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

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (119075)	11/10/2003 9:23:50 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"because if its strategic importance?" I believe that was the major factor.. We had plenty of reason to go into Iraq with the united Nations behind us and we wanted to go in their for strategic reasons... Bring some balance to the region..oil,, terror.. I wonder down the road if our air bases will leave Iraq? Didn't we establish or take over three air bases... never hear much about them or what is going on there if anything.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (119075)	11/11/2003 4:10:32 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

ST. The original post that started off this exchange was Jacob's assertion "They are now on to the next lie: "We are humanitarian imperialists, Bearing the White Man's Burden. That's why we did it."" And I said "Since well before the Iraq invasion, probably around Nov 2001, I thought this was a good reason for invading Iraq since I thought the US's and every one else's problem with Iraq was the nature of the Iraq regime." And then you write ", if you can show me why we do not invade so many other monsterous dictatorship and what made Iraqis so special to be worthy of our massive and very expensive "rescue" attempt, then you could win me over." And I gave a bunch of strategic, tactical and ethical reasons for going into Iraq as opposed to say, Iran or N Korea. They are all based on your country's interests as the government has defined them since 9/11 particularly referencing the M East. And you replied, "Now if we may come back to the issue for a minute, am I reading you correctly that we invaded Iraq to free its people from Saddam and that we chose Iraq from all the other brutal dictatorships because if its strategic importance? If this is the case, then I'd like to point out for such reasoning to be acceptable, we should have an anti-dictatorship policy and choose our battles selectively amongst them." Why? You've got a Promote-Democracy-in-the-Middle-East [PDITME] policy. Your president has been advocating it for over a year (it's part of drain the swamp). The Hussein regime was actively anti-democratic and an enemy causing the US a lot of difficulty. (I like PDITME because it promotes modernity). BUT, personally, I've always thought invading Iraq and putting down the Hussein regime is totally justifiable on humanitarian grounds, alone. This reason,(which Bush has always mentioned before and after the removal of the regime), also coincides with lots of other good reasons which are in US interests and the interests of lots of other modern countries. There seems to be a requirement on the part of some people who post here that there be only one reason to attack the Hussein regime. There were lots of reasons but the primary one was always the nature of the regime: That's why a million Iraqis were killed and another 3 million exiled and the constant reign of terror continued. That's why the WMDs were an issue. That's why the US could never detach itself from the aftermath of the Gulf war, had to remain in Saudi Arabia, had to enforce sanctions and no fly zones, and watch its soft power in the ME deteriorate.