Story I found

[»1587200]

Don't Close Your Blinds

 

The other day, my nine year old son wanted to know why we were at war. My husband looked at our son and then looked at me. My husband and I were in the Army during the Gulf War and we would be honored to serve and defend our Country again today. I knew that my husband would give him a good explanation.

 

My husband thought for a few minutes and then told my son to go stand in our front living room window. He told him: "Son, stand there and tell me what you see?"

 

"I see trees and cars and our neighbor's houses." he replied.

 

"OK, now I want you to pretend that our house and our yard is the United States of America and you are President Bush."

 

Our son giggled and said "OK."

 

"Now son, I want you to look out the window and pretend that every house and yard on this block is a different country" my husband said.

 

"OK Dad, I'm pretending."

 

"Now I want you to stand there and look out the window and see that man come out of his house with his wife and he has her by the hair and is hitting her. You see her bleeding and crying. He hits her in the face, he throws her on the ground, then he starts to kick her to death. Their children run out and are afraid to stop him, they are crying, they are watching this but do nothing because they are kids and afraid of their father.

You see all of this son.... what do you do?"

 

"Dad?"

 

"What do you do son?"

 

"I call the police, Dad."

 

"OK. Pretend that the police are the United Nations and they take your call, listen to what you know and saw but they refuse to help. What do you do then son?"

 

"Dad, but the police are supposed to help!" My son starts to whine.

 

"They don't want to son, because they say that it is not their place or your place to get involved and that you should stay out of it," my husband says

 

"But Dad...he killed her!!" my son exclaims.

 

"I know he did...but the police tell you to stay out of it. Now I want you to look out that window and pretend you see our neighbor who you're pretending is Saddam turn around and do the same thing to his children."

 

"Daddy...he kills them?"

 

"Yes son, he does. What do you do?"

 

"Well, if the police don't want to help, I will go and ask my next door neighbor to help me stop him." our son says.

 

"Son, our next door neighbor sees what is happening and refuses to get involved as well. He refuses to open the door and help you stop him," my husband says.

 

"But Dad, I NEED help!!! I can't stop him by myself!!"

"WHAT DO YOU DO SON?" Our son starts to cry.

 

"OK, no one wants to help you, the man across the street saw you ask for help and saw that no one would help you stop him. He stands taller and puffs out his chest. Guess what he does next son?" "What Daddy?"

 

"He walks across the street to the old ladies house and breaks down her door and drags her out, steals all her stuff and sets her house on fire and then...he kills her. He turns around and sees you standing in he window and laughs at you. WHAT DO YOU DO?"

 

"Daddy..."

 

"WHAT DO YOU DO?"

 

Our son is crying and he looks down and he whispers, "I close the blinds, Daddy."

 

My husband looks at our son with tears in his eyes and asks him... "Why?"

 

"Because Daddy.....the police are supposed to help...people who needs it...and they won't help....You always say that neighbors are supposed to HELP neighbors, but they won't help either...they won't help me stop him...I'm afraid....I can't do it by myself ...Daddy.....I can't look out my window and just watch him do all these terrible things and...and.....do nothing...so....I'm just going to close the blinds....so I can't see what he's doing........and I'm going to pretend that it is not happening."

 

I start to cry.

 

My husband looks at our nine year old son standing in the window, looking pitiful and ashamed at his answers to my husbands questions and he tells him..."Son"

 

"Yes, Daddy."

 

"Open the blinds because that man.... he's at your front door..."WHAT DO YOU DO?"

 

My son looks at his father, anger and defiance in his eyes. He balls up his tiny fists and looks his father square in the eyes, without hesitation he says:

"I DEFEND MY FAMILY DAD!! I'M NOT GONNA LET HIM HURT MOMMY OR MY SISTER, DAD!!! I'M GONNA FIGHT HIM, DAD, I'M GONNA FIGHT HIM!!!!!"

 

I see a tear roll down my husband's cheek and he grabs my son to his chest and hugs him tight, and cries..."It's too late to fight him, he's too strong and he's already at YOUR front door son.....you should have stopped him BEFORE he killed his wife. You have to do what's right, even if you have to do it alone, before......it's too late." my husband whispers.

