Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aladin who wrote (116398)	10/8/2003 10:30:57 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi John Cavanaugh; Re: "Your equivalency of Vietnam and either Lebanon or Somolia is strange. We lost 58,000 men in Vietnam and never fully supported their mission. Tons of mistakes were made - on all sides. Lebanon was a huge mistake, but certainly not in immediate casualties. In Mogadishu 18 men died supporting a humanitarian mission." Our casualties in Lebanon and Somalia were low because WE PULLED OUT BEFORE WE GOT TRAPPED IN THE QUAGMIRE. Eighteen is a hell of a lot smaller than 58,000. It's better to lose a war with 18 deaths than to lose it with 58,000. It's a matter of the simple expedient of cutting your losses. Any stock trader should know that the stocks that kill your portfolio are the ones that you keep even though they continue to get worse. My objective in arguing against staying in Iraq is to obviate the necessity of digging another hole in the ground where people go to weep over the wasted deaths of thousands of young men: nps.gov There is no "Lebanon Veteran's Memorial", or "Somalia Veteran's Memorial", because the presidents at the time wisely realized that there wasn't a reason to keep sending targets to those countries. Part of the reason for this is that neither Lebanon nor Somalia has significant oil reserves, nor was there a realistic threat of a "domino theory" to scare the public. Bush's attack on Iraq was largely due to the oil reserves he expected to free from it, but even that small advantage has turned into a mirage. Re: "Comparing 18 deaths to 58,000 begs the question - would you ever go to war?" I'm on record all over SI as supporting the Afghanistan war. The differences between that and Iraq include the following: (a) The US had a history of helping the Afghans (fight the USSR), but a history of bombing the Iraqis. Consequently, we could expect the Afghans, on average, to help us rather than shoot at us. (b) With Afghanistan, we had the assistance of all of its neighbors. The world community was on our side, and this makes our actions more legitimate, not only in the eyes of the world community, but also in the eyes that matter, as far as our troops getting shot at, that of the Afghans. (c) With Afghanistan we were able to have the bulk of the fighting done by the Northern Alliance, who were Afghans. This eliminated most of the anti-foreigner reaction that we have received in Iraq. It also reduced the number of US troops involved, and played to the strong points of the US military (air power) rather than to its weak points (pacification). (d) Since there was an Afghan government already there for us to support, there was no need for our troops to become the police force of Afghanistan. Instead, the Northern Alliance did the job for us. In Iraq, by contrast, our soldiers are having to police the country. (e) The Iraqi Arabs were very angry that the US supported Israel in its actions against the Palestinian Arabs. By contrast, there was no US client state near Afghanistan that was killing Afghans and forcing them to live as second class citizens. There are plenty of people who are so against war that there is no war that they would ever support. I am not one of them. Go back and look at US military officers' statements on Afghanistan and Iraq. You will find almost no statements against our going into assist the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. But there are oodles of warnings, complaints and now I-told-ya-sos about Iraq. Bush's problem is not that the peaceniks aren't supporting him in Iraq. His problem is that the right wingers like me, who have never voted for a Democrat, are against him because of his incredible error in Iraq. -- Carl