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General discussion

From liberation to terror - to a new war.

Apr 9, 2004 9:14PM PDT

The cheering got stuck in the throat. In American's as well as Iraqi's.
The evaluation can only be one: Failure!

Cities on fire all over the country. Bunches of corps on both sides and foreigners who are kidnapped.
The one year celebration could have been better.
The question must be asked: Was it worth the price?
The answer may differ depending on who is to answer the question.

The positive parts of it are as follow:
The tyrant Saddam Hussein is gone.
Freedom for the Iraqis to say what they want.
Political prisoners freed.
46 out of 55 suspected war criminals are caught.

The negative parts are:
At least 10,000 dead Iraqis, many of them civilians.
Over 600 American soldiers and soldiers from other countries are dead.
Thousands of people on both sides are marked for life.
There is an occupation by foreign countries.
The cost ? Over $100 billion

How many victims is the removal of a tyrant worth? A thousand? Ten thousands? A hundred thousands?
The answers may be very individual but the facts remain?

What do the parents of the three year old children say about the fact that their sons and daughters got American bullets in their heads during last weekend?s uproar in Sadr City, the suburb of Baghdad? What do the wives and girlfriends of the American guards that were shot and cut up by a crowd out of control say?

To them the war is not about numbers. How do we measure our happiness about the fact that Saddam is long gone, taking into account their grief?
Where the statue of Saddam was torn down a year ago, are pictures of the Shiite priest Muqtada Sadr. No pictures of the ?liberators? Bush and Blair. Neither Iraqis nor Americans thought about replacing Saddam with an Islamic totalitarian system like the one in Iran. Even so, the impression today is that anything may happen. Nobody has control!
The scenes of happiness that we saw a year ago were authentic in one single way; Saddam was gone! But the Iraqi people seemed to fear the future?

The anarchy spread immediately when the Americans looked at the lootings passively.
Since then things have gotten worse. Many Iraqis have changed from ?not willing to cooperate? to ?violent resistance?.
Even so there is a quiet majority who only want calm and security independently of who is in power. And even so, nobody dares showing their sympathy for the USA, if that exist?

The worst part is probably that the war was ?unnecessarily?. Iraq didn?t have any WMD! There weren?t any international terrorists! Not until Bush invited them?
So many serious mistakes. Such a bad research. Such ignorance for human lives.
One year is not much after a dictatorship of 35 years. It usually takes about 10 years to establish normality.
Even so, it must be something wrong about an occupation when the violence and the chaos are worse one year later?

Discussion is locked

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What made me think that ...
Apr 12, 2004 12:20AM PDT

... was the listing of statistics. A familiar format from many websites.

A simple, yes, these are my words would have sufficed, but then you would have denied yourself the fun of creating more strife. I didn't try to make it about you. If you really want to talk about the subject, try answering my reply to the content.

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(NT) All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
Apr 10, 2004 9:53AM PDT
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That just about sums it all up nicely Clay all in one sentence
Apr 11, 2004 9:13AM PDT

We have two choices:
1. Let the terrorists rule the roost in Iraq
2. Continue on the present path and smash the terrorists, and bring a peaceful government to Iraq.

Well number 2 gets it hands down for me.

The last thing the terrorists want is a peaceful place in Iraq. The idea may well catch on with all the other arabian states, and then where will the terrorists get any support.

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Re:From liberation to terror - to a new war.
Apr 11, 2004 1:01AM PDT

Even so, it must be something wrong about an occupation when the violence and the chaos are worse one year later?

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Must be something wrong if they are worse 10 years after too. Look at South Africa Charlie. By your argument, things were better under Saddam. They were also by almost any measure better under Apartheid (for blacks and whites alike). So I guess you advocate we abandon any assistance to South Africa and reinstitute Apartheid. After all, we had no right to impose our values on them now did we?

How about Kosovo and Bosnia? Hardly stable now 6 and 9 years later despite the presence of the peace keeping troops.

Haiti?

Pray tell, what is the Great Thunnell's magic pill for world peace?

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I agree with certain things sometimes but never usually all ...
Apr 11, 2004 3:50AM PDT

but can't help both thinking and repeating that the outcome might have been very different if more thought had gone into the outcome and aftermath beforehand.

If there was perceived to be an immediate threat at the time, then "at the time" is a misnomer since it takes many months to put the military machine together to mount such an operation - and surely within those many months, more thought should have been given to the prospective follow-on governing power and cultural reactionary after-effect.

It is not cut and dried IMO whether the war was correct - even with hindsight - and remembering that we Brits are the major coallition party with the US, it is more than an academic question over here too.

At this point, I have to agree with Dave that there are Shades of Grey. (Though PS to Dave: decidedly not in the same context.)

Regards
Mo