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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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 Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 3:41 am Post subject: The case for leaving Iraq |
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From the current issue of THE ATLANTIC. It's written in a Q&A format. Not the most profound thing I've ever read about the war, but concise and well-argued.
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Would the withdrawal of U.S. troops ignite a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites?
No. That civil war is already under way—in large part because of the American presence. The longer the United States stays, the more it fuels Sunni hostility toward Shiite "collaborators." Were America not in Iraq, Sunni leaders could negotiate and participate without fear that they themselves would be branded traitors and collaborators by their constituents.
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Wouldn't a U.S. withdrawal embolden the insurgency?
No. If the occupation were to end, so, too, would the insurgency. After all, what the resistance movement has been resisting is the occupation.
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What about the goal of creating a secular democracy in Iraq that respects the rights of women and non-Muslims?
Give it up. It's not going to happen. Apart from the Kurds, who revel in their secularism, Iraqis overwhelmingly seek a Muslim state. Although Iraq may have been officially secular during the 1970s and 1980s, Saddam encouraged Islamism during the 1990s, and the difficulties of the past decades have strengthened the resurgence of Islam.
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There's considerably more than what I've quoted here.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-withdrawal |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 10:20 am Post subject: |
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Yes, it would "embolden the insurgency." It would do wonders for Al-Qaeda recruitment and be a big boost to their spirits.
On the flip-side, I do think our withdrawl would make it easier for the Iraqi gov't to become secure and more stable. Why? THe insurgents #1 enemy is the USA, so they would leave Iraqis alone for the most part if the USA moved on elsewhere. |
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AbbeFaria
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: Gangnam
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 11:03 am Post subject: |
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| THe insurgents #1 enemy is the USA, so they would leave Iraqis alone for the most part if the USA moved on elsewhere. |
So they're killing Iraqi's because the US is in Iraq? We should leave and allow perhaps Iran to set up a puppet government there and continue to foster a country of oppression, terror and murder?
Most of the "resistance" is made up of foreign fighters. People from Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. People with no good reason to be in Iraq. They are the foreign invaders there. They spend more time blowing up and kidnapping civilians than soldiers because civilians are a much softer target. Iraqi citizens. And most of the Iraqi insurgancy are made up of Saddam loyalists. Why should they get to dictate policy in Iraq? Do you seriously think that if we just pack up and leave they'll be satisfied? What if they decide they want Spain back from the Christians? Do we abdicate and say "Oh, so sorry." And then of course there's Isreal.
And just for my own peace of mind, because I really can't fathom the position of the peace-niks, when is it okay to stand up to terrorists? Are we always supposed to concede to their demands because they're from a disadvantaged background, or some other such nonsense? Where is the line drawn? When do we get to say, collectively as a nation and a world, that enough is enough. People that seek to enforce their beliefs by blowing up crowds of school children or sawing off the heads of aid workers should have and deserve no voice.
And even if the insurgents were ligitimate freedom fighters, fighting for the betterment of the Iraqi people, where were they for the last thirty years when Saddam was busy grinding his people in to the dust. Slaughtering them by the thousands in mass graves and locking the women away in rape rooms. They obviously aren't afraid of guns because the US Military is a helluva lot better equipped and infinitely better trained then any force Saddam ever put together.
I really don't understand the viewpoint that we should consider anything these people say. It...baffles me. It really does.
-S- |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 11:41 am Post subject: |
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| AbbeFaria wrote: |
So they're killing Iraqi's because the US is in Iraq? We should leave and allow perhaps Iran to set up a puppet government there and continue to foster a country of oppression, terror and murder? |
Uh yes, that is why they are killing Iraqis: because the United States is there and anyone associated with the Iraqi gov't is considered a puppet of the United States.
Iran would not be able to set up its own puppet gov't. Sure, it'll have more influence than when Saddam was President, but the Iraqis won't allow it to gain undue influence. Shi'ites stayed loyal to Iraq during their war with Iran; I doubt too much has changed then.
| Quote: |
| Most of the "resistance" is made up of foreign fighters. People from Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. People with no good reason to be in Iraq. They are the foreign invaders there. They spend more time blowing up and kidnapping civilians than soldiers because civilians are a much softer target. Iraqi citizens. And most of the Iraqi insurgancy are made up of Saddam loyalists. Why should they get to dictate policy in Iraq? |
Why should the United States dictate policy?
Who said anything about the "insurgents" dictating policy? You mean United States policy towards Iraq? THen ok, I see your point. If you mean the Iraqi gov't, then uh, how are they doing it??
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| Do you seriously think that if we just pack up and leave they'll be satisfied? What if they decide they want Spain back from the Christians? Do we abdicate and say "Oh, so sorry." And then of course there's Isreal. |
Eh, did you read my post? I said it would encourage the insurgents.
