Hail the liberators!Follow

/shrug

With the very real distinction that even the most paranoid of us is not worried that a vocalization for or against the current administration will determine whether we or our families are dragged out of our homes, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually executed for being dissidents.

All I want is to blow you Smash, why wont you let me???

[/b]

gbaji wrote:

Smasharoo wrote:

You're wrong. Civil war is inevitible regardless of if we have a cerimonial "turning over of power" to some random puppet state. No one's even clear who we're turning power over to yet and we're like 90 days away from doing so.

That's certainly a possibility. I don't believe it's inevitable at all though. It will depend on a number of factors. I do agree that the lack of any solid leadup to the turnover is a concern. But then I'm not privy to the plans of the administration. They could have very legitimate reasons for keeping things hush hush. I'm willing to await judgement on this until June at least.

I have no problems debating the potentialities of the situation in Iraq. I just personally feel that using the silly Dem rallying cry of "Mission Accomplished" is a pretty **** poor slap in the face to the soldiers who fought in the War and did certainly "accomplish" a pretty stunning military victory. Insinuating that the statement was somehow invalid because we still had a lot of dangerous work ahead of us is inherently disengenous. It's not like Bush didn't on several occasions at that time talk about the work that we still had to do rebuilding Iraq. How ludicrous is it to base your whole objection to the current events in Iraq on a deliberate misinterpretation of a simple congratulatory message?

But I guess a sound bite and a bit of innuendo is more important then the truth.

/sigh

Gbaji, you strike me as the sort who'd still be waffling in you were bent over a table in some Middle-East jail cell.

[b]DISOLVE TO:

GBAJI being feminized by MAHUARA, a large husky Arab prison guard. MAHUARA is sweating and gnashing his teeth as he services GBAJI.

MAHAUARA (grunting)
Theese, THEESE is what we theenk of you, steenking
infeedel! You shall leeeve our countree! WE WILL
MAKE YOU BLEEED!

GBAJI (impassive)
Now now, we'll have none of that. We can't leave
yet, we haven't finished fixing your country for
you.

MAHUARA
YOU WILL LEEEVE! We need notheeng from you! For
every day you remain in Iraq, we will make women
of one thousand American infeedels! Like THEES!

GBAJI (conciliatory)
I'm sorry. We can't do that.

ENTER:

Smasharoo. He walks on, pauses. SMASHAROO spies GBAJI and MAHUARA.

SMASHAROO
Hey look. Gbaji's getting reamed.

EXIT SMASHAROO.

MAHUARA (to GBAJI)
Are you bleeding yet?

GBAJI remains silent. MAHUARA resumes servicing him. GBAJI's
head bobs up and down.

The camera PANS SLOWLY up the length of GBAJI's body as it is
rocked by MAHUARA. It STOPS and focuses on GBAJI's face as he
turns and faces the audience.

GBAJI
It may seem as though I'm being sodomized, but
there are many factors to consider here. You see,
I am, in fact, NOT being sodomized. Sodomy , originally a term used by a small, unimportant
sect of cannibalistic transexual Ecuadorian
pygmies to refer to the act of braiding a tribes-
mate's **** hairs-

FADE TO BLACK.

The point of the above simulated screenplay passage was to point out that, even were he to be f*cked up the ***, Gbaji would still say it isn't so just because someone else said it was.

You can't deny that "the poor, repressed Iraqi people, suffering under the regime of evil Saddam" was not a card publicly played by the American government in trying to bolster support for the war in Iraq. Why, I have heard George Bush say many such things in his addresses to the nation. It may not be the primary reason the country went to war, but it's in the mix. I hardly think you can call it a non-issue.

cool - when does Bush declare war on half of the countries of Asia where this applies too?

Edited, Wed Apr 7 19:13:05 2004 by Leiany

Panama, Grenada, The Balkans (remember that massively sucessfull text book way to win an engagement that was executed so well you forgot it existed?), AFGANISTAN.

Christ, you look the fool when you try to refrence history and miss a war that started 18 months ago.

