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| Does Immediate Withdrawal Make Sense? |
| Yes, American troops are part of the problem, not the solution! |
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50% |
[ 10 ] |
| Absolutely not! Chaos will reign! It'd be irresponsible! |
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20% |
[ 4 ] |
| No, but a 2-5 year drawdown is in the cards. |
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30% |
[ 6 ] |
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| Total Votes : 20 |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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 Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 10:36 am Post subject: |
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| Pligganease wrote: |
| First, the Iraqi people and the Iraqi defense forces are in no way able to secure the safety of their people. Before you go buck-wild and say that the US isn't keeping people safe, you must concede that they are trying to protect people. |
Huh? If you didn't see the article on deaths in Iraq and the rules of engagement in place, read it because what you say here is blatantly false. One thing Dumbya absolutely *did not do* was invade Iraq to help the Iraqis. That's perhaps the biggest lie of this entire misadventure. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 10:49 am Post subject: |
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"While Turkey is a secular democracy and the only Muslim member of NATO, the Turkish people have been increasingly critical of the United States since the Iraq war started. Fighting in Iraq has dominated the Turkish news for the past two years, with media often focusing on the suffering of the Iraqi people."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050928/ap_on_re_mi_ea/turkey_us
One wonders why you hear virtually nothing at all about this in American media.
Yes, get out. Now. I see this much as I see the environment: it's probably already too late. If I'm right, the US's role as a (Super) Power will have been one short ride, compared to other truly world-girdling empires.
No man is an island, nor is any nation. But it is increasingly the case. People had better wake up. |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 12:27 pm Post subject: |
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| EFLtrainer wrote: |
"While Turkey is a secular democracy and the only Muslim member of NATO, the Turkish people have been increasingly critical of the United States since the Iraq war started. Fighting in Iraq has dominated the Turkish news for the past two years, with media often focusing on the suffering of the Iraqi people."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050928/ap_on_re_mi_ea/turkey_us
One wonders why you hear virtually nothing at all about this in American media.
Yes, get out. Now. I see this much as I see the environment: it's probably already too late. If I'm right, the US's role as a (Super) Power will have been one short ride, compared to other truly world-girdling empires.
No man is an island, nor is any nation. But it is increasingly the case. People had better wake up. |
Its making their Kurdish population (who they've been slaughtering for the last 75 years) a bit edgy, uppity, and thinking of having their own indendence again since Turkey got all that free land of theirs with treaty deals from France and Britain after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in WWI.
Why everyone thinks Turkey is this great place is beyond me. Unfortunately within the US media, they are so concerned with NOT giving the Iraqi Kurds their independence so it doesn't give the Turkish Kurds any ideas (now convenient for Turkey).
Being that WMD weren't found.. and 'human rights against Kurds' became the primary excuse coverup for Iraq.. I can see why Turkey who slaughtered many more Kurds would become uncomfortable with that excuse.. in addition, the ally-thing with Kurds in Iraq isn't so good for Turkey who prefers slaughtering Kurds in Turkey.
One thing though.. if EU was to give Turkey membership into the EU.. its probably in the best interest for Turkey to give up Kurdistan-owned lands (as slaughtering those people wouldn't be standard EU policy for dealing with stolen lands of people who are different than you).. in addition to Turkey should have a nice buffer to protect its pourous borders from those who walk right into the EU from Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc. if Turkey did gain membership. At least that way the porous border would only be between Turkey and Kurdistan - and with how much slaughtering the Turks do against the Kurds - you can believe not many would go through those particular borders if the Turks could help it! Plus it would minimize the extremely large Turkish population that would have a very sizeable vote in the EU if admitted. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 1:18 pm Post subject: |
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The Pew pollsters ignored Greece, where hatred of the United States is now a defining feature of political life. The United States offended Greece by rescuing Bosnians and Kosovars. Then, the same Greeks who hailed the Serbian conquest of Srebrenica in 1995 and the mass slaughter of the Muslims there were quick to summon up outrage over the U.S. military campaign in Iraq.
In one Greek public opinion survey, Americans were ranked among Albanians, Gypsies, and Turks as the most despised peoples. Takis Michas, a courageous Greek writer with an eye for his country's temperament, traces this new anti-Americanism to the Orthodox Church itself. A narrative of virtuous and embattled solitude and alienation from Western Christendom has always been integral to the Greek psyche; a fusion of church and nation is natural to the Greek worldview.
