Bring our troops home!!!!!

Well i recently heard that any death takes a little bit away from everybody - but that is a little whimsical.

To be honest with you paul - it depends. Ofcourse every innocent civilian death is horrible and i feel very sorry that they are cuaght up in all of this.

No - they did not ask to be ''invaded'' [well we might argue that they wanted Saddam removed] but neither did they ask to be killed by their own countrymen or outside terrorist organisations.

It is always those in the middle that suffer the most.

''so because you dont believe in jihad you think you can just go and wipe all who do believe in jihad out and yes WOMEN AND KIDS .''

Not this interpretation paul - we went to Iraq not to fight Jihadists - did we ?. They got involved afterwards - so they are not innocents. They invaded the country even worse than we supposedly did - our intentions were a little more productive than theirs.

If it was what the people wanted and they formed a political party - put the guns down and talked - in a democracy they can just about SAY what they want. This stopped being a jihad a very long time ago. I do not give a toss about any of those people killing their own people. I feel sorry for the kids that have effectively been brainwashed - the women for all my compassion are grownm ups.

I think even saying it is 'Jihad' is giving them more 'credit' than they deserve - I can just about see that men supposedly going out to defend their country - but women and children ? Indoctranating kids and useing them and women as human sheilds is just disgusting.

 

Given enough inteligence I could have forseen it - i could quite easily haved taken another POV though.

I knew that there would be some critics forseeing the worst and not seeing anything further than their own noses or political / morale prejudices. E.g The Lib Dems - that was very predictable.

If i accept a civil war is occuring - it is not occuring all over Iraq.
I knew there were going to be critics and they would forsee what could have happened.
I knew the majority of the media would take the stance thay have.
Their is nothing that could not have been forseen.
There was always going to be well articulated critics that saw what could have happened.
Not many had the foresight to know exactly what could occur - and to a degree they blind themselves by their own bias. Ignoring the reality and just being content with the reality that they create. To a degree like us all.

At the other end of the scale there are critics pouring scorn on everything that the other critics are saying - that was predictable as well. They are calling them political opportunists.

Nobody was 100% correct with their anaylsis and not many people are 100% unbiased and objective -

How many re-actions can you put down to consequence of our actions.
To a certain degree you have a fair point but after a while it becomes a excuse and a bad one at that imho.

 

bullshit

 

Thinking that we are all connected and a peice of us dies when some other human being dies - i do not know how you garned this ''so your dad gets killed by someone who feels he can take your dads life and you call that whimsical ? '' from what i said - paul.

They were caught up in global political machinations - even if the supposed ''second resolution'' was met - and all the guys and gals calling all this illegal - were satisfied it was legal - there would have been a invasion.
So unfotunatly they were ''caught up in it''.

I'm sorry paul - i guess as not to cause confusion i should have said:
It is always the innocent civillians that are caught in the middle - they always end up suffering the most.

WMDs and Saddams none compliance.

We build mosques schools hospitals - attempt to protect the innocent - http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029394374 http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/

Well i'm not whimsical as far as that goes paul - so no i do not give a toss about those people who kill our troops and innocents deliberately and consistently.

 

my bullshit not yours ....

 

now you have lost me you fuckin nazi piece of shite not a big one at that just a little fuckin turd go and fly your georges cross motherfucka and pretend your cross is better than anyone elses ..........all you are man is a sponk stain on humanity that went wrong ............you can try and justify what you want prick ....so why are"nt YOU OVER IN IRAQ FIGHTING FOR OUR SO CALLED FREEDOM ?

 

Matthew, it's reassuring to see that your views are as ridiculous as ever. Some things never change eh? I won't comment further on them, I think we've had this debate over and over for the last three years or so. Sufficeth to say, troops out now....

 

Let's say Denmark invades England, destroys the government, bombs the houses of parliament. They disband the army and police, destroying the nation's civil infrastructure. A civil war breaks out. Some extremist anti-Danish factions come over from Scotland and Wales and exploit the situation, in the ensuing and ongoing violence hundreds of thousands of people die.

Would you say this situation is entirely the fault of the English, Scottish and Welsh? Or would you say that the Danes had some culpability for creating the situation in which a civil war could happen? In the case of Iraq, it's not just creating a situation in which a civil war could happen - it's creating precisely the situation in which civil war was likely given the region's well documented and long standing tensions.

 

Yes, and after I said on another thread that I was almost glad he existed. Utterly contemptible insane bullshit.

 

I did say you had a fair point -
Let me try and explain once again .
Yes i'll accept it is our fault that we created a situation in wich civil war could happen - i accepted in certain parts of Iraq that is happening. In other parts it is not. Why is it not occuring in all the provinces of Iraq ?.