The very frightening thing about the war in Iraq isn't *why* we went, it's *what the warplanners honestly thought would happen after Saddam was removed from power*.

That's where the ideology of this Administration breaks down and becomes overly religious moralistic fantasy. This Administration realized it had sufficent military might to remove Saddam from power and assumed that doing so would result in a free democratic Iraq. What they failed to realize is that military power can exersize a nations will on the world what it cannot do is change the will of the people it's unleashed upon.

The Romans realized that over two thousand years ago, these guys still don't understand it.

JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE A HAMMER DOESN'T MEAN THAT EVERYTHING YOU SEE IS A NAIL

Sometimes using other tools is a better way. Bush, Rumsfeld, et all are the child hammering the puzzle peice that won't fit into place and then staring confusedly at it when it doesn't reveal the picture they expected.

Let me bold in the parts you apparently skimmed over. I know you are horrible at reading anything in context Smash, so maybe this will help:




Panama. We went in to capture a criminal for extradition to the US. While I don't agree with the "war on drugs" in principle, we certainly did not just invade Panama because we were ideologically opposed to its government.

Grenada. I'm fairly certain there was something about some US hostages? Again. Not ideological. Not done "purely" because we disliked the government. We had very real and specific goals that *required* action.

The Balkans. Hmmm... First off. Aside from a secondary role as air support, we didn't really do anything there. If we had, we probably would have screwed it up just as badly as Vietnam, so that's a good thing. In this case, there was a civil war going on, and all we really did was stay out of the way, and establish "safe areas" (which weren't always super safe), and no fly zones. This was a UN operation Smash. Not US.

Afghanistan. Again. Did you bother to read what I said? We knew about and ignored the Taliban for a decade. We weren't there "purely" because we disliked their government. We were there because they were harboring Al-queda. What part of that is confusing to you?


Contrasted to Vietnam, where we basically got into a huge armed conflict purely because we didn't want Ho Chi Minh to be the leader of the country after they broke away from French colonial rule. We didn't want him purely because he was "communist". Of course, he was "communist" purely because France was a Nato power, so we and the rest of the "democratic" world supported France. That left the revolutionary cause to turn to the Soviet Block for weapons and support.

Pure ideology. Pure stupidity. Minh was "real" communist about as much as you are a gun lover. But we fought and died in that country for over a decade purely over a word. That's stupidity. Thank Kennedy and his dominoe theory for that one...


Somalia. A situation very similar to Bosnia actually. However, unlike Bosnia, we decided we just had to meddle. Even though the UN was handling the situation just as they were in Bosnia, we apparently couldn't help but send our own forces in for political muscle. Of course, we did it in a half-assed way as usual and accomplished nothing more then getting a bunch of Rangers killed. Sure. We may have decided that the UN wasn't getting the job done to our satisfaction, but the administration took such a tepid course of action, with no willingness to carry it through, that it was doomed from the start.


Let's contrast again to Iraq. Here again, we see the US deciding that the UN is not "getting the job done". However, instead of some half-assed actions, the administration decides to actually do something that will work.


The only people who are thinking that this wont be costly are the people like you Smash. The difference is that the Bush administration recognizes this and is willing to pay that cost.


I just find it amusing that even with the mounds of historical precident establishing that doing half measures only results in lost american lives with nothing gained (and interestingly enough, it's virtually always a Dem president who gets us into such conflicts), there you are complaining about the cost of the Iraq conflict. Look. Just because your politics requires that you lie to yourself about whether an action will result in death does not mean that the other side does. Us Republicans understand that if you use your military, people (on both sides) are going to die. That's why when we use the military we do it in a way designed to actually achieve a desired result. You seem to prefer using the military as a political leverage instead. Historically, that's resulted in zero results and a lot of dead US servicemen.


Can we at least wait until after July to see if the administrations plan works? Yelling that the sky is falling is amusing, but not terribly productive...