In the 1990s, the Yugoslav wars gave this sentiment a free run. The church sanctioned and fed the belief that the United States was Satan, bent on destroying the "True Faith," Michas explains, and shoring up Turkey and the Muslims in the Balkans. A neo-Orthodox ideology took hold, slicing through faith and simplifying history.
Where the Balkan churches? be they the Bulgars or the Serbs? had been formed in rebellion against the hegemony of the Greek priesthood, the new history made a fetish of the fidelity of Greece to its Orthodox "brethren." Greek paramilitary units fought alongside Bosnian Serbs as part of the Drina Corps under the command of indicted war criminal Gen. Ratko Mladic.
The Greek flag was hoisted over the ruins of Srebenica's Orthodox church when the doomed city fell. Serbian war crimes elicited no sense of outrage in Greece; quite to the contrary, sympathy for Serbia and the identification with its war aims and methods were limitless.
Beyond the Yugoslav wars, the neo-Orthodox worldview sanctified the ethnonationalism of Greece, spinning a narrative of Hellenic persecution at the hands of the United States as the standard-bearer of the West. Greece is part of NATO and of the European Union (EU), but an old schism? that of Eastern Orthodoxy's claim against the Latin world? has greater power and a deeper resonance.
In the banal narrative of Greek anti-Americanism, this animosity emerges from U.S. support for the junta that reigned over the country from 1967 to 1974. This deeper fury enables the aggrieved to glide over the role the United States played in the defense and rehabilitation of Greece after World War II.
Furthermore, it enables them to overlook the lifeline that migration offered to untold numbers of Greeks who are among the United States' most prosperous communities. Greece loves the idea of its "Westernness"? a place and a culture where the West ends, and some other alien world (Islam) begins. But the political culture of religious nationalism has isolated Greece from the wider currents of Western liberalism.
What little modern veneer is used to dress up Greece's anti-Americanism is a pretense. The malady here is, paradoxically, a Greek variant of what plays out in the world of Islam: a belligerent political culture sharpening faith as a political weapon, an abdication of political responsibility for one's own world, and a search for foreign "devils."
Lest they be trumped by their hated Greek rivals, the Turks now give voice to the same anti-Americanism. It is a peculiar sentiment among the Turks, given their pragmatism. They are not prone to the cluster of grievances that empower anti-Americanism in France or among the intelligentsia of the developing world. In the 1920s, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk gave Turkey a dream of modernity and self-help by pointing his country westward, distancing it from the Arab-Muslim lands to its south and east. But the secular, modernist dream in Turkey has fractured, and oddly, anti-Americanism blows through the cracks from the Arab lands and from Brussels and Berlin.
The fury of the Turkish protests against the United States in the months prior to the war in Iraq exhibited a pathology all its own. It was, at times, nature imitating art: The protesters in the streets burned American flags in the apparent hope that Europeans (real Europeans, that is) would finally take Turkey and the Turks into the fold. The U.S. presence had been benign in Turkish lands, and Americans had been Turkey's staunchest advocates for coveted membership in the EU. But suddenly this relationship that served Turkey so well was no longer good enough.
As the "soft" Islamists (there is no such thing, we ought to understand by now) revolted against Pax Americana, the secularists averted their gaze and let stand this new anti-Americanism. The pollsters calling on the Turks found a people in distress, their economy on the ropes, and their polity in an unfamiliar world beyond the simple certainties of Kemalism, yet without new political tools and compass. No dosage of anti-Americanism, the Turks will soon realize, will take Turkey past the gatekeepers of Europe. |
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/983088/posts |
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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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| EFLtrainer wrote: |
| Pligganease wrote: |
| First, the Iraqi people and the Iraqi defense forces are in no way able to secure the safety of their people. Before you go buck-wild and say that the US isn't keeping people safe, you must concede that they are trying to protect people. |
Huh? If you didn't see the article on deaths in Iraq and the rules of engagement in place, read it because what you say here is blatantly false. One thing Dumbya absolutely *did not do* was invade Iraq to help the Iraqis. That's perhaps the biggest lie of this entire misadventure. |
OK. I guess I have to type it again...
Given that the troops are already in Iraq, whether you agree with the reasoning behind their entrance or not, I think immediate withdrawal is a bad idea.