For one thing - the majority of the violence is being orchestrated by outside terrorists exploiting the situation - yes you can blame us for creating the situation that allowed them to start doing this.

This is where i think our views devide

The continual violence can't imho be blamed on us for ever.
What is the insurgencys [ignoring the terrorists for a minute] excuse for killing Iraqis ? - because we are there ? - they want us out ? - we are killing Iraqs ? - we invaded Iraq ?.
What does the insurgency want ? - us out of Iraq ?.

So their response is - they go about killing their own countrymen as well as us. Like you they can blame us killing innocents / invading the country. After this No. of years they end up with nobody else to blame but themselves. The majority of people in Iraq and the majority of the rest of the world have moved on.

Iraq and its people have moved on from the initial invasion - millions voted - UN mandates have been written - govermental institutions have been formed.
I'm sure you read through the link i posted . Obviously their are many who have not moved on for legitimate reason - do they kill ? NO. Do they air their opinions YES. Have they every right to ? YES.

After 3-4 years like i keep saying - the excuse that because we are there the insurgency and terrorists can STILL blame us - gets a little tenuous.

If neither one of you 3 wanted troops in Iraq and are pacifists - then i doubt we will find middle ground. I'm sure memory serves atleast 2 of you are not.
To be honest i'm not 100% sure where you guys stand on this. My abiding memory is of you guys calling my POV dispicable etc etc - not actualy providing me with some solid thoughts on what you think [aside from responding to me] - Yes even after all this time. I think you jumped off this wagon before my time ? *shrugs shoulders* dunno. What was you thoughts about this BEFORE the invasion ?.

Maybe a brief comment from all 3 of you will prevent us having to go through this in the future.

I'm pretty sure neither Lithium or PP are pascifists so i do not know why you give me a hard time.
If it was deemed legal in either one of your eyes - then the violence whould still be occuring. If there was better initial planning - their would still be widespread deaths and terrorists exploiting the situation - If we had waited and applied soft diplomacy - people would still be dying. There was always going to be a crunch point in all of this.


We shall never know if your chrystaline points of view - if used in Iraq - would have ended this situation in a shorter space of time or not created this situaion in the first place.

Is this to judge how i would be feeling about being invaded ? - how the hell do i know - i'm not suggesting no Iraqi shares your POV - many do. The point is many do not. I'm intitled to my POV - many Iraqis share my POV.

Ok answering you:
What happens when the goverment of Denmark helps rebuild the goverment of England - provides the ground for democratic elections - helps train a new police/military force - helps rebuild the infrastructure and helps defend that infrastructure and the people within England from extremists [along with hundreds of other initiatives]. You end up with the latter of the problems - which i fully appreciate can at the start of this situation be blamed on us. The only people that have not moved on from their initial reaction to this - is you guys and the extremists and the insurgency and those that follow them.

Their are millions of Iraqis that share the POV i have - or they felt that way when the intial invasion occured. I'm sure many still do share the POV i have [even if it is a little weathered in the storm] . Are all their POVs ridiculous utterly contemptible insane bullshit ?.

To be honest i think if we were discussing another conflict we would agree with each other - even if none of the fundementals would have changed -

Critics call every war illegal - critics call every war ill advised - critics always have better options. It just seems you guys are the critics this time and i'm the poor little fish in the fish tank getting bitten left right and centre. Oh well thats life.

Well that is not new - so i lost you but you still feel the need to call me ''you fuckin nazi piece of shite'' mmm cheers paul - i'll remember to pass judgement on you - if i do not quite understand you POV.

Well i think out of the 3 of you - Paul you are the one person who may not have wanted any troops over there - regardless of resolutions - it being legal or illegal. None of that crap matters to you. I fully respect that POV - but it is waste of both our time discussing this - we are pretty much dyemetrically apposed to one another.

The initial venom is because guy has asked me about this about 10000 times - i do chill out. http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=216879&page=1&pp=10

If you do not bother to read any of it - well then confusion of our POVs wil ensue for even longer - have a nice day paul.

 

what if they detonated a bomb and a splinter of wood dug into your skin and caused you to need a sticking plaster would you try to get revenge then ?

 

sentient where are you going with this ?... sorry just curious .

 

Of course Denmark might have been well intentioned in their attempt to overthrow the oppressive British government, they might be doing everything they can to try to rebuild the civil infrastructure they destroyed and trying to bring some semblance of civilisation back to the UK. This is the very least they should do - they are, of course, culpable for igniting this tinderbox at the outset. The Welsh extremists are not blameless - of course they aren't - but the fact remains that had Denmark not invaded the Welsh would have had no opportunity to exploit the situation and the English civil war would never have occurred. The British government might well have been oppressive and murderous - but never could they have dreamt of causing so many deaths, so much suffering had they remained in power for decades more. The Danish are culpable in large part for the consequences of their actions.