Yes. And we've tried the "Dem way". We got 10+ years of Vietnam. We got a brief and moronic action in Somalia. We got 10 years of sanctions against Iraq with no gains made. How about you guys step aside for a few years and let us use a different tool on the problem? I think its abundantly obvious that the one we were using hasn't been doing the trick.

Edited, Wed Apr 7 23:32:14 2004 by gbaji

I thought I already answered this. Why are you just repeating the exact same sentiment as though I didn't post a response?




Look. The very fact that we didn't deal with Saddam purely because he was being a meanie to his own citizens is all the evidence that we need to debunk the "why aren't we attacking China" argument.

We attacked Iraq because they met a whole list of pre-requisites, which, each taken separately would not be enough to justify an attack, but when taken collectively, was.

No one single reason was enough by itself. That's why we aren't going to attack China (that and China has nuclear weapons and is on the security council of the UN). Get it?


That does not make the humanitarian reasons a "pretense". It's one reason of many. There are also nations with WMD that we don't have any plans to attack. By your logic, we should be attacking France because they have the bomb and the reason we went to war with Iraq was because Iraq supposedly had WMD. Or we should be invading Siberia because there's oil there.

You seem smarter then that Yanari. We did not go to war in Iraq for one single reason. I know that it makes for a less impressive bumper sticker, but that really is the truth. The speaches made by Bush give multiple causes for the war. The presentations made by Powell give multiple causes for the war. The Act of war signed by Congress lists multiple causes for the war. No amount of simplifying it to be was just about WMD, or just about terrorism, or just about UN sanction violations, or just about human rights will make it so.

Hmmm....as this will effect Hong Kong also it could mean an end to some plat-trading companies...... =)

Sure, set conditions that qualify it working and then when they're not mit have the balls to come here and say "Gee, I was wrong."

Wait, what the hell am I saying. You won't set conditions, that would require knowing two things:

One, what the "plan" is. Are you aware of some secret administration plan that I'm not? What is "the plan", exactly? Because at the present time, "the plan" seems to be to hand over power and sovriegnty on June 30th to some unamed group of people (probably just the current governing council leaving the situation pretty much identical to the way it is now) maintain the current troop allocations and change Bremer's title from Administrator to Govenor, pardon me, that's wrong...Ambassador.

Two, what "wokrs" actually means. The situation is deteriorating in Iraq as it has been for going on a year now. Every milestone that's lapped up by the press fails to lead to the stability the Administration would like it to.

How many times have we heard that attacks are "isolated" or the result of "fringe groups" or my favorite "Saddam Loyalists".

You know what the attacks are the result of? Pissed off ordinary Iraqis with a minimum of prodding from religous leaders or forieng nationals.

So feel free to step up to the plate and set some conditions for sucess in July and we'll see what you can come up with.

I'm not much for arguing about this kind of stuff on message boards, so in my place I offer these tokens of.... jounx?

Sing along with Powell

Sing along with Saddam

My apologies for not adding anything other than comic relief.

Ah. But you already have Smash. That's the problem. You've set conditions that are unrealistic and impossible to achieve. And then when the US "fails" at them, you post here claiming some sort of moral victory.

Now I know you haven't actually stated any conditions, but if you try the "I never said that!" argument, I will physically strangle you. These are based on points you have argued and keep arguing over and over. If you don't like them, then feel free to give us your actual "conditions" for success in Iraq:

First off you seem to believe that the day after the Iraqi military was defeated, that all operations in Iraq would be over. Our boys would load into transports and come home and everything would be wonderful.

You seem also to believe that Saddam should have been captured/killed immediately upon the fall of Bagdad. That it took us 6 months longer is therefore a failure.

You believe that a stable Iraqi government can be formed in a day. After all, it's not like we left forces in the other countries we've conquered for years afterwards. Nope. This should all happen in an instant. We'll just wave a magic wand and it will happen.

You have this absolutely bizarre belief that you can use a military force and no one will ever get killed. So every time either Iraqi's or US people die, you paste it here and show it to be yet another failure of the US.


Where did you get those assumptions? What kind of bizarro history did you study to make you believe any of those are reasonable expectations? They aren't. You seem to think that if you keep insisting that they *should be*, and then pointing out when we don't meet them, that people will believe we're failing.


