It is you who excused Saddam's murders and tried to prevent the police from arresting the murderer. Maybe it's you who doesn't like Iraqis. — Paul Edwards

This is the third straw man you've raised and the first one I'm reacting to. You should respond to what I say not to things you make up.

This is the third straw man you've raised and the first one I'm reacting to. You should respond to what I say not to things you make up. — Benkei

Sorry, I don't see any straw man. If you opposed the liberation of Iraq, it meant that you wanted to see a criminal like Saddam remain in power to continue his crimes against humanity. That is the consequences of your action. Look up "consequentialism".

That is a straw man and not the first. Just stop it. You're not going to shame me into a different position by pretending I'm all for Saddam killing people.

Just like I think the police should adhere to rules regardless of the victim or perpetrator, so is it here. It's a pathetic argument to make that I'm therefore in favour of murderers continuing to murder innocents.

Just like I think the police should adhere to rules regardless of the victim, so is it here

As I said before in this thread, if you believe there is a "rule" that protects Saddam's "right" to rape women and mutilate men, then you should:

1. Ignore that rule for now.
2. Do your best to get that rule changed.

I believe this to be a sound philosophical position. But I'm here to open myself up to the free marketplace of ideas.

Your reply has exactly zero bearing on my previous post. Your rule doesn't apply because I'm not saying there's a rule protecting Saddam, I'm saying there are rules to exercising force by others.

The prohibition on you personally to not attack me is not a rule to protect me so I can murder people.

Instead of replying to me, why don't you have a good hard think on why that is and come back to me tomorrow why you think that is the way it is.

I am curious at what mental blocks exist that prevent people from understanding that criminals need to be brought to justice, and whether there is a combination of words that can persuade them of this. Or whether it really does require goons knocking on their door before they return to reality. — Paul Edwards

The threat seems too distant to many folks for them to take it seriously. If Saddam had taken over Saudi Arabia and then cut off the oil, that probably would have snapped some out of their delusions. Or, if Trump were to win again, and then become a dictator. Something like that. Maybe not goons knocking on their door, but something that makes it more personal and immediate to them.

Some combination of words? Probably not.

Yeah, it must be mental blocks causing people to disagree. :brow:

The threat seems too distant to many folks for them to take it seriously. — Hippyhead

Even without the threat that Saddam posed, there was the fact that he was raping and mutilating Iraqis. I don't know how anyone can look at video of Saddam's goons chopping out someone's tongue and not be spurred into action. At the very least the anti-war should be saying "Well I disapprove of the war, but I am ELATED that Saddam is no longer able to rape and mutilate and torture and murder the Iraqi people - I jumped for joy when Saddam's statue fell and the Iraqi people were free".

It may just be simple racism. They may think that Arabs are just a bunch of animals who do cruel things to each other and that's just the nature of the beast. That's why there were no shortage of people who said that the Arabs couldn't handle democracy and it was a fool's errand to bring them democracy.

Can you also answer Benkei's message? He wants me to wait until tomorrow before I explain that if he is raping someone I will kill him regardless of any rules preventing me from doing so. If I can get away with it, anyway. If I can't get away with it because his name is Uday and I'm an Iraqi citizen I will instead wait for a US liberation and support that.

why didn't you play off one fascist against another to get the end result, — Paul Edwards

Because, as I've explained, I'm not a psychopath. You might get off on hundreds of thousands of innocent people dying to enable America to control Iraqi oil, but I cannot.

And you seem to be policing America, despite America being a sovereign nation — Paul Edwards

Are you seriously equating criticising a country for war crimes with invading a country illegally, bombing seven shades of shit out of it, bombing hospitals, weddings, funerals and schools, and torturing prisoners? There are very few intelligent right-wingers, I suppose.

Yes, it is perfectly clear. The US et al waged a war of liberation. They successfully managed to convert a dictatorship into a democracy, something that racists/religious bigots said was impossible.

They took nothing, they asked for nothing, and they left. It was as pure as a war of liberation can be.

Tosh.. I don't know how anyone could deceive themselves so thoroughly and so refuse to face the facts. .

But no point in arguing. I'll let you get on with your arrogant assault on the rest of the world..

