iraq report is in, let the spinn beginFollow

here is a prediction. even after the repubs are kicked out of office for doing the dirty work, ie, lieing to you to get you to support butchering innocent people for black gold and world domination, the dems WILL NOT LEAVE the middle east.
---------------------------------------------------------------

anyone see the democratic debate?

all of them are already backpeddeling about an immediate total withdraw from Iraq. even edwards and obama.

this is a war about money and our economic future. not terrorism. but the goals are so long term, not many of you sheep will understand that.

but go aheead and argue about the spinn you were fed to argue about. then argue some more about semantics. its the place your shepards have led you to graze, so graze away.

Which they began doing before any sort of official declaration of war (and only targeted ships delivering war supplies to Britain). Germany declared war specifically so it could expand those attacks, but we were already supplying arms to Britain and "involved" in the conflict prior to that point. Not sure what your point is here. My point is that the argument that "Iraq didn't pose a direct threat to us" is not a valid argument against war.

Germany "did not pose a threat to us" during WW2. Didn't even come close. It had absolutely zero capability to project any sort of force across the Atlantic, nor did it have any plans to do so.

That's the point I'm making. Are there differences between the conflicts? Of course. But the similarity is that in both cases, the US didn't actually have to do anything to Germany. I'm simply countering the argument that since Iraq didn't pose a "imminent threat" to the US, that this somehow means that we had no business invading them.

To prove that argument wrong, all I have to do is show one conflict in which we did attack/invade a nation that was not an "imminent threat" to us, but that we all agree was a good idea in the long run. The US's decision to deal with Germany during WW2 is a perfect example of this. We didn't have to do it. We could have simply ignored Germany and left Britain to its own fate (and many wanted to do that btw). But I think we can all agree that the world would have been much much worse off in the long run if we'd done that.


And the corollary point is that I believe that if we had not invaded Iraq, the world would *also* be much much worse off in the long run. You may not agree with that (exactly as the isolationists didn't agree with the same when said about Germany in WW2), but I believe it's true.



Wrong. Read some history. Japan and Germany had a mutual defense pact, but not agreement to automatically declare war on any nation that they went to war with. If we'd declared war on Japan first, Germany would have had to join Japan as part of the defensive pact. But since Japan attacked us and initiated that conflict, Germany was under no obligation to get involved.


You are aware that when Germany invaded Russia, Japan didn't also declare war with Russia, right? In fact, Japan signed a non-aggression treaty with Russia instead. Germany didn't have to declare war on us. They decided to for their own reasons, mostly having to do with the fact that the US was already causing them huge problems in Britain because FDR was effectively skirting the US Congress's prohibitions on involvement in the conflict.

Not to mention that even with a declaration of war, we could have easily just avoided the region. We *could* have stopped shipments of supplies to Britain. We *could* have simply focused on Japan instead. And many thought we should have done so. I assume you're thankful that we didn't, right?


But hey! You go ahead believing that it was all an automated process once Japan attacked at Pearl Harbor. It really wasn't.



Of course you could. In exactly the way that Russia was fighting Germany without involving Japan. All we had to do was not send supplies to help out Britain. Done. Germany had no interest, agenda, nor plan to attack the US at all. That was the point of the link I posted. We could have simply left that entire part of the conflict alone and been just fine.

You might have fared a bit worse though.



Only because we were getting involved. If we didn't send supplies to Britain, those ships would not have been attacked.

See how that works? My point is that we could have chosen to stay entirely out of the European part of that conflict. Heck. We could have avoided the Pacific part of the conflict as well if we'd backed off and let Japan do whatever they wanted. We deliberately choose not to in both cases, the result of which drug us into a massive world war and cost hundreds of thousands of US lives.


And yet, we can all agree that the end result was positive, right?


That's all I'm trying to get you to understand. That just because we don't have to involve ourselves in a conflict does not automatically mean that it's the right thing not to involve ourselves in that conflict. Get it yet?

My point is that you said "Germany did not attack us", when they blatantly did. I thought it was quite freaking obvious.



So now it's not about "attacking" anymore, it's about "posing a threat". Nice moving of the goal posts.



So because, according to you, Germany "didn't pose a direct threat to the US" in WII, and yet it was a "just war", then the "threat posed by the country you decide to attack" is always an irrelevant argument?! Is that what you're trying to say?