Just because the administration has not met your ludicrous conditions for victory does not mean they have failed. You need to pull your head out of whatever ultra-liberal sources you allow to do your thinking for you and apply just a touch of common sense.




Nope. I don't know what it is either. But that's the point Smash. I don't assume it will fail becuase I'm not personally in the loop. You, on the other hand, are perfectly comfortable with making wild speculations about what will happen, and arguing against current actions as though those speculations are unavoidable.



Did you really think there would be no opposition to this? It will get worse before it gets better. What works is a process that moves Iraq away from a regime based on fear. The only way we're going to accomplish this is if we show we have the will to do it. Leaving, backing off, or shirking away at this point will almost guarantee that we "lose".

What do you think they should be doing Smash? Huh?



And yet still less then 10% of the population Smash. Heck. I'd be willing to be we're talking about less then 5%. These are the same 5% that would rule Iraq through fear if we don't stop them.

I find it amusing that the same guy who will argue for days about how horrible it is that 5% of the people in the US posses 90% of the wealth, but seems to see nothing wrong about 5% of the people in Iraq not only possessing 90% of the wealth, but all the power, the governent, control of the laws, and an ability to literally do anything they want, with the rest of the population completely powerless to stop them.

How freaking hypocritical can you be Smash? The only consistency I can see in your political positions is that you argue that side that is most unrealistic. That and you don't think that a military should ever actually kill anyone. Got it.





Conditions? First off that the government starts taking control of the day to day working of Iraq. Then *gradually* assumes the role of policing the nation. Lots of baby steps here Smash. Anyone who thinks that the day after the new government is in place, everything will magically be better is fooling themseles (or you, yet again placing ludicrous conditions). Little things will matter. Getting power and water to the nation. Getting the factories working again. Getting public services working again. That's what's going to "win" this. Not bullets. However, you can bet that those 5% will use bullets to try to stop it. They don't want order. They want chaos. So yeah. You'll see more attacks on people performing the oh-so-evil jobs of connecting electricity wires, and reparing water mains. You will see more people die Smash. I'm sorry if your childlike view of the world wont accept it, but the "bad guys" wont just give up.

However, the "win" is that over time, they'll lose support. Over time the rest of the Iraqis will see them as the problem, and not the solution. The difference between a revolutionary and a menace is how the public percieves their current social/economic conditions. As the structures of Iraq are rebuilt, the radicals will have less and less ability to sway new recruits (or keep their current ones). It's easy to get people riled up when all the know is that their cities are in rubble, they have no jobs, they have no electricity or water, and the people who destroyed those things are standing around on the street corners holding guns. When you rebuilt that stuff, and the "people" see a future with the new government that is better then it is now, you'll see a shift in public perception.


This will not happen over night. It will not be immediate. There will be no clear sign (not one you would be able or willing to see) that the plan is "working". But the very formation of that government is one step in a process. You don't complain that you can't drive a car after just the frame has been constructed, do you? Most people would accept that progress is being made towards that goal though.

I read your entire post, Gabji and it's all fantasy land ********* If you want to argue with something I actually POSETD do so.

If you want to make up imaginary things to argue against you'd be better served to just go ********** into your shrine to Bush Jr.

You haven't set conditions for sucess or failure because you can't allow any space for this to fail.

Because you're a partisan hack. Post some conditions to measure sucess by in July and we'll revisit it then.

If you can't do that simple thing you have to admit that you have no idea what you'd qualify as a sucess and that you're incapable of measuring the progress of anything in Iraq as you have no frame of referance to measure by.

Doesn't matter to me, hack boy.

You're the one who tried to take the high ground of reason and say "can't we wait untill July" to meansure sucess or failure in Iraq.

Now you can't offer any way to measure it at all.

Imagine that.

"Oh, I uh, whatever happens by July will be a sucess. The only way it would be a failure is if everyone in Iraq dies and then America is sucked up by an earthquake. I mean, let's be reasonable."