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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (12081)	2/23/2003 5:15:59 PM
From: HG	Respond to of 25898

<<How many times have we heard the inevitable repeated story of countless thousands of women , children and soldiers ...and the COMPLETE DESTRUCTION OF IRAQ refered to on this board ? Complete destruction will be wrought - by the air force. Kinda like last time. Once that is done, the ground troops can just waltz in and it'll be over soon. IMO of course. <<though there will be some initial shock&awe in certain areas , but mostly avoided and removed from the cities.(hopefully). Well...knowing Saddam, its not hard to guess that the targets will be located in civilian populations...and so we can hope all we want to. There will be terrible devastation - IMO. And the shorter the allowed window of air assault, the more the devastation. <<the resistance encountered within the cities themselves , though I feel strongly as you that this is probably not going to materialize in much force and actual opposition given the willingness (imo) of the Iraqis to be liberated.>> It depends on how you define liberation. I personally don't think we are liberating them. We didn't liberate the Soviets from the evils of Communism - we just pushed them deeper into the mire. We didn't liberate the Afghanis from extremism - we left them pretty much in the lurch and we won't be liberating the Iraqis from their plight. We'll just win the war. And we'll come home, leaving an army base there. And a govt that consents to being our political yes-man...... What liberation do you see for an average Iraqi? <<All any Iraqi has to do is look across the borders to Kuwait and it's security , plus the quickly refound prosperity there with our presence to convince them we are not "Evil". This could also be theirs...>> Hard to agree completely. We never occupied Kuwait. But we'll occupy Iraq. We never divided up and took their oilfields - there were existing 'owners' of the Kuwaiti kingdom. But with Iraq we're changing the political dynamics of the entire region. We'll win the war, and the spoils of the war as well. But I doubt if an Iraqi will benefit from being 'liberated' (if you insist on using that term), except that he'll be rid of Saddam. But the instability will produce larger problems for an average person. Like it did in Kashmir and Afghanistan. IMHO, of course. << Any civilian collateral damage will be avoided at all costs , this we know, and pray is so. I wish i believed you. I know American media was given a very santised version of destruction in Iraq during the Gulf war coz i used to get CNN in Dubai. And though the entire ME was against Iraq at the time and had nothing to gain by highlighting the destruction of Iraq and the plight of peole...well...it was shown to be pretty bad nonetheless. The guided missiles were really not so guided after all. And the targets were really not military targets a lot of times. <<No matter what Bush does , or how guided or misguided he will not win any popularity contests ever abroad because of the richness of the classic stereotype he represents , but real test will come in the aftermath and how well we execute all facets of the reconstruction.>> Whenever i am in a conflict, I tend to freeze out the opposing personality, and concentrate of making the problem go away. Sometimes to my dismay, my proposed solution makes the other person look good, and I hate that, but then i think of what my goal is - is it to make the other person look bad at any cost, or is to resolve my problem. The pespective helps me a lot and would do Bush a lot of good. The only times I have failed in finding a decent resolution is when i let my feelings for the person (good or bad) dictate my strategy. If Bush stops focussing on Saddam and focusses on the problem of disarming him, or even liberating the Iraqis, there are millions of solutions that surface even in my dumb mind. By portraying Saddam as evil that has to be eradicated, we have lost sight of the actual problem - which is terrorism. The truth is, terrorism grow leaps and bounds...IMO, of course and....well...I must warn you I'm not a Harvard graduate. <smile> <<<I think in that area there is as strong a determination to succeed as the very quick neutralizing of the military of Saddam's rule . That will be one of our wildCards , plus cheaper oil worldwide that some believe will be the case with Iraq's return to the world scene as an oil producer and some newly found prosperity after reconstruction. Some will continue to rant and rail. That's freedom of speech of course.>>> You have to ask yourself, did we succeed in bringing democracy and freedom of speech to Iran? <smile> <<<Hard to argue with prosperity >>> Prosperity ? For whom? The average Iraqi's. Forget it. Their lives will be changed for the worse. DO you think Afghani's are any more prosper now than they were under Taliban? The news reports are about a small minority but are assumed to be true for the entire population. I have friends in Kashmir for who life goes on as if nothing were happening there - except that they pay the bad guys off on a monthly basis. Other than that, the stuff in the news is just a piece of statistics for them. Normal people are not affected by political extremes. In fact I remember an occasion when I was visiting my family in Kashmir. We were at a dinner hosted by a friend. A loud explosion occured somewhere...and I freaked out. The lady casually said "Oh it must be a bomb going off.....would you like a little more Achar Gosht? I specially made it for you." I lived in Dubai for 9 years, and we talk about human rights violations and stuff in ME...but neither me nor any of my thousands of friends was ever affected. But yes, we heard there were people who were affected. And thats here too, but really, how many Rodney Kings do you have in US. And does that need foreign intervention? An average Iraqi is probably indifferent to all the politics. They want security, from bombs, and food and hospitals for their family. Thats all that matters to them. They're at the lowermost rung of the Maslows triangle, political freedom most don't care about. <<<will be emasculated even with martyrdom in the end. Young Arab and muslim boys will still be sporting Bin Laden tee-shirts in decades to come , as with Che>>> Yes. <<<Busloads of Kuwaiti kids drive by some of our installations and always are waving to the troops there>>>. Ahh yes, I remember waving at the motorcade that carried Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir for Simla Agreement. I even smile and say hello to my awful neighbor when i pass him. And again, lets remember that the scene with Kuwait was totally different from that we have with Iraq, and its best that we remain aware of the differences.... Oh well...we'll chug along...and live thru it all. I suppose it could have been worse....