I happen to think we should invade the USA to impose regime change, and you seem to think it would be fine to do this. So my army has support on the ground.

If the Iraq invasion had been an honest enterprise there would have been no need to lie and cheat and invent fake reasons for it. Obviously.

Yeah, it must be mental blocks causing people to disagree — Benkei

If Saddam took over the house next to yours and you started hearing screaming coming from inside...

You'd call the police, knowing in advance that men with guns would come and shooting may occur.

Mental blocks. Inability to use common sense. Prioritizing fantasy moral superiority poses over the welfare of victims. Partisan politics.

Can you also answer Benkei's message — Paul Edwards

Not worth the bother. Like I said, imho, words and reason are insufficient for this task.

I think such an overthrow of an Australian dictatorship would be relatively simple and painless. What made the middle-eastern wars so difficult was the networks of insurgents and non-state actors who did not rely on an identifiable central structure that could simply be attacked by the US. If a country like Australia set up a dictatorship in Canberra then the US could just swoop in and take them out and there are no militia groups, no foreign parties like Al-Queda attacking stationed troops. The Australian dictatorship would capitulate, the Australian army would cease hostilities and the war would be over very quickly.

That's why the US found it so easy to install democracies in West Germany and Japan but then found Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan a seemingly endlessly struggle. Iran would not be different, there would be a near-endless post-war guerilla offensive by non-state actors and the end result would almost certainly be worse for Iranians than what they have right now. Just like we saw in Vietnam and Iraq, decades-long wars which the US seems doomed to lose, if not just due to attrition and public opinion.

Honestly, even North Korea would be so much easier than Iran to invade, because the N. Korean army might just cease hostilities after the central government capitulates and who's going to continue the fight? All the US can do to Iran is turn an advanced economy into rubble, there's no option of an easy invasion and occupation.

You can't 'invade' a democratic nation open to all- rather, that'd be stupid. Unnecessary.

To be fair, historically, the largest genocides of unique peoples have always been perpetrated by, themselves. As can be shown in the region of the world we're talking about. Sunni vs. Shiite, I believe.

If the Iraq invasion had been an honest enterprise there would have been no need to lie and cheat and invent fake reasons for it. — FrancisRay

People such as yourself were that reason. Twenty years later, Saddam gone, his psychopathic sons dead, Iraq free, torture chambers gone, no WMD arms race with Iran, no more Iraqi invasion of it's neighbors, threat to the world's oil supply removed, US troops almost home, and you STILL don't get it.

Had you had your way, Saddam and his sons would still be attaching jumper cables to the genitals of anyone who got in their way. The entire Middle East would probably now be engaged in a frantic nuclear arms race.

The hyper sloppy logic of the war's critics is that they never compare the invasion to what the reality would have been without the invasion. Instead, they compare the invasion to some imaginary mythical vision of peace which had never existed in Saddam's Iraq. A million killed in the war with Iran. Peace????

Without the invasion, the containment strategy would have inevitably failed and once again Saddam would have been up to some trouble that likely would have made an invasion necessary at some point anyway.

Anyway, I'm being stupid to bother typing this because those who didn't get it then will never get it.

Had you had your way, Saddam and his sons would still be attaching jumper cables to the genitals of anyone who got in their way. — Hippyhead

Like Abu Ghraib? No, Americans just did that for kicks.

If Australia had a cruel dictator, I think 99% of Australians would be against him too. I projected Australia onto Iraq. — Paul Edwards

Just think about why that projection is difficult:

- British conquered the area of Iraq in WW1 from the Ottoman Empire and it's the British who set up present Iraq, which had divisions to Shias and Sunnis and also ethnic division including Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians, Yazidis, Shabakis, Armenians, Mandaeans, Circassians, Sabians and Kawliya put together in a totally arbitrary way. Iraq had it's first elections in 1925, but free elections (that we take as granted in a genuine democracy) basically happened in January 2005.

- The Australian continent was colonized solely by the British first by penal colonies bringing with them British institutions (jurisdiction, politics, etc.) and European style government since 1788. Hence Australia has a long history of democracy. Universal male suffrage Australia has had since 1850's and womens suffrage in 1903.

