This is for the Forum members with a greater understanding of international affairs than myself.
We know that we will have very little coalition support, and most likely NO support from our “friends” in the Middle East, (mainly Saudi Arabia). This will most likely be one where we’ll have to sort of be on our own.
My question is what has us Hell Bent on attacking Iraq? It “seems” like Saddam is “contained” within his borders. Am I missing something? I may sometimes be critical of our Government, but all in all, they appear to be intelligent people. What advantage is it to us when just DISCUSSING THE POSSIBILITY of attack is drawing international criticism? Can you imagine what an actual attack will do?
Sadly, it is my feeling that it is easier to identify “rebel” nations and make lots of noise than to do the really hard work of Counter-Terrorism. There are many things we could do to help our economy and elimate the terrorist threat, but they are long term solutions that would have to be sustained over several presidencies. I know this doesn’t help much and reading Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times is useless. Start be studying history, the underlying causes (economics, politics, religious, etc) then apply that matrix to the current situation. It is not something you will get from most history professors, but it will change your outlook on the world. Best of Luck.
Of course you have friends in the Middle East, silly. Israel will fully support the United States in a war against Iraq.
About Saddam- The reason the U.S. wants to attack is that he is developing Nuclear and Biological weapons (if he hasn't already), and is very eager to use them against any of his enemies, which includes the U.S. By the way, why does America even give a fuck about what the rest of the world thinks? All those European countries can bitch and cry all they want, but they can't do anything about it.
great post,same boat as you are in…why…we in this country might be the greatest hypocrites in the history of the world…we have nuclear weapons,biological weapons but we don’t want anyone else to be able to defend themselves,mostly defend themselves against western influence…now these people have found a way to fight back.enter sept 11.that is just the start of whats coming…we in this country think everyone should want to live like us and be like us…for we are the greatest nation on earth(self proclaimed)…we have deemed iraq part of an evil axis of terror…but now the rest of the world is waking up and the evil axis of terror just might be in washington…for al-qaeda was just a rag tag group untill president clinton helped their rise to prominence with the cowardly cruise missle assalt which brought many together mostly young arab males to join this now legend osama bin laden…the clinton administration salidified osama bin laden as a hero who’s legacy will haunt this country long after he is gone…thanks bill…saddam hussein is about to gain a huge political victory when these plans to oust him are dubunked by the rest of the world who might just be waking to our own immoral judgements and will help to grant mr.hussein a long and prosprous dictatorship…I am an angry american not an arab sympathiser…when the wtc fell and all the innocent came down I did not look towards the middle east in anger I looked at washington.when the first 100,000,when the 1st million innocent americans go in a biological assult you too better start looking at washington not the middle east…we fought against nazism in WWII arabs are just fighting against americanism plain and simple…they don’t want to live like us…lets get over it…one more thing analyst have come out with numbers 10,000 american soldiers dead 250,000 iraqi soldiers dead to oust saddam…if you are a parent with a son between 18-25 this had better be about more then the bushes against the husseins fued…
The reason is that there is reportedly considerable intelligence that Hussein is
close to possessing an atomic bomb, and he is not considered a stable enough person for it to be wise to allow him to have one. In addition, there is considerable evidence that he is a major source of support for terrorists outside of Iraq.
The error of course was in leaving him in place before. It is Colin Powell who is largely to be thanked for that, although the elder George Bush certainly has the ultimate responsibility for that error.
In fairness, however, it also would have been very problematic at the time to have taken down Hussein’s government and attempting to maintain peace while trying against all odds to create a good new government there. It also was perhaps not obvious that the treaty agreement of ongoing UN inspections to prevent development of weapons of mass destruction would be a failure. Of course, Hussein should never have been able to get away with refusing the inspectors. The bombs should have started dropping the first time he did.
It is funny, Mufasa, isn’t it, that our current President has made it very clear that he wants Saddam out? Maybe he wants to finish what his father didn’t, or couldn’t do. I don’t know. President Bush seems to think Saddam will eventually, and probably very soon, deploy a chemical or biological weapon (or maybe a nuke if he has one or ever gets one) somewhere in the region and spark World War III. Iraq is refusing to let UN arms inspectors into the country to check for weapons of mass destruction, and this has our President peeved. Most of our allies in Europe, though, seem to think that eliminating Saddam would cause more turmoil and instability in the region than if he just remains in power, because as crazy as he is, at least he’s “predictable”. I don’t agree with that assessment. I just don’t think the Europeans want to go to war in the Middle East. In my opinion, most European countries aren’t as “war-crazy” as we are anyway. I also don’t think that we should go to war with Iraq just to eliminate Saddam. We should have done that 11 years ago when we had the chance. If we’re going to go to war with Iraq we at least need the support of our European allies, and except for the U.K., we don’t have that right now.
Oh, and Saudi Arabia, by the way, isn’t backing us now because Saddam’s not knocking on their doorstep threatening to take their black gold from them.