Yet again, someone decides that it is better to read what they want to read rather than what was actually written. Is this a thread about whether you agree with the coalition invading Iraq? Is this a thread asking for your over-opinionated reasons for that invasion? Is this a thread asking you to "create a new idiotic nickname that plays upon the middle initial of the President of the US and makes him seem silly."
Oh, my bad, it isn't one of those threads.
Why is what I said so "blatantly false?" Is it because you don't agree with it? In that case, you should have said "I don't agree with your statement."
I said that the troops were there protecting people. I definitely did not say that it was the Iraqi people that they were protecting. It's the "infidels" that they are protecting. Every suicide bomber that dies in Iraq is one less guy that I have to worry about at an airport. Every roadside bomb that pops off near Baghdad is one less bomb I have to see blowing up in the Underground.
Yes. I do hate to see American and coalition soldiers dying in Iraq. I might not agree with the reasoning behind the invasion. However, I think that what they are doing now, since they are already there, is in mine and my country's best interest. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 10:03 pm Post subject: Re: ... |
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| Nowhere Man wrote: |
Kuros,
Where is the "no withdrawal was ever planned or intended" choice? |
The choices were meant to ask the opinion of others on hypotheticals, not to reflect what may or may not be likely to happen. But, I did screw up the poll. I wanted at least a Not Sure/Other option but I clicked over too quickly. Anyhow, it is certainly possible that the Bush administration may have never planned to pull out entirely.
| Pilgganease wrote: |
Yet again, someone decides that it is better to read what they want to read rather than what was actually written. Is this a thread about whether you agree with the coalition invading Iraq? Is this a thread asking for your over-opinionated reasons for that invasion? Is this a thread asking you to "create a new idiotic nickname that plays upon the middle initial of the President of the US and makes him seem silly."
Oh, my bad, it isn't one of those threads. |
The thread wasn't meant to be one of those threads, but I knew it would go there if it were to get more than 25 responses...
I agree with some people that pulling out will have some initial negative effects. But there's little to suggest that staying in for years with no fundamental shift in strategy will improve Iraq. In other words, rip the bandaid off, and let Iraqi society heal, or fester, in its own way. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 10:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Pligganease wrote: |
Why is what I said so "blatantly false?" Is it because you don't agree with it? In that case, you should have said "I don't agree with your statement."
I said that the troops were there protecting people. I definitely did not say that it was the Iraqi people that they were protecting. It's the "infidels" that they are protecting. |
It was blatantly false as I interpreted. As you did not state who they were protecting, my response was utterly logical. Why be rude in response?
But even with that interpretation, I still say it is false. The growth in the number of new "terrorists" and general ill will will reap "rewards" for a long time to come. I see no way to come to the conclusion lives are being saved unless you: 1. Actually believe terrorism can be beaten by a ground war, 2. that all the ill will being created has no long-term repurcussions. |
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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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| But even with that interpretation, I still say it is false. The growth in the number of new "terrorists" and general ill will will reap "rewards" for a long time to come. |
We all know that these problems exist and they will now continue whether US is in or out, so if that is the reason to pull them out to stop this, then let the Coalition do so in a time and in a way that doesn't create future terorists who use the argument, "Well they screwed up our country and then left us out to dry when it looked like it would be a tough fight".
How do you think people will view the US and any future actions on its part, if it screws up Iraq, either by staying or leaving immediately. I do not think they should let the same thing happen as in Vietnam. The Vietnamese finally realised they had to fight and did so well on their part, by which time. The US did no more bombings and wouldn't provide the ammo needed. The S.V lost |
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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 12:02 am Post subject: |
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| Summer Wine wrote: |
| We all know that these problems exist and they will now continue whether US is in or out, so if that is the reason to pull them out to stop this, then let the Coalition do so in a time and in a way that doesn't create future terorists who use the argument, "Well they screwed up our country and then left us out to dry when it looked like it would be a tough fight". |
Exactly. Also, I think that having a vacuum for terrorists, which obiously exists in Iraq, is a good thing. At least they will be fighting trained military personnel rather than unarmed civilians. I think we also should face the fact that nothing the US can do at this point will lessen the radicals' hatred for the US. We must, at least, make something beneficial happen in Iraq to appease the moderate Muslims. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 9:08 am Post subject: |
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I don't know if an immediate withdrawal is the best course of action or not, or likely or not, but I do know that something has gone horribly wrong there.
