Iraq

The Core RPGC Main Forum
21

Originally posted by Igatona
[b]Yes, he did not “say that”.

Riiiiiiight. [/b]

Fascinating how a story that agreed with your views that came from a “credible” source is considered valid, but when the same credible source makes a correction about a mistake, that is considered invalid?

And out of curiosity, if it turly is about oil then why didn’t we take out Saddam in '91 when he was on his knees? And why spend 150 billion on a conflict with a country that only generates 20 billion a year in oil revenue? We aren’t even going to get to see a dime of it, because Iraq is going to be selling the oil. Sounds like a pretty bad investment.

I do believe that this topic has been gone over countless times though, and I dunno if we wanna go over it again.

In World War II, we were defending ourselves after an unprovoked attack by Japan.

By carpet bombing Dresden?

Once again my point is simply that Bush is far from a war criminal.

22

The reason we didn’t go after Saddam in '91 was because the senior George Bush was afraid of losing the coalition of nations that supported the Gulf War. Many experts believe that Bush was planning on taking out Saddam during his second term, but was unable to because he lost the '92 election to Bill Clinton.

Unfortunately, political leaders are often forced to lie to the people to do something they feel will make the world a better place. The majority of the American public was opposed to U.S. entry in WWII before Pearl Harbor, even after the Fall of France. In that case, Franklin Roosevelt cut off oil shipments to Japan to provoke war, and intentionally did not act on information that Japan was planning to bomb Pearl Harbor. And he did these things after promising the American people over the past 2 years that he had no intention to enter America into WWII, when in fact that is exactly what he wanted to do. The Bush Administration lied to the public by telling us that Iraq, through their purported weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism, posed an imminent threat to the American homeland. However, the administration told these lies because they had other reasons, LOGICAL reasons, to invade Iraq. They had logical reasons to believe that invading Iraq would make the world a better place. Whether or not these reasons will prove true remains to be seen.

Arguing whether or not the Iraq invasion was ‘justified’ according to some set of international laws or ‘self-integrity’ or somesuch thing is a dead end. There are few morals when it comes to international politics, and what rules are followed are followed to preserve stability and consistency. The Iraq invasion will be justified or not justified when its consequences come to bear upon the people of Iraq and upon the international stage, and even then these consequences may be so complex that we will have trouble saying whether the Iraq invasion was justified, whether or not it was a good decision.

Bush should not be tried as a war criminal, because if he was, the number of current and past leaders who would then be liable to be labelled as war criminals would be staggering. Thomas Paxton is right about the bombing of Dresden; it served little strategic purpose other than to terrorize the German populace into submission.

23

The problem in 91 was also that if they took Bagdad, what then? From what I had been hearing , there were no plans whatsoever, nothing concrete anyway, to take over any potential issues and government and seeing what happened a few weeks ago, I think it would’ve been just as bad. However, I will say that it was shitty for the Americans to say “oh, revolt against saddam” to the Iraqi people and then leave em high and dry. That was fucking bad.

24

Originally posted by Sir Percival
More petrol for more sport-utility vehicles. Disgusting.
:enguard:

Especially considering the rate at which some cars deplete fuel.

25

“And why spend 150 billion on a conflict with a country that only generates 20 billion a year in oil revenue?”

Simple. The 150 billion is in taxpayer money, so you, I and everyone will be paying it. The profiteering, however, will benefit only a select few people. However, the war isn’t just about oil. It’s also about ideology (probably even more than about oil) and also, like Curtis keeps saying, about reshaping the Middle East. The war won’t benefit America as a country.

“We aren’t even going to get to see a dime of it, because Iraq is going to be selling the oil. Sounds like a pretty bad investment.”

Halliburton is making its millions, though, so it was a pretty bad investment for you, but a pretty good investment for some.

“By carpet bombing Dresden?”

No, by entering the war. You’re right that no side held a monopoly on war crimes even in that war, and there were doubtless some things that were poorly justified. In the current case, however, the very <i>creation</i> of the war was an unjustified fabrication, and so every aspect of it was, as well. This latest quote about Wolfowitz may have been misinterpreted, but that doesn’t change his interview with Vanity Fair, in which he said that weapons of mass destruction were basically a convenient excuse to go to war.

26

In my opinion the conflict was justified based soley on the fact that Saddam was slaughtering his own people. You may disagree of course, but look at it this way.

