[Vision2020] Continuing "The Ramadi Hell Hole"

[rvrcowboy]

On July 5, J. Ford Wrote (in red):

If the Iraqi people are amenable to allowing their life-time enemy to come in and take over, who are we to say they shouldn't be? 

Do you really believe the majority of the Iraqi people want to be under the control of Iran?  Do you really think it would be wise to turn over control of Iraq to Iran, giving Iran the ability to pressure other OPEC nations?  Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE would be in great peril from such a formidable foe.  Should these other OPEC nations come under the control of Iran, either directly or indirectly, it would put a great deal of the world's oil supply at risk.  This would likely result in collapse, or near collapse, of all the world's money markets.  

OPEC controls 78% of the entire world's oil reserves.  Who, in their right mind, would advocate allowing such a thing to happen?  Who would just assume the majority of the Iraqi people would be in favor of living under the direct control of Iran?

 The ONLY reason we are in the area is that Bush's friends and family have oil interests there.  

Do you have proof of this inane statement, or is it just one of your ridiculous, idiotic, groundless beliefs?  If you have proof of this, please be so kind as to share it with the rest of us.  Also, please inform the rest of us just how many barrels of oil the United States is getting from Iraq at this time, or even in the past.  

We have NO business telling other countries how they should be run.  

Using this sort of logic, we have no business interfering in the civil strife of any of the African nations.  We should just stand back and allow the senseless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people to continue.  Many people believe we not only should make it our business to intervene in such matters but in fact it is our OBLIGATION to do so.  Did you object to our intervention in Bosnia?  Are you certain you really believe what you are saying?  Or, perhaps you would just rather let the great United Nations handle it all.  Using that strategy, by the time anyone intervenes in any of these problems there will be no one left to save.

Unless they are a confirmed and bonafide threat to the rest of the world (which 
Iraq was NOT at the time we did this) then we have no right to march in there and say "Do things my way or else." 

I suppose we could all argue for eternity about whether Iraq, under Saddam, was a threat to the rest of the world.  I would doubt that Israel would agree with you, given the fact Saddam was financing sucicide bombings of innocent Israelis.  The ethnic cleasnsing of the Kurds and the political killings of any who resisted, the imprisonment and torture of young children....... the list goes on and on...  

In spite of all this, let's assume, for the sake of argument you are correct.  Iraq was NOT a bonafide threat to the rest of the world at the time of our invasion.  Assuming you are correct in this assumption, let's consider if it is a threat to the rest of the world now.  If we cut and run, Murtha style, from Iraq and allow the insurgency to force the rest of the population into a massive civil war, the threat to the rest of the world should be obvious to even you.  

If you believe George W. Bush is guilty of war crimes for invading Iraq, that is an issue for the ballot box and legal action.  It does not mean we should just pull out, leaving thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent people to fend for themselves, knowing most of them would surely die.  Priorities dictate that we should deal with the problems as they exsist right now, at this time.  We can not keep bitching and whining about the past while allowing the innocent to die in the present.  Whether we were right or wrong in our past actions, we do definately have an obligation to millions of people not to just let them die now.  Cries of "Bush Lied!, Children Died! and other rhetoric are not going to help anything in the present.

We would fight it if another country did that to us - why should we be allowed to do it to others? The only reason we should come into another area is if we are asked by the government of the country or if there is a real, that's REAL, threat to the world if we don't.   

Of course we would fight another country invading ours.  So would any other country, regardless of whether it was justified or not.  As I stated above, whether or not Iraq, under Saddam, posed a real threat to the rest of the world may be debatable.  If you don't believe it was, take it up at the ballot box.  Surely you are not naieve enough to believe for a moment that any rogue government, killing its own citizens and exporting terrorism abroad would ever ask another government to step in and straighten the mess out.  Once again, we must concentrate on the immediate problem right now.  The time to argue the rights or wrongs of the past must wait until the present is secure.

Where in all that is written does it say "America, the Babysitter of the World"?  I always thought it was "America the Beautiful".

Most Americans still believe in "America the Beautiful".  They are not naieve enough to start hating their own country just because they disagree with their President or the actions of their elected officials.  Most of us still believe the United States is still the greatest nation in the world.  We laugh at those philosophy professors who continually hold up some third world dictorate as the role model for Americans, over their own country.

As for America being the babysitter of the world, many believe the U.S. should finance the world, or most of it, through the United Nations, while giving up the right to have any more say in world affairs than any third world nation operating under whatever rogue government they happen to be laboring under at any given moment.

Mayhap if we were to stop trying to beat everyone over the head with our way of doing things, the "third world" countries would actually get down to the business of developing and we'd actually have new partners to do trade with. 

And, perhaps, if we just stayed home and let the third world countries eliminate each other, kill off their own people through ethenic cleansing, and figure out how to support their own citizens, using their own resources and wealth, there would be no third world countries left to trade with.  Hey!  Maybe you have hit on something here!

As long as we continue to carry the big stick of "I'm right - you're not" we are going to just continue in the circle of war/hate/intolerance that we 
seem stuck in.

I just love it when people of your persuasion speak of hate and intolerance.  You hate the President, you hate anyone who does not agree with you politically.  You even transfer your hate of others to your own country.  You are totally intolerant of anyone who believes differently from you and get totally millitant toward them.  Your spokespeople are misfits like Michael Moore or that poor pathetic Cindy Sheehan.  You accuse your own country for the problems of the entire rest of the world.  You carry so much guilt over being born an American you can't enjoy the privileges and rights you have because of it.

Thoughts of a war-weary Vet that has seen too much violence in too short a period of time.

And you somehow believe the violence will just magically end if we just cut and run and leave the innocent at the mercy of the insurgents?  Do you really belive there will be less violence if that happens?  Are you really that naieve?

J  :]

Dick S.
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