 

THAT scenario I just gave you is WHY we are at war with Iraq. When good men stand by and let evil happen is the greatest EVIL of all. Our President is doing what is right. We, as a free nation, must understand that this war is a war of humanity. WE must remove evil men from power so that we can continue to live in a free world where we are not afraid to look out our window. So that my nine year old son won't grow up in a world where he feels that if he just "closes" that blinds the atrocities in the world won't affect him. "YOU MUST NEVER BE AFRAID TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT! EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO DO IT ALONE!"

 

Discuss

[MonteZuma]

"Now I want you to stand there and look out the window and see that man come out of his house with his wife and he has her by the hair and is hitting her. You see her bleeding and crying. He hits her in the face, he throws her on the ground, then he starts to kick her to death. Their children run out and are afraid to stop him, they are crying, they are watching this but do nothing because they are kids and afraid of their father.

You see all of this son.... what do you do?"

 

"Dad?"

 

Child: I go over to his house with a shotgun and blow his head off, saving his wife's life.

 

Father: The shotgun blast accidentally killed one of the kids. Some of the kids hate you for killing their brother and start throwing rocks at you. Some of the kids are angry because even though their father hit their mother, their father always looked after them, so long as they didn't complain. Some of the kids are glad you killed their evil father, but the kids who liked their father start to beat up the kids that are thankful that you killed him. What do you do now son?

 

Child: I stay and try to maintain order until all of the kids become friends again! I tell them that if the family behaves like my family we can all live in the same neighbourhood happily!

 

Father: They keep fighting. Sometimes they throw big rocks at you and it hurts. Some of the kids die in the crossfire. Many of the kids want you to leave. They say that things were better before you came along. The house becomes very messy. Windows are broken and they have no money to fix them. Rats and !@#$%^&*roaches come inside. They see their house get worse and worse. They see themselves fighting with each other. They say it was simple before when they knew that their dad was bad and that even though their mother got hurt, at least they had food and the house didn't have broken windows, and rats and !@#$%^&*roaches everywhere. They didn't need to beg for anything from anyone. They hate you more than ever.

 

Child: But I'm the good guy! Why do they hate me????

[SeVeR]

Brilliant Monte. When a government declares themselves the judge of what is right and wrong there will always be more bloodshed. That's because there is no right or wrong, only the will to survive. Until we understand that morals are not god-given and come from our survival instincts and those of our family we will always get governments imposing their personal "god-given" versions of right and wrong.

 

We went to Iraq to "help" based on our god-given morals when in fact we should have stayed out because helping would threaten our own survival. It may sound selfish at first sight until people understand our nature and the evolution of morals.

[Aileron]

Monte, your reply doesn't work here, because having a couple children die from collateral damage is not as bad as having ALL of them die as in the origional story...and it doesn't work in Iraq because more people died under Hussein than are dying now...and the situation now will eventually stop.

[SeVeR]

Bush is saying to the people of Iraq "we know what is right for you so we're gonna bomb all these fascist ASSS because we like you "innocent" people" What he really should be saying is "we disagree with Saddam and his old regime but if you don't like it then rebel against him and show him". The fact is that Bush is making the decision for the people of Iraq and killing a bunch of them in the process.

 

There is no right and wrong, when will these dummies in government realise that the world will be able to develop at its own pace? How would america have liked it if some more "developed" country had interfered when the whole place was a racist !@#$%^&*ehole full of ignorant white descimantory ASSS. They'd have gone to war with them. Thats what some of the people in Iraq are doing with America now. Let people solve their own problems because they'll never understand what is wrong until they stand up against it and solve it themselves. America isn't the worlds policeman, its the worlds judge jury and "god-given" executioner!

[Aileron]

jeez...where did my post go?

 

To sum it up:

 

There were already rebellions in Iraq that had been going on since the Gulf War "ended". Virtually the entire Kurdish population was out to kill Saddam, they just didn't have the technology to finish the war. And the Iraqi people love the fact that we disposed of Saddam. That's what the no-fly zone was about. It was an effort to prevent Saddam's airforce from getting air superiority over the rebels...and to make sure that unidentified aircraft weren't cruise missles filled with chemical weapons.