If Hitler was around and decided when he took over Germany, rather than try to take over the world, he would simply sit on his plot of land and execute all the jews and “infidels” in his country. We’re talking millions of innocent people slaughtered. In my opinion, trying to remove him on that premise is all that is necessary. The UN was supposed to stop something like this from happening again, but apparently they need more proof than mass graves now.

27

Saddam wasn’t slaughtering his own people. He didn’t have nazi death camps. He took out select dissidents. While still murder, its not on the same scale as Nazis. The genocidal acts that occurred were from acts of rebellion against saddam post gulf war which the US didn’t support.

28

Hitler was never really after the jews for other reasons than to get popular. There was a lot of antisemitsm in Germany at the time as the country was going to hell, and the people wanted to blame someone. The jews were hit.
Hitler used this, with the words “We have found the solution to the jewproblem” (this was psychological if you study the meanings of the word - he told straight out that the jews were a problem and he had the solution) he won the Germans to his side. However, that wasn’t until later in his career. From the beginning, he was only fighting the socialists if I remember my history lessons correctly.
Heck, I don’t remember how but Hitler had jewish relatives, not very close but still.
And while we’re on the subject, the “perfect humans”, arier (what’s it in English? Sorry :P), are long, blond, and blue-eyed. And how did Hitler look?

But now I’m going off topic. Carry on.

29

Actually, Weiila, a large percentage of the Jewish populace was quite rich. What better way to get money than to persecute those with wealth?

And the word you’re looking for is aryan.

30

The idea that blond hair blue eyes = purity arose from the idea that these were controlled by single gene loci that had to be homozygous recessive (aa , not Aa or AA) in order to have phenotypic expression.

However, Hitler knew little of genetics (and neither did his people), as it was discovered that all DNA of all people was meant to be imperfect due to specific error rates (as the replication machinery is imperfect) . Even the Americans attempted to take out the impure in the eugenics movement. Essentially, all people carry some form of recessive disorder that is rare enough so that 2 people most likely won’t have a kid that has the disorder. Few people realize that to this day. There are a lot of molecular screwups which have little gross outward expression, making the evaluation of perfection based on eye and hair color a very tiny approximation of the purity of the entire genome.
Also , what is perfect and what isn’t is up to interpretation. Sickle cell anemia is lethal (homo res). Having a sickle cell allele is slightly impairing, however it makes you immune to malaria (heterozygous). Having the normal non-sickle cell allele makes you vulnerable to malaria, which is why humans along equatorial regions have evolved a balanced polymorphism; sickle cell alleles, though “bad” are “good” therefore they aren’t driven out of those particular populations.

31

Sin, I think it’s safe to say that only you understand everything you say :stuck_out_tongue:

32

We need more bio majors here.

33

Nonsense. Last Bio I was in was back in my freshman year of high school, and I understood what Sin said, even if I can’t give a precise definition of an allele off the top of my head.

34

does the ‘I know what it is’ dance

35

pokes Is that you, Jing? Bad sis, no possessing reploids!

36

Originally posted by Thomas Paxton
If Hitler was around and decided when he took over Germany, rather than try to take over the world, he would simply sit on his plot of land and execute all the jews and “infidels” in his country. We’re talking millions of innocent people slaughtered.
As Sinistral pointed out, that isn’t what Hussein was doing. What Hussein was doing is more comparable (though possibly on a lesser scale) to what is done in, for example, our ally Saudi Arabia. Do you want to go to war against them, too? There’s a pretty big list of Hussein-like dictatorships all over the world. If you think that that’s a good enough reason to go to war, and damn the consequences, you’ve got a lot of fighting left to do.

37

Would I go to war with Saudi Arabia? Depends. Husseins murders were not simply dissidents being denied political freedom. Some of the murders were religious. Christians were persecuted in this region.

Basically Saddam was killing the way Stalin was. Stain was executing “political dissidents” and other such prisoners.

I’m not saying that countries shouldn’t be allowed to execute prisoners, I am mostly questioning the motives. Lets take Saddam’s case. Why exectue a mans family because he may have said a foul word toward Saddam? Why drive nails into the head of the Ayatollah after killing his family because Iran got a new government? Why call out the names of your high officers and have them sent to be torutured simply because you need people to be examples? Saddam wasn’t carrying out Justice, this was murder.

Yeah, I know there are a lot of places in the world that have similar situations. Frankly the US doesn’t have the resources to handle all of them. We would need the whole of the UN to commit to a peace-making, and life-saving effort. “If everybody gives a little, we can do a lot.”