Hmm, what?



You are such an idiot.

It was a fUcking threat to you. They were attacking your ships, bombing your allies, killing your trade relations, making you weaker in the world, and chances are, once they were done with Europe, **** Germany would move on to something else!

Not only that, but their closest allies were bombing your naval bases!!

Now, tell me again that **** Germnay wasn't a threat to the US...



As thankful as you are to Lafayette. Which, I assume, is a lot, old chap. Right?



No.

You're trying to argue that because you can misunderstand the logic behind a conflict, the same flawed logic applies to another, radically different conflict.

It doesn't. Things are different.

Yes, there are instances where invading is right eventhough the country in question isn't directly threatening you. For exemple, the First Gulf War, you twunt. Which is much more similar the the 2003 Iraq war than WWII. The US wasn't threatened, at all, and it invaded. Everyone said it was right. Why? Because Iraq had just illegally invaded one of the US's closest ally in the region, and of its main suppliers of oil.

Did this happen in 2003? No.

So, does all this mean that "the US wasn't threatened so it shouldn't have invaded Iraq in 2003" argument is invalid? Of course not. Invading a country that isn't threatening you is only acceptbale if a number of other factors are in place to mitigate this lack of a direct threat, such as: world peace being torn apart (WWII), that country has just brutally invaded a close ally for no reason (GWI), they're bombing your boats (WWII), etc, etc...

Iraq 03 didn't have any of these. Not only did it not threaten the US, it didn't invade a close ally, it didn't threaten world or even regional peace, it didn't even threaten US intrests.

So, in the light of all this, the fact that the US could've maybe possibly not invaded Germany if 60 billion things were different and we lived in an alternate reality, seems completely fuUcking irrelevant to me.

No?

I guess I missed the formal declaration of war in 1991 which is what Rimesume's joke was.


By all means, spend ten paragraphs talking about what you REALLY meant and how poor, sad Gbaji gets his words taken out of context and we can't see the forest for the trees.

Annnnndddd.... GO!

The several hundred Americans on board the Lusitania would like to have a word with you gbaji.

Oh wait, they can't. They are dead. Wonder who attacked them?

Did Iraq sign a declaration of War in 2003? If not the whole comparison of attacks being the 'same' is as facetious as ... well a gbaji argument!

Gbaji's ignorance on the knowledge, comprehension, and time line understanding of WWII is stiflingly apparent, doesn't surprise me though.


Edited, Oct 2nd 2007 3:13am by Rimesume

You can believe I bookmarked this thread for future reference. The next time I read some douchebag claiming "Gbaji is smart" they're getting linked straight to here.


Gbaji's arguments are laughable at best, at worst, down right ignorant.

What a ****.

Though commonly thought or claimed to be part of a UN resolution or peace treaty, I couldn't find anything in such that calls for the no-fly zones creation. Nor the increase in target rules by the US/Britain that caused France to drop out. The attacks on US planes vs. US increase of targets (which increased again just prior to invasion, without any UN resolution calling for it) seems to me to be strictly a US-Iraq matter without any binding legality.

Was attacking US planes a violation of a UN resolution? Yeah, but US planes being there wasn't authorized by anyone but the US.

And don't forget the CIA forces inserted into Iraq well before the invasion for prep work, clearly a violation of the sovereignty of Iraq according to resolutions or treaties. Also don't forget the promised new UN resolution Bush was supposed to present. He knew his case was rubbish and he didn't present it. The invasion had very, very little to do with actual violations or overt acts by Iraq.



Germany had a navy and subs, they certainly had the ability to attack the US proper if they could get there. Eating up nation after nation also increased their capability of staging direct attacks. There's no comparison.

Comparing the war with Germany, and the war on Iraq is stupid as hell.

After all, the allies won in the war against Germany.

But as we know, Gbaji will be along momentarily to explain to us how the war in Iraq was lost because of the liberal media and that murtha fellow......

And *again* the point is missed. What on earth does that matter? The US did not have UN permission to send arms and supplies to aid Britain prior to our official entry into WW2 either. Yet we still sent them, and German U-boats attacked the ships transporting those goods (and US military vessels sent to protect them, yet oddly we still did not officially declare war at that time).

