Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "And apparently neither was Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, right?"
No, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan were involved with Al Qaeda. But Iraq is neither Saudi Arabia nor Afghanistan, LOL.
Re: "These guys just came out of the blue from nowhere, right?. Popped up on a whim with no outside influence? Popped up on a whim with no outside influence?"
They sure as shit didn't come out of Iraq, LOL.
Re: "Having to contain Saddam and enforce sanctions against Iraq played no role, right?"
What you're doing here, from my point of view, is admitting that our lousy policy against the Iraqis (and in favor of the Israelis, etc.) eventually resulted in our getting cold cocked by Al Qaeda. You admit that sanctions were a mistake. Very good. For that, I commend you.
Yes, you're right. If we hadn't been enforcing sanctions against Iraq, the WTC attack would have been considerably less likely. But that's not an argument to invade Iraq, it's an argument that we should not have been in the Middle East.
Before the war, the argument in favor of sanctions made a lot more sense. But the war proved that Saddam was not a realistic threat, that he had little or no WMDs, and that an invasion would be incredibly expensive and result in an Iraq that was far more dangerous to our interests than it had been.
The danger that our sanctioning of Iraq held for us was not in Iraq, it was in the Arab world in general. Our sanctions convinced the Arab world that we were their enemy, and that they should support resistance against us. Now that we are in Iraq, their convictions are only further hardened, and their resistance against us will further grow. Still, you provide no solution to this problem, except your continuing to hope that the situation in Iraq improves. Any loser can hope, lose and then keep on hoping. What you haven't done is tell me when you're going to give up on your hopeless hopes.
Re: "And no.. my position has not changed on the use of US military forces. But I'm not in charge, now am I? I would not have US forces sitting out in the streets. I would find local power figures, tell them they are in charge until found unfit, or replaced in general elections, and let them set up their own police forces, answerable to coalition authorities if found corrupt or abusive."
You fail to see is that your policy was attempted, repeatedly and in many areas in Iraq. Hey, in some it worked and it's still being used. But those aren't, generally, the areas where we're taking casualties.
What happened is that some of the areas where we used "local power figures" etc., kept shooting us up. Your policy was attempted. It failed.
The Bush administration originally planned to use your idea, that's why they didn't plan to use our soldiers as policemen. The plan was to take over the government of Iraq after decapitating it, and then to run it as a democracy, LOL. The problem with the plan was that the Iraqi police didn't show for work. It wasn't a "liberation" it was an "occupation". In an occupation, you have to provide security, and that means patrolling the streets.
Like the Israelis, we've tried everything to pacify the Iraqis, and like the Israelis, everything has failed. It stuns me that you're unaware that your ideas were tested in Iraq. Here's a reminder:
Iraq: U.S. Forces Withdraw From Police Station In Al-Fallujah
Radio Free Europe, July 11, 2003
The chief at an Iraqi police station in Al-Fallujah says U.S. forces left the police station in the center of the restive western Iraqi city today.
Colonel Jalal Sabri said he had requested that U.S. forces using the station leave because the presence of the Americans was putting the lives of Iraqi police at risk. He said the police station had become a target for pro-Saddam Hussein fighters. Sabri said the U.S. forces left this morning.
A U.S. military press officer in Al-Fallujah, Specialist Scott Molina, said the U.S. was not pulling out of the city but was trying to give more control to Iraqi police.
Police in Al-Fallujah protested against the U.S. presence in the city yesterday, saying it was provoking violence.
rferl.org
And what was the result of our pulling out of Fallujah and letting the locals take charge? They declared that they had "liberated" Fallujah, and proceeded to attack our forces near the town. It's now January and we're still taking casualties around Fallujah.
It's like you think that you can wander into a bar (maybe the one in the first Star Wars movie), sucker punch one of the denizens, and then expect him to follow you in your footsteps, adoring you like a love-sick puppy.
You fool yourself (and no one else) when you claim that you are in possession of a tactic that would have pacified Iraq. Like your theories on how Vietnam was "winnable", your theories in Iraq simply ignore reality.
It's simply impossible to put the genie of "resistance" back in the bottle without killing boatloads of people (including a lot of our own). Impossible. And the Iraqi resistance began within hours of our crossing the border into the place. Like I told you before the war, the Iraqi military would be quickly defeated, but the Iraqi "civilians" would drive us out.
Your ideas for winning hearts and minds would have resulted in the Iraqi resistance concluding that they had, in fact, driven the US out of their cities. With that "victory", (and remember, we're talking about a people who believed that they won the war with us in 1991), they would have continued to harass our forces.
There is no way that they would have given up done what we wanted them to. We're (mostly) Christians. We eat weird food. We can't speak their language, or do with a funny accent. We're outsiders from across the planet. There's no way in HELL that they'll follow us anywhere that we don't force them to at the point of a gun.
-- Carl |