This is the only point of yours I was addressing - the mealy-mouthed attempt to remove blame for what has happened from those who caused this entirely predictable situation to begin with. I have no desire to engage yet again with the rest of your idiotic pro-war bullshit matthew. I don't doubt that at the end of time you will still be attempting to support this war.

 

With you so far

With you so far

With you so far

ALL OUR FAULT - that is what your words boil down too - thats the only point i disagree with you so far.

Back with you again - bone of conention is HOW BIG of a part

I was NOT removing blame - just i think transposing the bulk of the blame from one side to the other [at this stage of the conflict - maybe my views would differ a few years ago] - not to deny we are not partly responsible.

Pro - war ? like i said many Iraqis share my POV do you think they are idiotic ?.

Keep calling me all the names you like - but this is the type of response that creates confusion - i only ask you to post a very short statement about what you thought of this situation pre-war and maybe what you feel now. Don't worry i was not expecting you to answer me - not that i was speaking to you in the first place.

Clear up if you are pascifist or not [makes your rude statement about me being ''pro-war'' a litle redundant if you are not - yes we can disagree on this current conflict - but how can i understand YOU if you never answer ME.].
If you are pascifist just add your name to Pauls - cheers.

I have no idea - nothing has altered my POV over the last year - maybe some new revelations will crop up. Maybe ? maybe not. Why in the hell should i not defend my POV.

 

No, this is a misreading. My words were:

"The Welsh extremists are not blameless - of course they aren't - but the fact remains that had Denmark not invaded the Welsh would have had no opportunity to exploit the situation and the English civil war would never have occurred."

This does not translate to "all our fault". Particularly the numbers of deaths directly attributable to people other than "us". That much is obvious. Nonetheless the coalition has culpability for creating a situation in which this outcome was predictable. This is what I said, not "all our fault". I think you like to boil complicated ideas down to simplistic axioms which do not come close to conveying the subtlety of a position.

You've asked me the question and I've answered it several times before, most recently in this thread. It's not a simple yes/no answer. Again, if you want a simple axiom to address such a nuanced and complex area of moral philosophy you won't get it from me. I'm sure you will have no trouble in simplistically misinterpreting my words yourself.

It may be your favourite hobby to bait people on liberal forums with your poorly spelt conservative tirades, but I really don't want to go over old ground for the millionth time...

 

Well thus far I've seen 3 valid justifications for war:


1) The humanitarian reason

2) Weapons of mass destruction

3) Control of resources

All three have fallen flat on their face.

1) Far more people are dying now than under Saddam. It would, of course, be unfair to place the blame for ALL of these deaths at the hands of the occupation forces, but as Lithium said, they are entirely responsibile for the facilitation of this situation. Anti-war activists, with no grounding in military strategy, had been predicting the current situation a year before the invasion, so it strikes me as owing to a level of gross incompetence or simply ambivalence on the part of the British and American governments that Iraq is worse (both objectively in deaths and subjectively in Iraqi opinion) than it was under Saddam.

2) No weapons of mass destruction were found before the war to justify invasion and none have been found since. Quite simply, there were no weapons of mass destruction, the 45 minute claim has been thoroughly debunked, as has Colin Powell's evidence before the UN (by ex-Pentagon staff who oversaw the fabrications) and it is quite apparent the argument was a ruse for -

3) Control of resources. I put this as a legitimate reason for war. Really it's not, it's illegal, but in terms of the legitimate requirements of states, it is an overwhelming factor. Nevertheless, the war for oil has been utterly undermined by the current situation and oil production has plummeted. The only other concievable benefit would be to have supported the petrodollar. Many analyists agree that Saddam effectively signed his own death warrant by converting Iraq's oil sales from dollars into euros (which as the stronger currency boosted Iraq's economy). Since America's trillion dollar deficit is largely supported by the fact that oil is traded in dollars, any shift on a large scale to euros would cripple the American economy. Thus amongst the first acts of the puppet regime put in place by America was to return oil sales to dollars, which in fact harmed the Iraqi economy, but supported the American. This, as I can see, has been the only success for the Americans in this war. And that in itself has been undermined by Iran, Venezuela and North Korea's moves towards swapping to euros (those names ring a bell don't they? - oh yes, America's shit litst). Perhaps the same motivations are there for further disastrous military engagements.

In the meantime, however, the war has done nothing to help the war on terror. Firstly because Iraq had nothing to do with global terrorism. Secondly because Iraq now has a lot to do with global terrorism. What al Qaeda and related groups lost in Afghanistan, they gained in Iraq - a training ground for militants and an enemy against which to mobilise.

In no way can I see this war has been successful. Its outcomes have been as disastrous as its intents were misguided....