You guys keep bringing up irrelevant facts as though they have meaning. What matters is that just because a nation is not actively attempting to invade your home country does not invalidate a justification for war or warlike actions. It just plain doesn't. Never has. Didn't in WW2, and shouldn't today. Yet so many people rely on that sort of false argument to condemn our actions with regard to Iraq.

Yeah. Iraq wasn't in a position to directly attack us militarily. So what? Neither was Germany just prior to WW2. Yet that didn't stop us from "meddling", picking sides, and eventually going to war with that country. Just as we did with Iraq. Was there a "goal" to do so? Yup. But it existed in both cases. It's pretty blatantly obvious that FDR wanted to get the US into the war in Europe. You'd be hard pressed to find a historian who'd disagree with that assessment.

Just because there were underlying reasons for doing so does not make the action itself immoral or illegal. That's the point I'm trying to get at and which so many of you seem utterly unable to grasp.

Gbaji.



Gbaji.




Gbaji.


By all that is right and good in the world. You Sir, are an utter *******

And the US Congress refused to declare war on Germany despite this threat. Thanks for adding yet another common factor! That sometimes bodies of politicians can make horribly wrong choice and sometimes it takes someone who sees the situation for what it is to take action to force the situation.




I didn't say that was the cause for war. I said that just because a country is not actively engaged in an invasion or attack of your own territory does not represent a lack of justification for war.

See the difference? I'm simply pointing out that when someone says: "But Iraq had no capability to attack the US, so we shouldn't have gone to war!!!", that their argument is invalid. That's it. I'm not even making a case for war at this point. I'm merely pointing out that that particular argument *against* the war is wrong.

It's just amazing to me how often this happens. Someone will make some broad claim using what I perceive to be a bogus argument. I point out that their argument is bogus and use some sort of comparison to show how it's bogus. Then everyone jumps out of the woodwork making assumptions about my argument, pulling in additional an irrelevant facts and generally going waaaay off the original point.

We can debate the legal justification for war with Iraq if you want. Unfortunately, very few people actually do that. They prefer instead to point out single facts about Iraq and insist that since "FactX==True" that this automatically means that going to war with Iraq was wrong. You do see that we have to get past those ridiculous and bogus arguments before we can even begin to discuss the issue of the war, right?


Saying that our invasion of Iraq was unjustified because Iraq had no intention or capability to attack the US homeland itself is no more valid then saying the same thing about Germany during WW2. Clearly, in the case of Germany the decision to go to war was "right" even though Germany certainly never attacked the US itself, nor (as the link I provided showed) did it have any intention to do so. Thus, the argument when applied to Iraq is *also* wrong.

You're free to argue other reasons why you believe the invasion of Iraq was wrong. I'm simply saying that that particular one isn't valid.

Sheesh. It's like pulling teeth!




Again. I didn't say our justification for war with Iraq and the one we used for war with Germany were identical (or even similar). Nor did I say that we could invade anyone for any reason. You (and others) plucked that one out of your own heads. You assume that since I'm disagreeing with a single point, that I must be making a particular argument that I didn't make.

The only comparison I'm making between Germany and Iraq is that in both cases, the country in question was not going to attack the US if the US did not attack them first (as far as we know anyway). Thus, saying that it was "wrong" to invade Iraq purely because Iraq wasn't going to attack the US anytime soon cannot be true unless you apply the same argument to Germany (which also was not going to attack the US anytime soon).


I'm only debating a single statement that was made. Stop trying to invent my argument for me and argue against that instead.



I would if my argument were actually that since Iraq wasn't planning to attack the US that this means that the US was justified to invade Iraq. But that's not what I said (how many times do I have to repeat this?). What I said is that the fact that Iraq wasn't planning to attack the US does *not* mean that the US cannot have another justification for war. I didn't even say what that justification might be (in this thread). I simply refuted the idea that since Iraq wasn't going to attack the US that the US therefore had *no* justification to invade Iraq.


Please tell me you get this? I didn't think it was that hard of a concept to grasp when I posted it three pages ago. Apparently, many people are unable to discuss a subject by analyzing the individual parts rather then creating a blanket whole and arguing on that. I'm only looking at one tiny part. One statement. I'm just trying to get you (and others) to acknowledge that the argument that since Iraq wasn't going to attack the US, that the US had no justification to go to war is wrong.

That's it. Nothing else. Can you look at that one statement and debate just that?