 

 

The problem is that we can't please everybody and it takes about 12 people to form a terrorist cell. I mean, in order to do a suicide car bombing you need a car, a driver, and a bomb. Getting a car is simple. Crafting a bomb is also simple. All you need to do is find one idiot to drive the car...the number of people who were in Saddam's not-so-inner-circle could provice the manpower needed for a suicide bombing campaign. We aren't fighting patriots who love their country, we are fighting s!@#$%^&* that had the good life under Saddam and don't like us because we evened out the playing field.

 

 

 

There is no right and wrong? If that's true then great social reformers like Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther King were pariahs. They changed social systems that weren't wrong because there is no such thing as wrong. Abraham Lincoln would be terrible and on par with Hitler and Napoleon, because he fought the Civil War to end slavery...but if slavery isn't wrong all he did was fight a bloody war for no good end. But we regard such people as great heroes. The statement presents a contradiction...therefore right and wrong DO exist.

 

 

 

Let nations advance at their own rate? We tried that at the end of the 20th century. The problem is that the rate at which they acquire modern weapons is greater than the rate their society evolves. This is the basic cause of terrorism....people with dark-age thinking that have modern explosives.

 

And why shouldn't we advance their society? Their people have to live with it. If they come to advance on their own it is unlikely the tyrannical regime they live under would just step aside and let them take over, so it would either be a bloody revolution by our hands now or a bloody revolution by their hands later. As a matter of fact as this specific example pointed out its better if we do it because we have the military strength to make the military conflict short, but the revolutionaries always have to fight a long bloody war with the aim of depleting the tyrant's resources rather than defeating his army.

 

The problem with this logic does not lie in the logic itself...rather the fact that this arguement was often falsely used to justify imperialism. The difference in this case is that the US plans on leaving Iraq in the near future, rather than hold onto it.

 

 

You act as if Hussein was the justly elected and benevolent ruler of a people that loved him. He was a dictator that ruled by force and everyone hated his guts. The very very worst a foreign power can do is match him.

 

Which brings me to the very predictable puppet government arguement. Maybe the new government will have a desire to follow US policy. However, such things would occur below-the-table, everything down above the table will be in the Iraqi peoples' best interests...which is still better than under Hussein, where the only thing done was Hussein's interests.

[»Ducky]

His variation works fine. A story is just that, whether you believe a certain scenerio is better or not.

[MonteZuma]

...All you need to do is find one idiot to drive the car...the number of people who were in Saddam's not-so-inner-circle could provice the manpower needed for a suicide bombing campaign. We aren't fighting patriots who love their country, we are fighting s!@#$%^&* that had the good life under Saddam and don't like us because we evened out the playing field.

I don't think people blow themselves to bits because they don't like the playing field being levelled. I think the issue is considerably more complicated than that.

 

There is no right and wrong? If that's true then great social reformers like Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther King were pariahs. They changed social systems that weren't wrong because there is no such thing as wrong. Abraham Lincoln would be terrible and on par with Hitler and Napoleon, because he fought the Civil War to end slavery...but if slavery isn't wrong all he did was fight a bloody war for no good end. But we regard such people as great heroes. The statement presents a contradiction...therefore right and wrong DO exist.

An oversimplification. Of course there is right and wrong. But right and wrong are social constructs. What is right in one context may be wrong in another.

 

As a matter of fact as this specific example pointed out its better if we do it because we have the military strength to make the military conflict short, but the revolutionaries always have to fight a long bloody war with the aim of depleting the tyrant's resources rather than defeating his army.

There is no fast way to make Iraq a self-sufficient and peaceful beacon of democracy in the middle east. The problem isn't defeating Saddam. That was easy. The problem is overcoming ethnic and religious divisions.

[AstroProdigy]

a) The death toll after the Iraq War due to the insurgency is nearing the death toll under Saddam's regime due to his regime and it is continuing to rise at an unabashed level. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-08.htm

How do you know the situation will eventually stop. It doesn't look like much progress is being made nor is the death toll starting to decline.

c) All of them dying? Where did you ever get that information? Saddam Hussein was going to exterminate the entire population of Iraq if we didn't invade now? Get your information straight.

d) Of course we can't please everyone, but the people of Iraq aren't frustrated that we toppled Saddam's regime; they are frustrated because it doesn't seem like an end of the US occupation of Iraq is in sight.

e) Of course there is a right and wrong. There are certain things that most people in the world agree are right and wrong. That's all that matters.