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| And even if the insurgents were ligitimate freedom fighters, fighting for the betterment of the Iraqi people, where were they for the last thirty years when Saddam was busy grinding his people in to the dust. Slaughtering them by the thousands in mass graves and locking the women away in rape rooms. They obviously aren't afraid of guns because the US Military is a helluva lot better equipped and infinitely better trained then any force Saddam ever put together. |
Uh
1. It is a lot easier to fight your enemy when you blend in
2. Saddam was a lot more barbaric and put the smack down. He's on trial for destroying a village. Americans are nothing compared to that. Dude, training and equipment doesn't mean squat. Dedication and violence mean more in a situation like that.
3. There was a lot less freedom to operate with Saddam in charge.
I'm not saying these people are "freedom fighters" but I think you are being a little naive about the conditions in Iraq when Saddam was el jefe. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 2:10 am Post subject: |
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AbbeFaria wrote:
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| Most of the "resistance" is made up of foreign fighters. |
According to the Center For Strategic International Studies:
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| While the foreign fighters may stoke the insurgency flames, they make up only about 4 to 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgents. |
The CSIS is a Washington think tank, which counts among its trustees Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. While it's obviously difficult for anyone to get a precise grasp of what's going on in the Iraqi underground, in the absence of a more authoritative source I am inclined to go with the CSIS numbers.
Do you have another source, AF?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0923/dailyUpdate.html |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 4:58 am Post subject: Re: The case for leaving Iraq |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
From the current issue of THE ATLANTIC. It's written in a Q&A format. Not the most profound thing I've ever read about the war, but concise and well-argued.
| Quote: |
Would the withdrawal of U.S. troops ignite a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites?
No. That civil war is already under way—in large part because of the American presence. The longer the United States stays, the more it fuels Sunni hostility toward Shiite "collaborators." Were America not in Iraq, Sunni leaders could negotiate and participate without fear that they themselves would be branded traitors and collaborators by their constituents.
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| Quote: |
Wouldn't a U.S. withdrawal embolden the insurgency?
No. If the occupation were to end, so, too, would the insurgency. After all, what the resistance movement has been resisting is the occupation.
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| Quote: |
What about the goal of creating a secular democracy in Iraq that respects the rights of women and non-Muslims?
Give it up. It's not going to happen. Apart from the Kurds, who revel in their secularism, Iraqis overwhelmingly seek a Muslim state. Although Iraq may have been officially secular during the 1970s and 1980s, Saddam encouraged Islamism during the 1990s, and the difficulties of the past decades have strengthened the resurgence of Islam.
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There's considerably more than what I've quoted here.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-withdrawal |
I hear an echo... of myself. On these boards. Ah, the curve. Always ahead ot it. So lonely, so very lonely...
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:58 pm Post subject: |
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Iraq: The New Heroin Route
Arnaud Aubron - Liberation
Losing war on drugs: Iran is on the heroin supply route from Asia to Europe.
Opiates - and cannabis - produced in Afghanistan transit through Iraq before being distributed in Europe. Their consumption is growing in Baghdad and elsewhere.
Repeat yet again. Although Washington took the lead thirty years ago in the global anti-drug war, narcotics seem to stubbornly want to surge through the wake of the American Army.
Thus, in 2001, following the prohibition of poppy cultivation by the Taliban, Afghanistan had seen its opium production fall by 185 tons ... to shoot up to 3,200 tons (or a 1,700% increase) immediately after the United States' intervention, a scenario that is finding an echo today in Iraq. According to the Iranian Hamid Ghodse, President of the OICS (Organe international de contrôle des stupéfiants, an expert group headquartered in Vienna charged with applying UN conventions relating to drugs), Iraq is in the process of becoming an important transit country on the route for Afghan heroin. Opiates and cannabis produced in Afghanistan "are brought through Iraq to Jordan from where they are sent on to the European markets of the East and West," he declared during a press conference given Thursday in Vienna.
This tendency is confirmed by the rise in narcotics seizures along the Iraqi-Jordanian border the last twelve months. "This situation is made possible by the domestic situation in Iraq, where border controls have been loosened and traffickers can come through disguised as pilgrims" going to the great Shiite cities, propounded Hamid Ghodse, for whom the situation is comparable to that of most countries emerging from a conflict situation.
While drug problems have been historically unknown in Iraq (out of fear of repression striking traffickers and consumers or quite simply from lack of information), OICS has worried about the new trend since its March 2004 annual report. "Drugs have started to enter the country in huge quantities, notably through the Eastern border," with Iran, revealed Iraqi Minister of the Interior Nouri Badrane then, who worried especially about the increase in narcotics consumption among young Iraqis: "Consumption of these drugs is on the rise, due to unemployment, insecurity, and the sense of uncertainty about the future, especially among young people." A few months later, his equivalent at the Health Ministry talked about "a problem that has become endemic," submitting a number of 2,029 registered addicts.
A trend confirmed this year by Hamid Ghodse, who, on Thursday, inventoried a troubling increase in the number of addicts treated in the capital's hospitals, but also in other cities in the country. To confront the situation, Baghdad has adopted a national anti-narcotics plan. "It's urgent that the Iraqi government and the international community take the preventative measures the situation requires before it becomes worse," Hamid Ghodse concluded.