Unfortunatly, I no longer have any faith in the UN. It’s a pathetic body of bickering countries who are too concerned about popular opinion to do whats right. Heck, Cuba is in charge of it’s human rights board! Plain and simple, we can’t afford to handle them all. Besides if we do, we’ll be seen as policing the world ourselves. People don’t like police, even if what they do is good. Anyway, I don’t have the solutions. No one really does. Wars will always happen, they are a necessity.

Earlier I mentioned that Saddam was killing more people a day than the war was. You said that was a mute point. Then I said Hitler was killing more than Saddam, yet you justify the one against Hitler? I know there were several other reasons to World War two, but basing your desicion on the fact that that Hitler was murdering millions of people, would you have decided to go to war with him?

38

Lessee… Who were the shiites? The muslim religious majority of Iraq (QED with the recent news). Were they repressed? Yes. Were they slaughtered in a rebellion the us didn’t support? Yes. So is it only christian? No. Would it be right if it weren’t christian? No.

Originally posted by Thomas Paxton
[b]Would I go to war with Saudi Arabia? Depends. Husseins murders were not simply dissidents being denied political freedom. Some of the murders were religious. Christians were persecuted in this region.

Basically Saddam was killing the way Stalin was. Stain was executing “political dissidents” and other such prisoners. [/b]

Such is what ALL dictatorships do.

Originally posted by Thomas Paxton

Yeah, I know there are a lot of places in the world that have similar situations. Frankly the US doesn’t have the resources to handle all of them. We would need the whole of the UN to commit to a peace-making, and life-saving effort. “If everybody gives a little, we can do a lot.”

But the fact is we don’t and we do little effort in light of things which we on’t care about. Who’s in Congo? The french. Who’s saving Liberian ass? Not the US, despite the fact the US created the country for liberated slaves and the country idealizes american traditions. How ironic. Africa is one hell of a god damn shit hole and the only reason AIDS is getting attention is because of how easy it can spread, unlike their continuous wars that result from colonial fuck ups hundreds of years ago.

Originally posted by Thomas Paxton

Unfortunatly, I no longer have any faith in the UN. It’s a pathetic body of bickering countries who are too concerned about popular opinion to do whats right. Heck, Cuba is in charge of it’s human rights board! Plain and simple, we can’t afford to handle them all. Besides if we do, we’ll be seen as policing the world ourselves. People don’t like police, even if what they do is good. Anyway, I don’t have the solutions. No one really does. Wars will always happen, they are a necessity.

No. Cuba isn’t in charge. However, Lybia was criticized for being a member of the board. But that’s a different issue and doesn’t diminish the value of taking the outside world into consideration when doing things which affect them.

Originally posted by Thomas Paxton

Earlier I mentioned that Saddam was killing more people a day than the war was.

I have a scientific mind. Fucking prove it. Otherwise, shut up.

Originally posted by Thomas Paxton

You said that was a mute point. Then I said Hitler was killing more than Saddam, yet you justify the one against Hitler? I know there were several other reasons to World War two, but basing your desicion on the fact that that Hitler was murdering millions of people, would you have decided to go to war with him?

Hitler systematically saught and killed for the purpose of eliminating race and culture. Saddam didn’t give a fuck as long as you didn’t interfere with his shit. Difference. No one says its right. However, if you’re going to act on Saddam, you need to have better proof than the one that wasn’t used to justify the war and you’re going to need to support wars world wide to destabalize the power base you’ve created for yourself by building pseudo democracies that fit your needs (at the time it was installed anyway). Saddam is not Hitler. Saddam wasn’t responsible for the destruction of over 20 million lives and the cultures of entire peoples.

39

My, my. A capital “J” in “Justice?” That’s making a rather bold statement, claiming to know what justice is.

Very well, then…if you want to base a war on what is “just,” then you’d better explain what justice is. For my part, I think “justice” is only a word people throw into their conversations to make their side sound better. If you really want to bring justice with a capital J into the argument, you’re going to need to invest some time in explaining the study of ethics, some.

Morality, now that’s different. It’s more subjective. I can understand if you say “moral,” even if I don’t agree with what you think morality is. “Fair” isn’t strictly defined, but we all have a somewhat similar concept of it, from living in the same society. “Right” and “wrong” can be applied to morals, so that’s already been said. But “Justice?” That’s an empty word, most of the time.