Pie wrote:Going into iraq is kinda shifty, sure. But we are doing good. And hopefully this time we wont do the IDIOTIC FRIKEN STUPID THING and LEAVE IRAQ BEFORE ITS DONE!!
This won't be done for years and years. Doing good? You're not doing good, man. You used to be able to go outside without fear of something exploding, or some militiamen shaking you down for cash at a checkpoint. You used to be able to send your daughter to go shopping on her own. It's gome to shit, man. If you'd invaded last time, the same shit would have happened. It would be the exact same deal. The invasion of Iraq is a disaster, not just of Iraq and not just for America, but for the entire world.
Pie wrote:Same thing with afganistan. We need to stay in there until the job is done. And yes, we are helping. People can fly KITES now. And they aren't gunned down in the streets. Now, when you want to gun someone down in affganistan, you just might have to gun down an american soldier first, in wich case the five others behind him will pwn you.
I agree, foreign troops need to stay in Afghanistan until things are fixed up, but nobody's fixing things up. It's turning into a Vietnam. People just hide inside their bases and go in infrequent patrols. Reconstruction is at a standstill, with the exception of what Afghans are doing themselves. And might I add, only half of the soldiers in Afghanistan are American. The rest are from other countries. Also, U.S.A. relinquished it's command over the mission some time ago.
Afghanistan was a fuck up from the beggining. They took Kabul, hid in Kabul and let the warlords take over the countryside. Afghanistan is now Sicily times five thousand.
Do you know how the Taliban became popular? Mohammed Omar was a peasant who was sick of the feudal warlord system and mob rule. So he took a rifle and he took a Qu'ran (whether or not he can read it, I do not know.) and he and his friends started a movement which in the end took over the country. And now the warlords are back. And so, the Taliban has credibility again. Credibility, power, food, what more could any young man want? That's why the movement's still around. The Taliban is not controlled by "al-Qaeda", but is rather made up of a bunch of poor folks who are sick of all the crap they've been taking. The foreigners brought back the warlords. Therefore, to get rid of the warlords, get rid of the foreigners. Kabul is the only place in the country over which the central government truly has control.
Zanthos wrote:Spoken like a true 14 year old...
Ok, I am an american conservitive, but even I am not blinded by american politics. I felt, and still feel, that going into Iraq was the right thing to do, WMD's be damned. The problem is that Bush did not plan adequately at all, hell the war itself should have taken a month tops and we shoulda been outa there by now with a trained Iraqi military and a stable democracy in place. Alas not enough funds or troops were alotted at the start of the war, and we have been playing catch up for years now.
Going into Iran would be a bad idea as we're already stretched thin...
See, that's the thing. That's fucking nuts. America has no right to be galloping off toppling dictators, whether they be bastards or not. But secondly, that wasn't the plan to begin with at all. Bush didn't give fuck all about bringing democracy to Iraq. Do you know what democracy brought Iran? Anti-Americanism. So they wrecked their shit and set up the Shah. True popular rule in other countries usually proves not to be in line with what the American ruling class wants.
No, brother, Bush didn't give a damn about rebuilding, about democracy or whatever other noble thing you can imagine. That's not his game.
Let's examine why President Bush really went to Iraq. And it wasn't revenge. Bush doesn't care that Saddam tried to assasinate his father. Saddam was a head case. Bush couldn't care less.
But who does Bush work for? Bush works for, firstly, American oilmen. Now, why would invading Iraq help American oilmen? Under the U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after 1991, it couldn't sell very much oil anymore. There was only a little trickle allowed to go out, just enough to keep Hussein in guns and palaces, not much else. That is no good for American oilmen. They want to be able to free up that supply, but under the sanctions suggested by their own government, they can't do anything about it. And so, what to do?
So Iraq is invaded on the pretext that Hussein was having some shit he wasn't allowed to have under U.N. resolution six hundred odd something. America occupies Iraq. Let the oil flow! What's more, no more nationalized oil monopoly! Iraq is up for grabs! American devolopers do an invasion of their own on the now privatized oil industry. Oh, and by the way, companies from countries that didn't nvade with us, (For example, Shell) can go fuck themselves. You should have backed us up.
Now, with all this war afoot, who knows what might happen to the "Dwindling supply"? Oil companies now have free reign to do what they will to oil prices. They don't need to explain. They're in charge now. They have a President and an Army in their pockets.
And with all this war, we're surely going to need a lot of guns, fighter jets, tanks, jeeps...Bombs, bullets, flack vests, binoculars, REMs, boots, gas masks, uniforms, tires, helmets, high tech computers, maybe a new aircraft carrier...Anything goes. They can spend as much money as they want. It's a war, after all.
And so Bush gives billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to his allies in the privatized Defence industry of the United States. Oh, and to keep the economy strong, he's also cutting taxes.
Bush doesn’t give a shit about you, Zanthos. Or anyone else for that matter. He never has. In fact, he’s been a puppet for the ruling class all along. All he’s ever done is steal the money of American taxpayers and give it to his friends, and use America’s army, made up mostly of America’s poor, to get them some more cash at the people’s expense. And don’t think the fact that American companies control Iraq that the American government has strategic control over the oil supply. None of this is for the good of America. The oilmen don’t care about America. They only care about money, and they’re very good at getting it. America is just a good place to be when you’ve got cash and a good place to make more cash if you’ve already got some. Other they that, they may as well be Swiss.