f) We let nations advance on their own rate at theend of the twentieth century? You mean under the Clinton administration; because that's the only period we did that and we interfered in other countries' development then too, just not to as large a scale.

g) If we let them topple their own regimes, the effect would be dramatically different. Think of the countries that achieved democracy on their own. France, the US, Britain, etc. They are a very proud people and are proud of what they have achieved.

h) "You act as if Hussein was the justly elected and benevolent ruler of a people that loved him." No one acts like that. Where has anyone posted that?

i) It is a known fact that the United States prefers a pro US dictatorship over an anti US democracy. If you look at the history of the Cold War, the US often supported a dictatorship over a democracy if it was in our best interest. Example two; Saudi Arabia. We have no intent of replacing the pro US monarchy with an anti US peoples' republic. That would be a stupid thing for us to do in our own interests.

[Aileron]

A: sacrificing 99 lives to save 100 is still logical..."approaching" is insufficient

B: I know the situation will eventually stop because it is impossible for a terrorist group to make strategic advances, and because the opinion of Muslims worldwide is gradually turning against the terrorists. Most of all, war cannot last forever.

C: good point...I was only referencing the story though

D: No end in sight? We we leave when the insurgency ends...we just don't know when that is.

E: Just making that point to SeVeR....

F: True...but I didn't say it was a large time of letting them advance at their own rate

G: The US achieved our democracy with French support...it is a historical fact that 3/4ths of all revolutions required foreign support to suceed. France was an exception...England just sort of stumbled on to democracy and never really had to fight for it. (They should be proud of this)

H: Michaele Moore did...in Farenheit 9/11 he portrayed Iraq as children flying kites.

I: I don't agree with our alliance with Saudi Arabia...I'd say Bush should invade Saudi Arabia too if it wasn't a betrayal.

[»i88gerbils]

FYI:

 

Abraham Lincoln did not "fight" the Civil War to end slavery, nor did he start it. The Civil War happened for a completely different reason.

 

----

 

Montezuma did a good job providing an alternate conversation. Nobody answered the question about what happens when you have several different reactions. Life is not monochrome, it's greyscale.

[Aileron]

The civil war is a case of motive being in the eye of the beholder...some say it was fought to end slavery, others say it was about state's rights and to keep the union united...I do actually agree with the second one, but the first was correct enough and that's the one I needed.

 

 

Hussein wasn't a grey, nor were the people supporting him.

[AstroProdigy]

That's a matter of opinion if Muslums are gradually turning against terrorists. I say the world is going more and more bakwards as of late. Also, I would think most Muslums are against terrorists anyway. Terrorists don't need to make strategic advances; it's not a onventional war. The Viet Cong weren't making strategic advances and look what happened. War cannot last forever, but it can last a !@#$%^&* of a long time.

 

"D: No end in sight? We we leave when the insurgency ends...we just don't know when that is."

That means there is no end in SIGHT. That doesn't mean there is no end.

 

The US did have French support, but the major fighting and the beginning of the Revolutionary War, they just needed French help to completely remove the British. Iraq wasn't really topelling Saddam at all without our help.

 

As for Michael Moore, he is extreme liberal.

 

I don't think it's our business to invade Saudi Arabia. I just think we shouldn't take a role as a "protector of freedom" unless we want to seriously take on the job, not just pick and choose based on our own interests.

 

I88gerbils, maybe life is in color?

 

I myself like blue. Speaking of colors and greys. The terror alert levels are interesting because they warn the people of a possible attack, but the people can't really do anything about it other than panic. Bush should have raised the terror alert level to red after Hurricane Katrina. That would have made people forget about the fact that all the preparation the administration claims to have taken in case of a disaster was just for show.

 

Putting everything in one Department of Homeland Security just makes all the different parts unable to function without the extra red tape. I heard that FEMA couldn't function properly because they had to contend with all the other parts of the Department of Homeland Security and get through all of the red tape and they were, therefore, very slow.

 

Thank god no one has started cursing someone else out on this thread for a while.

[MonteZuma]

A: sacrificing 99 lives to save 100 is still logical...

Only in a mathematical sense. In terms of managing public perception, the war on terror and looking after the national interest, I think it is better that a tyrant be responsible for 100 deaths than someone proclaiming to be 'the good guy' be responsible for killing 99.