Just stop and think of the totality of the difference between the two countries and in the history of law and democracy. You are simply totally disregarding how much difference there is and this has an enormous effect on how politics is managed in these two countries.

Note that I saw an Iraqi opinion poll where Saddam was only viewed favorably by 5% of the population. That shows that 5% with automatic weapons are able to suppress 95%. I believed, and still believe, that with automatic weapons and a properly organized security force, it is possible to subjugate 99% of the population. — Paul Edwards

And ask yourself, why is that?

It really would very naive to think that it's just threat of violence. It simply isn't. Yes, Saddam Hussein built his system based on fear and intimidation, just like Stalin, BUT there is a huge issue you totally forget. Just how did his terror apparatus stay intact? With Stalin he was a firm believer in communism and so were those NKVD troops that did the purges. In Hussein's case, as he was a genuine thug, it is the totally broken character of Iraq itself that truly gave him the power. Iraq was simply ungovernable before. The (British made) monarchy couldn't handle it. The Kurdish uprising against Iraq had flare up in 1918 right continued ALL THE TIME during Iraq being independent. And Husseins worst atrocities happened in the Al Anfal campaign against the Kurds. The basic fact is that this artificial British creation called Iraq has been so ungovernable, that the outcome has been that a brutal dictator kept it from falling apart.

Dictatorship don't happen from out the blue. There is a reason why the political process falls into the level of organized crime. Those reasons are found in the society and it's history.

Then just to waltz in, take control of a country through a military occupation and demand a highly function democracy where there hasn't been any, when the various population groups have suffered genocide done by the others and want their own country and independence, is simply condescending Western hubris that basically is totally indifferent to the reality in the country. It is simply just smug self posturing likely to hide other objectives. Or hubris. Democracy is not an app you can start using: there are demands that a society needs to have starting from social cohesion and national unity.

The entire Middle East would probably now be engaged in a frantic nuclear arms race.

The hyper sloppy logic of the war's critics is that they never compare the invasion to what the reality would have been without the invasion. — Hippyhead

Actually, we know now that Operation Desert Fox in 1998 destroyed the last remnants of Saddam Hussein's WMD projects. The real threat of Hussein getting a nuclear weapon was before the invasion of Kuwait and Desert Storm. Then in 1998 it was just a sham that Hussein himself kept up for appearances. Afterwards, totally nonexistent. And actually the UN observers noted this already before the 2003, but who would listen to them. Nope, it was "yellow cake from Niger".

Likely the Arab Spring would have hit hard a Saddam's Iraq and likely it would have gone the way of Syria/Libya.

Yet what you are forgetting that the US would be in a total different light in the Arab world. We simply would have had the media concentrating on the war in Afghanistan. Even if it was Gore that had become President, the US surely would have gone there and got it's next Vietnam.

If Saddam moved in next door to you and you started to hear screams coming from the house, would you call the police or not? It's a yes or no question, because you would either pick up the phone and dial 911, or you would sit there listening to the screams. One, or the other. No amount of sophisticated fancy talk liberates us from the yes/no nature of that choice.

If anyone wishes to make a case that all parties would have been better off without the invasion, ok, make that case. But please don't compare the invasion to peace, because there was no peace in Iraq to be preserved. If someone wishes to make the case against the invasion they are required to compare one list of horrors to another list of horrors.

It could be argued, and was argued, that the real threat to the region is Iran, because of it's larger size and fundamentalist ideology. If this judgement is made, then one could construct an argument that Saddam should have been left in power as a check on Iran. You know, instead of us fighting the psychopaths, let them fight each other.

We did try this strategy, but it so bankrupted Saddam that he was forced to make a grab for Kuwait to restore his bank balance. And so the problem was just moved from one box to another.

We could have kicked Saddam out of Kuwait and left it at that. And now we'd be watching a nuclear arms race spread across the region. Anyone here wish to vote for that?

What's interesting is that while Bush gets slammed for invading Iraq, nobody seems to mind that Obama didn't invade Sryia right at the beginning of the Syrian civil war, a decisive act which might have saved 400,000 Syrians from the carnage which was about to unfold there.

Bush invades Iraq, improving the situation.