A great web site to get updates on all this good Middle East info is http://news.bbc.co.uk
For begginers to capture Baghdad it will take at least 250,000 troops and cost 10,000 lives of “allied” soldiers. Civilian casualties would be in the humdred thousands. If we look back and see that Iraq became the 5th military power in th world thanks to being armed by the US mainly with other European countries it seems there is not much to gain for the average american. But for large corporations and oil companies…
I was just discussing this with my friend and this is what I think. We done fucked up. See, the thing is that there may be a ton of Iraqis that want Saddam out. People say that we should help groups within Iraq that want to overthrow Saddam, but that’s where we are caught. If we do that, no doubt 20 years or so down the line, we will be bit in the ass because we already helped Saddam and Bin Laden with regimes that we wanted ousted. But now we risk another Vietnam if we go against what the American people feel, as well as the people of Iraq. Most Americans don’t care to remember that Saddam is a dangerous man. Most Americans already seem to have forgotten Sept. 11. Now, don’t get me wrong, there may be other agendas, there always is. But Saddam is too dangerous to just leave alone.
Mufasa, in my opinion, this is rooted in the deep-seated hatred of Israel and by extension, hatred of us, as well, by the religionists of the Middle East. Europe wants everything to stay calm. But the animosity towards the Jew is quite overt; witness the non-response of the UN, Europe, China and Russia when bomb after bomb goes off against innocents in Israel. When Israel makes a mistake and kills innocents along with their top terroist target of two weeks ago, there is official condemnation.
But to answer your question, there are undercover Iraqi agents helping the Hezbollah with increasingly dangerous weapons just over Israels’ border. Plus, Saddam has WMDs hidden in his country too. I too, feel shaky about attacking Iraq but I guess the question is, what if wait and wait?
For the most part, we are going to attack Iraq because Iraq is violating the agreements that they incurred when the Gulf the War ended. Now, I am sure that there are more details than that, but that is about the slim skinny of it.
So Big J, what are we to do? Let Saddam stock-pile weapons of mass-destruction? Personally, I don’t want that fucker getting anywhere near that shit. Saddam is unstable and needs to be taken out. If that means attacking Iraq, then so be it. I could care less what any of the European countries think. To hell with those countries as long as Tony Blair and Vladmir Putin are okay with it. It’s also rather silly to blame our government or better yet Clinton for the rise of Bin Laden. He was getting weapons and aid from the U.S when the Taliban was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Which was before Clinton took office. Because we are a “Western Power” and aiding the Israelies, we are hated by Saddam and Bin Laden. Has nothing to do with who’s president. And please don’t compare us to the Nazis. Your making a fool out of yourself when you say things like that. The U.S is the police of the world and as long as lunatics like Bin Laden and Saddam are in power I hope we stay that way. BTW, we are the greatest nation in the world. Just to clear things up.
Now maybe someone would like to share why all these people hate us? Because we’re sucessful and live on the other side of the world. Maybe it’s because we support the sole Jewish country in a land full of Muslims by providing that country with arms and aid for over half its economy each year. After 50 or so years I think its about time they struck out on their own and we stopped getting Americans killed overseas.
Saddam has developed a nuke that can be launched from with in the hump of a camel. So we must kill him. I don’y know why its even being discussed, we should just do it and discuss the creation of Disney, Bagdad in the 51rst state of the union.
“USA is the best country in the world, yeah man, fuck the arabs and fuck those stupid socialists in… um… what is it called… eur… euro… europe!? yeah fuck them, we rule the world, we can do whatever we want, hey, lets start another war! yes, that will solve all problems!”
And then the intelligent americans wonder why they are hated in many parts of the world.
You won't stop terrorism by starting another war, okey?
Yes Saudi did say tha they aren’t going let us use airstrips in attacks against Iraq. Big fucking deal. We have Turkey as a possibility, Jordan maybe and Bahrain and Quatar are VERY supportive of the US. Christ we have troops in their borders as we speak. Don’t forget about the floating cities AKA carriers we have out there all the time too.
So why are we hell bent on attacking Iraq? They aren’t allowing UN inspectors in. Period. If we let one little slip of UN policy go unchecked, can you imagine what would come next? There has to be some sort of penalty for this.
Look what the rest of the world did after WW I. We let Germany rebuild and re arm itsself because we wanted to “Keep the Peace”. Look what happens when you don’t enforce treaties or agreements. You have to nip it in the bud before something terrible happens.
Look at how many people were asking “How did we let 9/11 happen?” I know there’s alot of you on this with the “let’s be hippie pacificits” attitude. Well this is how you stop shit like that from happening.
We have to be active in world policy.
As for Euro. I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks. Just be sure to come on this forum on June 6th and thank the US for saving you asses in 1944.
You know, it’s funny how the people that can’t seem to achieve the same level of greatness always despise the biggest, richest, most successful guys. Even if the guy started with nothing and worked his ass off to get where he is, still no respect. Not to mention the ever-present human tendency to resent those in authority. The more successful and important you become, and the more authority you gain, the more people raise their expectations. They are so quick to point out your every little mistake, and if you ever make a big mistake, well hell you must be evil. You are demonized and now no one wants to help you fix any problems, they are far more comfortable having a scapegoat to blame their problems on. Helping to fix problems takes way too much work and cuts into their free time. Those people pointing the fingers and calling all the names, of course they have never ever made a mistake in their entire lives. Oh, and of course they are always right about everything….