B: I know the situation will eventually stop because it is impossible for a terrorist group to make strategic advances, and because the opinion of Muslims worldwide is gradually turning against the terrorists. Most of all, war cannot last forever.

Conflict can last much longer than one generation. Wars can be unwinable.

[»i88gerbils]

Peronally, I think life is in plaid. And Midi.

[SeVeR]

Lets get this straight. How do any of you know whether right or wrong exist? For everything that you think is right in this world a great number of people will think you are wrong. Who are we to say anyone else is wrong?

 

Virtually the entire Kurdish population was out to kill Saddam, they just didn't have the technology to finish the war.

And the Kurdish people were right?

 

And the Iraqi people love the fact that we disposed of Saddam.

What a very generalised statement. Some like it, some don't. Those who don't think they are right and we are wrong. This act of imposing our 'righteousness' on another people is now threatening our own survival both in Iraq and at home.

 

The problem is that we can't please everybody

Precisely! So where on earth do you get your "absolute" right and wrong from?

 

We aren't fighting patriots who love their country

I'm of the opinion that patriotism is wrong, you may disagree with me and that doesn't make either of us right. They may not be patriots but to me that is a good thing. Would you say going to war to avenge your dead family who were killed in bomb blasts is a better reason? I think i would.

 

There is no right and wrong? If that's true then great social reformers like Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther King were pariahs. They changed social systems that weren't wrong because there is no such thing as wrong. Abraham Lincoln would be terrible and on par with Hitler and Napoleon

Hitler believed he was right, many agreed with him at the time, if more people agreed with him and he won the war then the established version of what is right or wrong would be completely different. Hitler was as right as the amount of people who agreed with him and who still do agree with him, that may not be a majority, but that sure as !@#$%^&* doesn't make him wrong.

 

Let nations advance at their own rate? We tried that at the end of the 20th century. The problem is that the rate at which they acquire modern weapons is greater than the rate their society evolves. This is the basic cause of terrorism....people with dark-age thinking that have modern explosives.

Oh common don't be so blind, where do you think they acquire those modern weapons from? I would call that interfering.

 

And why shouldn't we advance their society? Their people have to live with it. If they come to advance on their own it is unlikely the tyrannical regime they live under would just step aside and let them take over, so it would either be a bloody revolution by our hands now or a bloody revolution by their hands later.

There goes your self-righteous at!@#$%^&*ude again. Until the people of Iraq see that a democratic equal lifestyle is best for them there won't ever be that way of life in their country. The only way to end up with it is to let them fight it out amongst themselves, whoever has the most passion and desire will win. Who cares how much blood is spilled because it's THEIR FIGHT, not ours. Now instead we are spilling our blood in New York, London, Madrid, Eqypt and all the other places around the world where these angry people with "modern weapons" are going to to exact their revenge.

 

Maybe the new government will have a desire to follow US policy.

Oh i'm sure America's greed will do a good job of making very few people rich while 99% of the population live in poverty.

 

If we let them topple their own regimes, the effect would be dramatically different. Think of the countries that achieved democracy on their own. France, the US, Britain, etc. They are a very proud people and are proud of what they have achieved.

Exactly they'll see what they've done and appreciate its importance. I'm not very up to date with news at the moment but last time i heard everyone in the proposed Iraqi government ws fighting for as much power as they could get, all wannabe Saddams who only sit at a "unified" table because the US is making them. Correct me if i'm wrong but that isn't realisation.

[»i88gerbils]

So you believe in a military meritocracy then? Might makes right?

[SeVeR]

I believe that if the people of a country want a military meritocracy then they should fight to get one. If they want the opposite then they should fight for that. They shouldn't have to deal with some foreign power waltzing in to do it for them. Iraq wasn't a democracy because not enough people wanted one, simple as that. Who cares if Saddam was abusing the power he had, if 90%+ of the people of Iraq cared enough to topple him they would have done so. And thats the key, they have to do it themselves so you know they give a !@#$%^&*. America has !@#$%^&*umed that their version of right and wrong is the correct version and they've imposed that on another country where a significantly less proportion of the country agree with them.

[»i88gerbils]

I respect & share your idealism. I also believe that everyone can have the will to stand up for themselves. Unfortunately, this usually comes with consequences (i.e. people are going to get hurt, either emotionally or physically).

