Putting Saddam's conviction into perspective

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Letting them choose their own future is what we're doing. They have a freely elected government in power now. If we pull out of Iraq, it will be keeping them from choosing their own future. Then other major players can choose it for them. The Sunni insurgency is not representative of the will of the people in Iraq, as the massive election turn-outs has proven.

No. We have choosen their future for them, or at least tried. Maybe, now that they don't have a dictator over their heads for the first time in history, they simply can't survive as one nation. This happened in Yugoslavia. It was bloody, but what they have now there is what they have mostly been able to make for themselves.

You must let countries resolve their own conflicts as much as possible. It's the same reason why Israel continues to be such a problem. Because we have propped them up for generations instead of letting them succeed or fail on their own.

It's the only real solution. And it's also the solution that we will come to eventually. Until then we are just prolonging the problems.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

No. We have choosen their future for them, or at least tried.

You say that, but the facts don't back your claim. Saddam was not the people's choice. They had no power to choose their future, but now they do. We have given them that power, and that is both good and highly moral.

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

You must let countries resolve their own conflicts as much as possible. It's the same reason why Israel continues to be such a problem. Because we have propped them up for generations instead of letting them succeed or fail on their own.

It's the only real solution. And it's also the solution that we will come to eventually. Until then we are just prolonging the problems.

The isolationism you seem to be advocating is impractical in a world that globalization is drawing closer and closer together. Nowadays, we face global threats and deal with global economic issues. The Middle East crisis is a worldwide issue. The Third Reich was a worldwide issue, as was the Cold War. Letting countries resolve their own conflicts without our becoming involved can be a severe detriment to our own national interests, especially nowadays. This was less true in the 19th century.

[The Gaffer]

I don't think BJ is advocating isolationism; on the contrary. It appears he is, however, opposed to military adventurism and/or naive geopolitical experiments.

Lief, I think you are still in denial about this whole thing. By the evidence you gave, the US and UK both "shelter" terrorist organisations. As Aquilonius noted, there were many countries further up the food chain who "support terrorism" far more.

And that is the problem: those quotes. Any such grounds for intervention are based on a highly nebulous yet conveniently patriotic basis. You could almost hear the penny drop from this side of the atlantic: "Hey, we're the only superpower and we can use this terrorism thing to do what the hell we want and say that anyone who disagrees with us is also supporting terrorism."

Ka-CHING!

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

I don't think BJ is advocating isolationism; on the contrary. It appears he is, however, opposed to military adventurism and/or naive geopolitical experiments.

His reference to our policies regarding Israel don't indicate that to me. And his comment that we should let nations settle their own disputes seems to hark back to isolationist policies of the past. Nowadays, nations' own disputes aren't their own disputes anymore, because everyone is interrelated and what affects some often affects all.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Lief, I think you are still in denial about this whole thing. By the evidence you gave, the US and UK both "shelter" terrorist organisations.

I don't understand what you're referring to.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

As Aquilonius noted, there were many countries further up the food chain who "support terrorism" far more.

Except that Iraq was the nation that was developing chemical weapons. That changes the equation rather dramatically.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

And that is the problem: those quotes. Any such grounds for intervention are based on a highly nebulous yet conveniently patriotic basis. You could almost hear the penny drop from this side of the atlantic: "Hey, we're the only superpower and we can use this terrorism thing to do what the hell we want and say that anyone who disagrees with us is also supporting terrorism."

Ka-CHING!

Saddam tried to kill one of our presidents, and terrorist organizations he sponsored killed several Americans. He was a threat to the United States.

You could argue that he was a small threat, but this claim is invalidated by the fact that he was developing chemical weapons. I've spoken with an Iraq war veteran who described to me how a firefighter led him and others to a bunker full of nerve agents, north of Baghdad. I've looked at press reports from the time of the invasion, in which Polish troops found sarin in Saddam's possession. A substantial quantity of chemical weapons has been found, and Hans Blix found some missiles capable of delivering those chemicals, but it is true that we'd expected to find a much greater quantity of those weapons. Unfortunately, Iraq is a very big country in which conventional weapons staches are hidden all over the place. Finding chemical weapons in all that mess would be a big difficulty. The majority of such weapons could also have been transported over the border.

But my point is that some chemical weapons were found, and some missiles capable of delivering them. We also didn't enter into the war based upon US intelligence alone- we had many allies that joined in the endeavor and which also believed, based upon what their intelligence agencies were telling them, that there were WMDs in Iraq. The US Congress found the evidence it was presented sufficiently compelling that it overwhelmingly voted for war, Democrats as well as Republicans. To say that Congress was all deceived, and that our allies with their intelligence services were also all deceived, and that the chemical weapons and missiles capable of launching them that have been found are either planted or accidental leftover from the past, amounts to a highly improbable conspiracy theory.

[The Gaffer]

No need to apologise. I have a clear conscience in discussing these things.

Those incidents you are referring to happened at least 10 years before the invasion of Iraq. Why weren't you invading then? Also, if Saddam was "sponsoring" terrorism, so were at least a dozen other nations, to a far greater extent, including some of our "allies" such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Saddam's used to have chemical weapons, thanks to us, but his technological capabilities were going backwards throughout the 90s. Again, other nations had far worse, proven capabilities, such as Pakistan, whose citizens had engaged in selling the technology to other nations to boot.

EDIT: I see I posted while you were editing, so an addendum.

Those were old weapons and a very small quantity. Probably had "made in USA" on the side.

Also, our intelligence agencies, like yours, were giving mixed messages, so our leaders also ignored the bits they didn't want to hear. Remember the "dodgy dossier"? Submitted to the UK Parliament as evidence of Saddam's evil intent, and subsequently found to have been copied and pasted from some Masters dissertation written in the mid-90s.

It just makes no sense to me to cite this as evidence in support of a military attack which cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and threw a whole region into turmoil.

Can you see why I believe what I do about this conflict? It is a very unpalatable conclusion, but it is the only explanation that I have left.

Then you start to factor in the evidence "for": Rumsfeld's "go after Iraq" statement the day after 9/11, the Project for the New American Century, all the suppressed intelligence, the massive contracts awarded under no-bid tender processes, the security klondike that is Iraq, the Iraqi Constitution that protects Monsanto's interests, etc etc etc.