned. I thought that we were doing this for the Iraqis (seeing as how the WMD thing didn't work out for you), but never mind. I see that was about as true as the WMD charge."
Quote:char: "It shouldn't surprise me anymore, but I don't see how people who are convinced that potential enemies are intently watching Jane Fonda and me for encouragement can imagine that those same people don't get a little upset that we invaded an Arab, Muslim country, occupied it, and oversaw its descent into hell while blowing away a goodly number of its inhabitants."
Quote:char: "I suppose there must be advantages to just doing and thinking what you're told all the time, or you wouldn't do it. You should explain them to me sometime."
Feb 8 07 10:31 AM
Posts: 845
Feb 10 07 11:32 PM
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