 

FAIR ENOUGH - sorry. I read it as ''but never could they have dreamt of causing so many deaths'' .
Maybe i'm a little sceptical - you seem to slip from seemingly being unreasonable to being reasonable - but i think we both mis-interprete each other.

Not at all - i just think we are just two people destined not to see eye to eye.
You write like you're doing a editorial for the socialist worker and i write like somebody that can not spell very well.

YES i think we cover all this other stuff over and over. While i had your attention and in hope to understand you further i just wanted clarity on a few things. Maybe i just do not ask the right questions.

I asked what you thought about the situation pre-war. Not the usual diatribe against BUSH or BLAIR - and their supposed ideology - just about the resolutions your thoughts about the WMDs and Saddams threat - maybe YOU have answered this maybe we should NEVER get into any of this again. Regardless what i ask or you respond we are cursed to never get very far.

Not that i was actually talking to you in the first place *cough*.

No - like i said in the other thread you just miss 3/4s of what i say - the fact you choose not to respond to what i have said - just drags out our interactions as i'm forced to work out your POV from the responses and insults you throw - you clearly dislike what i think and what i say - so lets just never go round and round ever again - i promise not to respond to you on this again - if you do the same - deal ?.

Nope - my flaw is responding to overly ''liberal'' people - i seem to attract them. WTF is ''conservative'' about my POV - why are you so fond of labels - why do i end up using them myself ! .

I never wanted to go over this with YOU again. Whatever you say this is what i read ''Well in terms of lunatic religious fanatic mass murdering cunts........'' - so however nuanced you are it is just like your not quite seeing the world as i do - and never will. I never appreciated that you were THAT far in the opposite direction as me.

I guess i do see that now.

 

I think you fail to make the distinction between ironic and rhetorical overstatement with a colourful turn of phrase and the detailed and nuanced reasoning which underpins it. Surely nobody could take seriously an opinion that T Blair is a "lunatic religious fanatic mass murdering ****". It was an ironic rhetorical flourish in a throwaway one-liner in another thread. Don't be so literal minded. Like all jokes there is a kernel of my true opinion underlying flippant remarks such as that, but they are not to be taken at face value. I have plenty of times expounded my reasoning for opposing the invasion of Iraq in serious terms giving reasons and arguing my case in earnest.

Peace Phoenix's excellent post sums up my attitude about the war. Before the invasion I was vehemently opposed to it on pretty much all grounds. The evidence for WMD was sketchy at best - I took pains to study all the publicly available infomation including reading Blix and El Baradai's lengthy detailed robust and authoritative UN reports. As it turned out they made a conservative over-estimate of Saddam's capabilities.

The humanitarian case was exceptionally weak - it seemed very likely that the war would cause far more suffering than would otherwise occur - a judgement articulated by many which has been borne out with a vengeance. There may have been a case for humanitarian intervention when Saddam was committing his worst atrocities during the 80s and in the aftermath of 1991, but there was no evidence that atrocities on any comparable scale had taken place since the crushing of the Shia rebellion. Invading a country and destroying its infrastructure will inevitably lead to many tens of thousands of deaths. There are few situations, save those in which we are intervening in an ongoing genocide, in which such an action could be justified on humanitarian grounds. As it was the war was more likely to cause more death and suffering than the (not ideal, but less bad) decision to keep alive our ongoing attempts at a more peacable resolution.

The legal case of relying upon the UN resolutions from the 1991 war as justification for the 2003 war - a separate war conceived in an entirely different set of circumtances and for different reasons - was to use perhaps the understatement of the decade, "debatable".

It was therefore my opinion that the war was unjustified, probably illegal, and that it would cause more harm than good.

 

I agreed.

What else where they going to say ? - Regardless of the situation in many provinces - obviously the major areas of conflict are going to be used as ''told you so'' - I agree this could have been predicted - but lets not forget that is not the only story in Iraq.

Imho it was about none-compliance - nobody can argue he was in none -compliance. WMDs yeah that was about 30 minutes worth of 6 hours worth of evidence that was used to 'justify' the invasion. The fact the other 5.5 hours of justifications are rarely talked about is predictable - given the public reaction to all of this - in part based on the way all of this has been reported in the press. Ignoring those apposed to the war - in principle - anyway.

Maybe maybe not - it was what he was supposed to be declaring that ultimately mattered.

Yeah WE were never threatened by that - i think it was troops in greece or something. One plank of this i never bought into.

Many analyists disagree
You might want to go and take a fresh look at that.
Iraqi economy up
Oil production up
World oil prices stable

Unfair and untrue on both counts.

If you buy into ''war for oil'' .

Hahhahah

I agree.

Thanks for sharing - not completly what i expected - but appreciated anyway.

 

Thanks Lithium