 

There is also a matter of practicality. How do you fight a war when you do not have the resources to do so? You cannot*. Saddam governed by controlling resources and harboring fear so that no one would make the sacrifices necessary to successfully revolt. I'm not sure how closed Iraq really was under Saddam as I do not have factual information to base it on, but I !@#$%^&*ume that apart from official smuggling it was a closed system. This is the ideal condition for our "revolution" because nobody outside is helping, yet it did not happen effectively.

 

At the opposite side of the spectrum we have Iraq Today. There are various influences. Iranian agents pouring into the Basra area, Al-Qaida agents, the United States, upset Sunnis, upset Shiites, criminals, etc ... If the U.S. were to pull out we wouldn't be in an ideal condition for our revolution either! The other parties are still pouring in resources to various "sides". Today, it is an open system, and there is almost nothing we can do about it.

 

----------------

 

Are we necessarily "evil" for ignoring the human rights violations of others when the other do not have the resources to protect themselves? For the past 60 years the answer has been yes. If we wait too long before acting are we "evil"? Maybe. If we are incapable of helping those that need to be helped are we "evil" if we do not at least try to help? It is my understanding that we should not feel complete responsibility for not helping if we are not in the position to help effectively.

 

As the President of the U.S. was making his ultimatums in 2003 I was abroad, and I was scared by the issue of going to War. I was glad that I was not in the position to make the decision to go to war. However, I also decided that the U.S. shoul donly get involved in Iraq if we had a good plan for the reconstruction & rehabilitation. Much to my disappointment, we did not have a good plan. We did not set a long-term period of reconstruction, but instead followed the weak plan that we created for Afghanistan.

 

Now I place myself in another intellectual quandrary. Do we pull out now, or stay in until we can competently help Iraq reconstruct? Nobody likes failure. But perhaps the correct thing to do is to admit failure in Baghdad. Because we have failed in central Iraq. I say pullout of central Iraq & let the Shiite & Kurds deal with anything under international observation. I'm sure there are lots of Sadr followers dieing to arm themselves again.

[MonteZuma]

Interesting discussion.

 

Sometimes I think it is useful to intervene, but we gotta make sure that we dont:

 

a ) throw the baby out with the bathwater.

 

Iraq was relatively stable before the invasion. Iraq was not a hotbed of terrorist activity. Now that Saddam is gone, Iraq is a shambles. Despite what the spin doctors say, there is no bright future on the horizon for Iraq.

 

b ) cut off our noses to spite our face.

 

The US removed Saddam from power, but the threat of terrorism is greater than ever. National and international security has not improved. Occupying Iraq has been expensive in terms of money, lives and other resources. All of this effort could have been channelled into other projects that might have been more effective for reducing terrorism, such as alleviating poverty in the developing world, resolving the Palestinian issue, flushing out Taliban and Al Qaida in Afghanistan, pressuring or supporting arab nations to deal with extremists, etc, etc, etc.

 

We should have intervened in other ways. Sanctions, inspections, surveillance and the threat of overwhelming force if Iraq stepped out of line on the international stage or against her own people (eg the kurds and the shi-ites(sp?)). All of the das!@#$%^&*ly deeds that Saddam had committed could be examined (without introducing bs evidence like baby milk factories portrayed as chemical weapons factories) and brought before the UN - not as evidence for an invasion, but just to make sure that people inside and outside of Iraq, especially in the muslim world, know what the regime is all about.

 

If this was managed better, the US and other western nations might be viewed as protectors rather than oppressors and thousands of US soldiers would still be alive. Tens of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive too.

[Aileron]

SeVeR, there actually was enough people in Iraq that wanted democracy and they did want it bad enough...they just didn't have enough firepower. There can be a massive uprising, but if Saddam's forces have machine guns and tanks, all they are is cannon fodder.

 

Your logic is similar to the Boxer rebellion in late 1800's China. The Boxers thought that with Kung Fu skills and sufficient numbers and willpower that they could defeat the armed modernized foreign armies that were occupying China...they even laughably thought they could make themselves bulletproof by willpower. Obviously, it just didn't work and the Boxers got their !@#$%^&* handed to them every time they faced a military, though they did have a limited amount of success against unarmed civilians. Whether or not your cause is right and no matter how much you need victory or how much will you are putting into it, in war its usually the guy with the best weapon who usually wins.