Case in point:
"As the Army's investigation into Abu Ghraib deepened, it became clear that the use of unmuzzled dogs to frighten and intimidate prisoners was a routine practice- one that the prison guards believed had been authorized by by senior commanders. Military investigative records, made public in June 2004 by the Washington Post, showed that dogs were repeatedly used during interrogations, and not always to elicit intelligence. One military intelligence witness, Specialist John Harold Ketzer, told Army investigators that he watched a dog team corner two male prisoners against a wall at Abu Ghraib, with one hiding behind the other and screaming. No interrogation was going on. "When I asked what was going on in the cell, the handler stated that... he and another of the handlers was having a contest to see how many detainees they could get to urinate on themselves."
-Seymour Hersch, Chain of Command, P. 36 |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 12:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Pligganease wrote: |
| Summer Wine wrote: |
| We all know that these problems exist and they will now continue whether US is in or out, so if that is the reason to pull them out to stop this, then let the Coalition do so in a time and in a way that doesn't create future terorists who use the argument, "Well they screwed up our country and then left us out to dry when it looked like it would be a tough fight". |
Exactly. Also, I think that having a vacuum for terrorists, which obiously exists in Iraq, is a good thing. At least they will be fighting trained military personnel rather than unarmed civilians. I think we also should face the fact that nothing the US can do at this point will lessen the radicals' hatred for the US. We must, at least, make something beneficial happen in Iraq to appease the moderate Muslims. |
Uh, where would they be fighting unarmed civilians? Iraq or where?
Re: beneficial happenings, dude, ain't going to happen. The only way we'll change the minds of Iraqis is if we get the heck out of dodge, have many iraqi supporters immigrate to the states (there are already quite a number here pre-gulf war II), then let nature run its course. Some of the most pro-USA people are the Vietnamese. Why? Because a large number immigrated here, became successful and their stories got back to the motherland via relatives and whatnot. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: ARAB-AMERICANS; Arabs in U.S. Raising Money To Back Bush
February 17, 2004, Tuesday
By LESLIE WAYNE (NYT); National Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 1, Column 5, 1370 words
Correction Appended
DISPLAYING FIRST 50 OF 1370 WORDS -Wealthy Arab-Americans and foreign-born Muslims who strongly back President Bush's decision to invade Iraq are adding their names to the ranks of Pioneers and Rangers, the elite Bush supporters who have raised $100,000 or more for his re-election. This new crop of fund-raisers comes as some opinion polls suggest... |
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70717FB3F590C748DDDAB0894DC404482 |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:46 pm Post subject: |
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The war in Iraq is bad for America. End it.
End it now. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 4:08 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| Quote: |
THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: ARAB-AMERICANS; Arabs in U.S. Raising Money To Back Bush
February 17, 2004, Tuesday
By LESLIE WAYNE (NYT); National Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 1, Column 5, 1370 words
Correction Appended
DISPLAYING FIRST 50 OF 1370 WORDS -Wealthy Arab-Americans and foreign-born Muslims who strongly back President Bush's decision to invade Iraq are adding their names to the ranks of Pioneers and Rangers, the elite Bush supporters who have raised $100,000 or more for his re-election. This new crop of fund-raisers comes as some opinion polls suggest... |
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?
res=F70717FB3F590C748DDDAB0894DC404482 |
Are you seriously quoting about public opinion from more than 1.5 years ago? How is that at all relevant? |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 4:11 am Post subject: |
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| Summer Wine wrote: |
| Quote: |
| But even with that interpretation, I still say it is false. The growth in the number of new "terrorists" and general ill will will reap "rewards" for a long time to come. |
We all know that these problems exist and they will now continue whether US is in or out, so if that is the reason to pull them out to stop this, then let the Coalition do so in a time and in a way that doesn't create future terorists who use the argument, "Well they screwed up our country and then left us out to dry when it looked like it would be a tough fight".
How do you think people will view the US and any future actions on its part, if it screws up Iraq, either by staying or leaving immediately. I do not think they should let the same thing happen as in Vietnam. The Vietnamese finally realised they had to fight and did so well on their part, by which time. The US did no more bombings and wouldn't provide the ammo needed. The S.V lost |
I would usually agree with a slow withdrawal in most cases, even one where we wwrein the wrong, because the vacuum can be an issue. Unfortunately, I read the tea leaves to say the advantages to slow withdrawal are outweighed by the disadvantages: further ill-will, creating ever larger numbers of people willing to join al queda/-esque groups, the huge number of innocents being slaughtered.... and the civil war that will come no matter what. |
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