Hi American Spirit; Re: "Iraq is not WWII. We are the dominant military power."
(1) The problem is not with Iraq, the problem is with the rest of the world. If the whole world consisted of just the US and Iraq we could crush them easily in a few days time. Even with them halfway across the globe we could not be stopped. This is a fact of military power, but it is not the whole story. The problem with this sort of analysis is that it ignores the other nations in the world. You might as well argue that since Germany was so much bigger than Poland, their invasion would not cause them any difficulty, or that the Austrian Empire would surely not have a problem taking on the tiny state of Serbia. The fact is that Germany was destroyed in WW2 and Austria was destroyed in WW1 despite their having plenty of preponderance of military force over the nations they attacked.
(2) The US is accounts for much less of the percentage of total world economic power now than it did at the end of WW2. If you doubt this, I suppose I could dig up some links. I would guess that our percentage of world military power is also down, unless we're significantly more militarized than average.
Re: "We DO have some valid reasons, especially when they pull the UN inspectors manoevre and Saddam, doesn't let them in."
If our excuse is the UN inspectors, then we should let the UN handle the niceties of declaring our cause just and moral. There's no rush. Iraq is not a danger to us. Iraq is not even an Islamofascist nation like Afghanistan was, but instead is merely a fascist one.
Iraq is not even a long term risk to the security of the United States. Iraq is many thousands of miles away from the United States. Iraq is a risk to the security of nations in that region, but it is Iraq's neighbors that have been telling us not to invade it. Don't you agree that Iraq's neighbors should have to bear most of the burden of killing enough of Iraq's young men to change their government? What we are talking about here is killing a lot of people. These are regular Iraqi conscripts, boys who work on cars, ogle pretty ladies, and enjoy Coca Cola. If we decide to kill them, don't you think we should get assistance from Iraq's neighbors, who are the only ones that are really in danger? And why would we trust our own opinions over those of the countries that are neighbors of Iraq? Don't you agree that the countries that are neighbors of Iraq should have more of a say on the fate of all those kids then a country like the US that is many thousands of miles away?
Re: "Without his honey-pot he's just a tin-pot dictator hated by most of his people (I assume)." Your assumption disagrees with almost all of the history of the human race. For example, Hitler was deeply loved by his people all during WW2. If we attack Iraq, the Iraqi people will look at the weapons flying around and they will come to the same conclusion that enemy civilians always come to in war, that the people dropping bombs on them are complete and total barbarians. No one has ever ever ever loved someone who was dropping bombs on them, except if they were dropping bombs in support of their own fight on the ground, and even then friendly fire is hated. Since there is no civil war in Iraq, there is no one to love us for dropping bombs on Iraq.
Let me try to get you to see it from the perspective of someone who is looking up at the falling bombs. You don't like Saddam. Every now and then someone gets arrested by the secret police. But you day to day life is fine, provided you don't say stupid things in public. You make a living. Each night you make love to your wife. Your children play with the children from across the street. But now bombs are dropping on military targets. You know that the Americans are good, but every now and then bombs miss and destroy civilian stuff. And besides, your nephew was drafted and you know that he's operating an anti-aircraft battery a few miles outside of town. Every time a bomb flash goes off you wonder if your nephew is still alive. Will he come back like that boy with no legs you saw the other day? At night, when the bombs drop, you huddle in fear in your basement. Will your house get hit by a stray bomb and leave you to be dug up like those people in the photograph in the newspaper? Saddam's press is showing pictures of housing and civilians killed by American bombs. Why did the Americans choose to fight Saddam? If they'd waited long enough Saddam might have mellowed, and he'd eventually die anyway. Instead, your daughter is in tears because she is afraid that her boyfriend will be drafted into the military at the end of the school year. It hurts your heart to see your teenage children forced to grow old in front of your eyes.
Every night flashes light the sky. When bombs fall nearby the ground shakes horribly. You have to use your full attention to prevent yourself from wetting your pants. But your family is looking to you for protection. Protection from what? You know that in the last war the Americans targeted underground bunkers where families were staying. The newspapers made a big deal out of it. Should you leave the capital? But where would you go. The economy has sucked for 10 years and you don't have enough money to quit your job and live out in the country. You've seen women forced by poverty into prostitution. And why are you going through this hell? Because the Americans were afraid of Saddam getting "weapons of mass destruction"? What kind of weapons are the Americans dropping on you? Are they "weapons of energy destruction"? No, you know that the weapons that the Americans are dropping on you are also weapons of mass destruction. You can feel the ground shake. Why shouldn't it be your country that has the intercontinental bombers and nuclear missiles? Why does it have to be the Americans?
Yes, after bombing the crap out of the Iraqis, our proudly marching troops are going to be greeted by cheering crowds in Baghdad, glad that we got rid of Saddam Hussein. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LOL!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! What a fantasy. No, the world simply doesn't work that way. Our troops were not greeted by cheering crowds in Germany in 1945. The Japanese didn't give us a rousing welcome either. When people are at war they prefer to have strong leaders, even if those leaders are the idiots who got them into the war. I don't have an explanation for human nature, but this is the way it is.
When we went into Afghanistan we had the support of all of its neighbors, in addition to the support of the vast majority of the planet. Our troops were welcomed by joyous civilians, but not in the regions of the country where the Taliban had support. But there is no doubt that our troops were treated as liberators in most of the country. The same with the end of WW2. An ancestor of mine marched under the Arc of Triumph in Paris at the end of WW1 to the cheers of the Parisians. Our troops were treated as liberators by the Kuwaitis. Don't you agree that this is the right way to wage war? If Iraq causes problems with another neighbor like Kuwait then we have to go in and fix it. But until then, we don't have just cause.
War is an awful thing that should be avoided if at all possible. With the rest of the world taking up the opinion that we shouldn't do it, and with our own justification (the UN inspectors) dating back to the 20th century, we have no real justificiation for going into Iraq.
When Clinton didn't force Iraq to accept inspectors, the inspector issue disappeared as a legitimate excuse for deliberately killing large numbers of kids (i.e. 18-year old Iraqi conscriptcs.) If we were to use an excuse from so long ago we would be pursuing the same path of timeless excuses for revenge that has turned the Holy Land into a Hell Hole. It's okay to shoot a burglar in your house. As far as I'm concerned it's okay to shoot him as he runs down the street with your TV. But it's not okay to let him walk out of your house with your TV, wait several years, and then hunt him down and kill him. If it could wait for the authorities (i.e. UN) the first time, then it can wait after the 2 year delay.
-- Carl
P.S. The above description of life under a bombing campaign comes from my memory of reading several books by people who happened to be in a nation that was being heavily bombed. Most recently, there were civilians on the ground in Serbia who hated their government until the US began bombing the bejesus out of the city. For those interested, there's a passage in "The Forgotten Soldier" which is the autobiography of a Frenchman drafted into the SS, Granta #67 ("Women and Children first") with the diary of a civilian during the NATO bombing campaign:
Diary of a Political Idiot
Jasmina Tesanovic, Belgrade, March 1998-June 1999
granta.com
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