 

The forces trying to topple Hussein needed weapons and training to do it...and if we were willing to provide it we might as well make it easier and just take Hussein's forces out ourselves rather than giving somebody else some weapons and letting them handle it. (Besides, that's how Hussein came to power in the first place. We gave him weapons to fight Iran and he went psycho on us. That's also how Bin Laden escaped Tora Bora. We gave Afghan forces some weapons and had them do the hunting, and they weren't up to it. We learned from our own mistakes...if you want something done right you must do it yourself.)

 

 

 

We shouldn't pull out of Iraq until the Iraqi forces are in a position to take over and their consitution writtin. Its not much longer now, so we should be patient.

 

 

 

 

The key to the War on Terror was and still is Saudi Arabia...the problem is they are our ally, so any outright invasion is a betrayal and out of the question. We also can't cut the support we are giving to the Saudi Government because if we did the Wahhabists who are also supporting the other half of the Saudi Government will pick up the slack effectively allowing them to take over the country and thus make this worse.

 

Monte, the problem is that the people fighting us don't believe a single word that comes out of our mouth. They suicide bomb us. They wouldn't do that unless they convinced themselves that their target was 100% wrong. No matter what proof we offered, the terrorists would view it as lies and would ignore it. Everybody else doesn't matter, because they would never be willing to fight us over Hussein's regime.

 

Sometimes intelligence is faulty...Bush and Congress shouldn't be criticised for that...the spy who presented him that information should.

 

Going into Iraq was a good move though...it may not look like a good move at the moment, but it was. If we got the foreign and domestic support Bush was expecting the situation would be looking a lot better right now.

 

 

 

i88gerbills, did you get my pm? I'm very interested to know if you'd be willing to make that bot.

[MonteZuma]

SeVeR, there actually was enough people in Iraq that wanted democracy and they did want it bad enough...they just didn't have enough firepower. There can be a massive uprising, but if Saddam's forces have machine guns and tanks, all they are is cannon fodder.

Maybe you are right, but Saddam's former opponents have about as much power and support now as they are evr gonna get and things don't look good. There is no unity in Iraq. That is (and was) one of the main problems.

 

Whether or not your cause is right and no matter how much you need victory or how much will you are putting into it, in war its usually the guy with the best weapon who usually wins.

Usually, but not always. Vietnam.

 

The forces trying to topple Hussein needed weapons and training to do it...

Despite his military power, what Saddam needed more than anything was public support or public ambivalence. The events in Poland, East Germany and other soviet bloc countries in the 80s and 90s showed what happens when ambivalence is replaced with idealism and determination.

 

We learned from our own mistakes...if you want something done right you must do it yourself.

Like in Vietnam?

 

We shouldn't pull out of Iraq until the Iraqi forces are in a position to take over and their consitution writtin. Its not much longer now, so we should be patient.

That piece of paper will not solve Iraq's problems at all. The US administration might use it as an excuse to begin a pullout (or pretend to begin a pull out to placate the US and Iraqi public, but Iraq will go to !@#$%^&* in a handbasket without massive ongoing support.

 

Monte, the problem is that the people fighting us don't believe a single word that comes out of our mouth.

If that is the problem, then the solution is to convince them that you can be trusted. Come to think of it, that is why I think the Palestinian issue is so important.

 

They suicide bomb us. They wouldn't do that unless they convinced themselves that their target was 100% wrong. No matter what proof we offered, the terrorists would view it as lies and would ignore it. Everybody else doesn't matter, because they would never be willing to fight us over Hussein's regime.

Everyone else does matter. Somewhere in there is the next batch of suicide bombers.

 

Sometimes intelligence is faulty...Bush and Congress shouldn't be criticised for that...the spy who presented him that information should.

No. If a financial advisor tells you that a particular stock is going to be the next best thing, and you lose all your life savings when the stock fails to meet expectations, you can't blame the advisor. Decision-makers are responsible for !@#$%^&*essing the quality of the advice they are given and the uncertainty !@#$%^&*ociated with it.

 

Going into Iraq was a good move though...it may not look like a good move at the moment, but it was. If we got the foreign and domestic support Bush was expecting the situation would be looking a lot better right now.

It was always clear that Bush was never going to get the support he wanted. He went to Iraq knowing full well who was in the 'coalition of the willing' and what they offered in support.