RE: Dems will not end war if they win the White House

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RE: Dems will not end war if they win the White House - 9/27/2007 10:52:28 PM

philosophy

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quote:

ORIGINAL: MasterKalif

Popeye, I think the best most safe bet now, would be to install a pro-Western dictator, maybe someone who is in the Iraqi army with american education, meaning send him over to Fort Benning, etc, and have him head an elite paratroppers type unit and help him take over the country...it will be imperfect and a short cry of western style democracy, but at least all the chaos and bs will be over, no Iran influence, and eventually it could lead to a more open democratic regime.

..and we could call him Saddam and pretend the whole sorry mess never happened......

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RE: Dems will not end war if they win the White House - 9/27/2007 10:55:58 PM

MasterKalif

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well.....not really. It would be different, probably not as hardcore or as totalitarian, merely authoritarian overtones, maybe overly militaristic and nationalistic...and he would be trained by US military, inculcated with US education and belief in democracy...but he would be wise to know that a country embroiled in a civil war cannot possibly hold free elections. Its an idea, and one that served the US well in the past, in central and south america. It is a mess now...it would be worse to leave as is, with chaos...

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RE: Dems will not end war if they win the White House - 9/27/2007 11:21:34 PM

cyberdude611

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We should have done that at the start....
Two mistakes were made:
1) The Iraqi army was disbanded
2) Paul Brenner was put in charge

Instead of disbanding the army, they should have took POWs. And then when Baghdad was captured a pro-western Iraqi dictator-like government should have been installed at the onset. In other words it would have been like a coup. We replace the top brass, the generals, the government officials but keep the general government structure intact. What this would have done was maintain the security forces, the chain of command, and the infrastructure. It would have been MUCH easier to secure the country this way. And from there we move step-by-step to a constitution, to elections, and eventually a democracy.
What we ended up doing was destroying not only the government but all forms of authority and also the security forces. Which means the security and infrastructure of the entire nation relied on the US armed forces. It should never have come to that. That's why there was all that looting, anarchy, and mass chaos after the invasion. Had we kept the security forces in place and simply replaced the leaders....none of that would have happened. Now we have to rebuild everything from scratch.

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RE: Dems will not end war if they win the White House - 9/27/2007 11:32:08 PM

Owner59

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That`s viceroy ,Paul Brenner,to you. lol

Can you imagine what the Iraqis thought,when they 1st heard that Bremmer,would be called Viceroy(or Viceroyal).

Sounds......... imperialistic? Nahhh,couldn`t be that.

< Message edited by Owner59 -- 9/27/2007 11:44:00 PM >

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RE: Dems will not end war if they win the White House - 9/28/2007 3:55:44 AM

meatcleaver

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quote:

ORIGINAL: kdsub

Well....we sure have ourselves a mess. I was very much against going there, but what the hell can we do now? I hate to throw away 3,000 lives for nothing but to me the Iraqi’s are not worth one more.

As if the invasion was about caring for the Iraqis! No one gave a monkey's toss about the Iraqis, caring about them wasn't even an excuse for the invasion, the invasion was about WMD's which everyone with a reasonable monkey sized IQ knew wouldn't be found because WMD's was so obviously just an excuse for an act of aggression.

You have only thrown away 3,000 lives if you don't secure the oil contracts for Bush's buddies.

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RE: Dems will not end war if they win the White House - 9/28/2007 11:17:54 AM

philosophy

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quote:

ORIGINAL: MasterKalif

Its an idea, and one that served the US well in the past, in central and south america.

...for a given value of the word 'well'. What it absolutely is though is an utter betrayal of the USA's high ideals. Truth, justice....stuff like that. To paraphrase an old saying...if Americans don't stand for something they will fall for anything.

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RE: Dems will not end war if they win the White House - 9/28/2007 1:16:16 PM

SuzanneKneeling

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Cyberdude, I don't know what the best course foreward is at this point, but wanted to point out that it's a little more complicated than your post states. Yes, Iran does want hegemony over the region and there is the religious identification between Shi'ite Iran and the majority in Iraq. But running counter to that is the fact that Iranians are ethnically different (Persians) from most Iraqis (Arabs). Then there is the little matter of lingering animosities from the 1980s Iran-Iraq war (granted, started by Saddam's Sunni government), in which Iraq (with Ronald Reagan's tacit blessing) used chemical weapons on Iranian footsoldiers. Hundreds of thousands died in that war. So it's not entirely clear how cooperative Iraq would/will be with Iran. (Obviously it's not dependent on that if Iran just asserts itself there.)

How Mr. Bush's neocon idiocracy couldn't have forseen this scenario in 2002 when it was a pretty clear possibility/probability to people like me who have no real expertise in the geopolitics of that region is pretty dumbfounding.

The other thing I wanted to add was that this really is overwhelmingly a religious civil war. Bush constantly touts the "fighting the terrorists there so we don't gots to fight 'em in Peoria" BS because he knows it keeps the easily-gulled GOP base frightened and on board with the war. Unfortunately the defunct Washington press corpse just passes the manipulative quotes on to us undigested and unhindered by any factual context. But numerous independent reports have confirmed that "foreign fighters" comprise only about 5% of the insurgency. And the group "Al Qaida in Iraq" that has named itself so conveniently for the White House propaganda machine has no operative connection with the group that attacked us. They are a mostly indigenous group whose sole point of agreement with the "Al Qaida" that attacked us is that they want the US to leave Iraq. Given that it really is their country and not mine, I can't really think of any objective objection to that sentiment. I suspect you'd feel the same if a large force of Iraqis came barging into your country causing a war that resulted in a decimated infrastructure and the deaths of upwards of 500,000 Americans (counting all causes).

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RE: Dems will not end war if they win the White House - 9/28/2007 1:34:34 PM

SuzanneKneeling

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You're awfully polite, philosophy. If I were drinking coffee while reading MasterKalif's post it would have shorted out my keyboard after being involuntarily sprayed all over it. One of the places that idea "worked well" for us (for a time, I guess), was in a country called... oh yeah, Iran - in 1953. Our CIA overthrew a democratically elected government there because it wanted to nationalize Iran's oil. Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh had the nerve to assert that Iran's oil should be for the benefit of the Iranian people rather than British and American oil companies. Pretty selfish, eh? So we installed the Shah to do our bidding at the repression of Iranians. For some bizarre reason Iranian youths grew up resenting the US, and took over our embassy. One of those youths may well be the current president of Iran (this in question).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax

But yeah, it really is just all about Britney's midriff. 19 mostly educated men spent many years planning and then flew themselves into the Twin Towers because we dress provocatively. They hates us for our freedoms. If we keep chanting this long enough with our ears plugged and eyes covered, maybe it will become the truth.

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RE: Dems will not end war if they win the White House - 9/28/2007 1:52:33 PM

Politesub53

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To add to Suzannes post, another complicatiom is that Al Qaida is a Sunni organisation as is Pakistan. Russia wont stand by and let Pakistan fall to Al Qaida as its too close to the old USSR countries. Iran and Al Qaida wont join together if America leaves as one is Shia the other Sunni.
Anyone thinking you can just leave Iraq and go back if civil war breaks out is misguided as the later loses will be horendous.

I loved the idea of going into to free the Iraqi people by installing a pro western dictatorship though... Thats what they had before the first Gulf war !!

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