Obama does nothing in Syria, opening the door to chaos.

If Saddam moved in next door to you and you started to hear screams coming from the house, would you call the police or not? It's a yes or no question, because you would either pick up the phone and dial 911, or you would sit there listening to the screams. One, or the other. No amount of sophisticated fancy talk liberates us from the yes/no nature of that choice. — Hippyhead

Sorry, but there simply is no fucking 911 to call for a police in this World when it comes to sovereign states. It's anarchy out their.

Bush invades Iraq, improving the situation. — Hippyhead

Starts a war that in the end helps Iran.

Obama does nothing in Syria, opening the door to chaos. — Hippyhead

Does not intervene in an ongoing civil war.

Spot any difference?

You can't 'invade' a democratic nation open to all- rather, that'd be stupid. Unnecessary.


It seem very necessary to me and it's been done many times.

The idea that the USA is a democracy is a game of words. It looks like a dictatorship to me.

Besides, as Churchill noted, democracy is the just the least worst form of government. It is not even always appropriate to the situation, as should be obvious.

If you note the supporters of war here you'll note they're not considering all the factors but just pushing an ideology.

The real threat of Hussein getting a nuclear weapon was before the invasion of Kuwait and Desert Storm. — ssu

The real threat of Saddam getting a nuclear weapon was his living existence. The Iranians are inching right up to the edge of having nukes. What Saddam would do in response is utterly predictable. And then everyone in the region would want their own nukes. A nuclear war in the Middle East could erase the entire region off the map in literally just a few minutes, and could quite credibly suck all the major powers in to a Biblical scale end times scenario.

That could still happen some day, but we can thank George Bush for the fact that it's not happening now.

And in case anyone might be wondering, I'm a liberal Democrat. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson. Liberal Democrats used to understand such things.

Sorry, but there simply is no fucking 911 to call for a police in this World when it comes to sovereign states. — ssu

I knew you'd dodge the question. They always do.

Anyway, I'm being stupid to bother typing this because those who didn't get it then will never get it.

I'm surprised to find we disagree on this. I suspect it's very difficult for you guys over there to see the wood for the trees, so powerful is the 24/7 political propaganda. At least you might ask yourself why Britain was about the only country to support Bush's war. Why not more?

We must be careful here. I do not want to be rude to an entire nation, but I wonder if you realise the vast extent of the disgust for US foreign policy.

If you note the supporters of war here you'll note they're not considering all the factors but just pushing an ideology. — FrancisRay

Saddam just moved in next door to you. Will you be calling the police, or listening to the screams?

Oh well. I must retire from the forum I think. I cannot sit and listen to a bunch of people trying to justify the the arrogance of their behaviour and lack of comprehension of the world.

America Frst, and the devil take the rest.

I'm surprised to find we disagree on this. I suspect it's very difficult for you guys over there to see the wood for the trees, so powerful is the 24/7 political propaganda. At least you might ask yourself why Britain was about the only country to support Bush's war. Why not more? — FrancisRay

They're all happy to accept our help when it's their head on the psychopath's chopping block. I don't recall resistance to the invasion of Normandy by our British and French friends.

1) We saved your ass in WWI

2) Then we saved it again in WWII

3) Then we risked nuclear war on the American homeland to save you from being over run by Russian tanks.

The entire 20th century spent saving Europeans from their own problems.

And in return you lecture us from a position of imaginary moral superiority when we try to save somebody other than you.

The Brits stood with us in the war against Iraq because the Brits are honorable grateful people who have brains. As for the rest, no comment.

Saddam just moved in next door to you. Will you be calling the police, or listening to the screams?

This is an irrelevant question, as you must surely be aware.

The UK is in danger of having to do a trade deal with the US, and everybody I know is terrified of the possible consequences. We want nothing to do with your constant warmongering, military and political interference or approach to life.





. .

Oh well. I must retire from the forum I think — FrancisRay

Well ok, that's one way to dodge the question. Why not just retire from the thread though? I enjoy your insights on other topics and look forward to more.

This is an irrelevant question, as you must surely be aware — FrancisRay

So I take your point to be that if Saddam was torturing your family we should not intervene. Ok, duly noted.