And as for America going off and invading countries to bring them democracy, that has never happened and even if it did it would be fucked up. You simply cannot invade sovereign nations, remove their legal governments and install your own cronies. That’s not the way if works. The U.N. forbids it.
“But the U.N. is inneficent, they get nothing done, they’re pussies, they’re not in the best interest of America!”
The U.N. as all about NOT getting things done. The idea of the U.N. is that there will never be inter-nation wars again, and never one country occupying another or influencing it’s internal affairs. It was started during the Cold War, to avoid another world war like the one we’d seen. Had there been another big war, there wouldn’t be a world left. The U.N. has been doing their job, not perfectly, and they haven’t stopped even close the all the problems coming up, but they’ve done pretty damn well.
But the U.S.A. wrecked the whole system. Just when we were about to enter a period of the rule of international law and the non-armed resolution of conflicts, America has thrown is back into the 1900s, a world of alliances and blocs. If these trends continue, the U.N.’s going in the toilet and there’s going to be a lot more wars. And it won’t be all sunshine for the U.S.A. The PRC has, to it’s credit, been rather restrained in it’s stockpiling of intercontinental nuclear tipped missiles. If the U.N. is finished, they’ve got the resources. There’s more where that came from. U.S. global power will collapse.
The U.S.A. has a permanent veto in the U.N. It was a way for both the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. to back down from dangerous conflicts without losing face. It still is. What happens if it goes? The U.S.S.R. is gone, but there’s some folks moving in.
If the U.N. is gone, then I can go up to Alaska with some friends of mine and annex it into Canada as the Territory of Alaska, and quite legally. (Or maybe I’ll overthrow the government, privatize the oil, buy some Russian guns, and hold some fair and free elections.) The U.S.A. can’t complain to the U.N. You either fight or back down. Now, that may work with me. You might be able to outgun me. Probably, in fact. But what happens with China? Hey, what about Taiwan? If the U.N. goes, either PRC takes Taiwan or there’s a war between the U.S.A. and China. That’s what’s up.
Invading other countries is not in America’s best interest. The only people it helps are the people who don’t need any, them being, the American ruling class.
DylPickle wrote:
The only way to achieve a "stable" democracy is to let it develop on it's own. Iraq wasn't ready for a democracy, and it's not a case of what plans or tactics were used. The majority of the region's populous are religious fundamentalists or radical-fundamentalists, and whether a fundamentalist is muslim, catholic, jewish... or all those other little sectes in between... Then you have to be careful, cause those folks are loopy.
That's not true. Iraqis love Iraqis. It used to be a unified nation. Nobody gives a damn whose this or that. It's meaningless. They're all Iraqi muslims, and they all hate Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party of Iraq. Once they overthrow him, Iraq will be one of the most modern countries in the Middle East.
What? Invasion? Executed? No way! That's fucking nuts. Well, I don't know what to tell you now.
No, Iraqis never used to fight Iraqis. There hasn't been a civil war in Iraq for over fifty years, until now. The only happenings of that was Iraqi Arabs fighting Iraqi Kurds. That's more or less it. Some folks would posture, some folks would get stabbed and shot, but that happens anywhere, and it didn't happen in the cities, only in backward places, and it happened just as much between families of the same tribes and religions as between two different ones.
What's happening now is the same thing that happened in Lebanon. The central government has turned to mush, and so people have turned back to ethnic and religious communities to protect themselves. Naturally, some people want to use the power of these groups to enrich themselves and gain power. So they take control, and in return for protecting and retaliating for their neighbhourhoods (or what have you), they run the place like kings, because the group of men have the guns. It's a mob war, really. Sure, there's some religious types, but not really much in that way. In that sense, people are religious like King John was religious. And of course, these militia leaders will lose their power if the central government takes power. So they fight it. They don't want to be factory workers again. They've got real power in this anarchy, and so, will preserve it.
Now, those guys will fight the Americans because they're trying to restore a central government. But also, there's the other folk, people who are just sick of this whole crappy situation. Iraq wasn't like this under Saddam Hussein. The Police might have been corrupt, and murdered people, but nobody was fighting it out in the streets. People are fighting the Americans also because they're angry at them and want them to leave. The religious talking you hear, about how the Yanks are "Infidels" is meaningless. The Americans are Christians, therefore, a part of the Iraqi Nationalist anti-American movement is being Muslim. If China invaded America, people would blow shit up in the name of Christ. If Mexico did, they'd do it in the name of their righteous protestant resistance to the Catholic church. It's just posturing and nationalism.
Religious fanatics had no power in Iraq before America came around. Saddam Hussein made sure of that. They were his biggest enemies, and Iraq was a pretty progressive place, not really open to that kind of thing. They were more into secular socialism, that sort of thing. But now, long beards are going to make a comeback. You'd have never seen all this sort of thing four years ago.