A deterioration that Washington, which for the moment has other priorities, could also pay the price for. If drug consumption by GIs is not at present the subject of any study, the highlight of the June 2004 edition of the magazine "High Times" (specializing in cannabis) was a GI in Iraq posing next to a cannabis plant. In 1971, 11% of GIs based in Vietnam declared that they consumed heroin regularly, while one in five said that they had tried it.[1]
It was following their return to the United States that Nixon decided to launch his global war on drugs.
http://www.banderasnews.com/0506/hb-heroinroute.htm |
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R. S. Refugee
Joined: 29 Sep 2004
Location: Shangra La, ROK
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| Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 4:39 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
AbbeFaria wrote:
| Quote: |
| Most of the "resistance" is made up of foreign fighters. |
According to the Center For Strategic International Studies:
| Quote: |
| While the foreign fighters may stoke the insurgency flames, they make up only about 4 to 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgents. |
The CSIS is a Washington think tank, which counts among its trustees Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. While it's obviously difficult for anyone to get a precise grasp of what's going on in the Iraqi underground, in the absence of a more authoritative source I am inclined to go with the CSIS numbers.
Do you have another source, AF?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0923/dailyUpdate.html |
Rush's Righteous Numbers, I'll warrant, pulled straight out of the old . . . |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 6:04 am Post subject: |
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| Ah, the curve. Always ahead ot it. So lonely, so very lonely... |
Epiphany!
The longer you post, the more irrelevant you get. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 8:01 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
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| Ah, the curve. Always ahead of it. So lonely, so very lonely... |
Epiphany!
The longer you post, the more irrelevant you get. |
Now, Ya-ta, let me 'splain you somethin': to be considered relevant you have to be seen as objective, or at least attempting sincerely to be so. When I poke fun at myself and you arrive much later to pretend you've pointed out something of consequence, well...
Mean-spirited posts don't impress anyone. I poke fun at goph because he takes himself so seriously and reacts so violently to something as simple as, "That point is irrelevant." But, I do it in fun mostly. I've actually spent any number of posts actually pointing this out to him, but it don't matter. Once he flipped some switch somewhere, that was that. I'd still wager a good bit that, should we anonymously meet sometime, we'd get on just fine.
But you, well, any post you make in response to a post of mine is nothing more than an insult. And, typically, they are childish and insipid, as this one was. (Again, makes little sense to try to score points off of someone's self-deprecating joke.) And the primary reason for them being childish and insipid is that it is so obvious that you make no effort whatsoever to be even slightly objective about my posts.
However, should you do a search on my posts and note the various responses to *your* posts, you will see that I limit any sharpness, for lack of a better word, to posts that deserve it. Those that are not deserving of a little ribbing, a comeuppance, or what have you, don't get it, yet those that deserve a positive response get one.
You cannot claim the same. (Yes, I know, they don't exist... blah, blah, blah...)
I don't assume that because you *seem* to be a bit oblivious here that you are in person. I'm not convinced you make the same distinction.
In teh sprit of the Holidays and in honor of the return of goph, let's assign you some temporary nicknames: Ya-ta baby/Thing IIb. Teh former in honor of the Christmas song and the latter in honor of the fact that goph claims I chase him 'round these boards jsut to pester him. If the title fits, we can't acquit. You do a dog chasing it's tail proud, son.
Cheerio. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 9:15 am Post subject: |
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| efl trainer, you have a lot of time on your hands. That's all I can say about that posting. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 9:40 am Post subject: |
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| (Again, makes little sense to try to score points off of someone's self-deprecating joke.) |
EFL Trainer, this was your joke:
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I hear an echo... of myself. On these boards. Ah, the curve. Always ahead ot it. So lonely, so very lonely...
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I'm not sure if saying that you had a correct opinion before anyone else had it is self-deprecation. And the "lonely" thing doesn't really qualify either, because it wasn't meant to have any basis in fact; it isn't as if you wanted us to think that you are actually a lonely person. It seems to me that a self-deprecating joke would involve admitting something unflattering about yourself, and making a joke about it. I don't think you did that in your post. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 10:56 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
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| (Again, makes little sense to try to score points off of someone's self-deprecating joke.) |
EFL Trainer, this was your joke:
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I hear an echo... of myself. On these boards. Ah, the curve. Always ahead ot it. So lonely, so very lonely...
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I'm not sure if saying that you had a correct opinion before anyone else had it is self-deprecation. And the "lonely" thing doesn't really qualify either, because it wasn't meant to have any basis in fact; it isn't as if you wanted us to think that you are actually a lonely person. It seems to me that a self-deprecating joke would involve admitting something unflattering about yourself, and making a joke about it. I don't think you did that in your post. |
Bragging isn't unflattering?  Ah, but is ahead of th curve the same as in front of the curve? Can you be a little ahead of the curve, i.e., not the greatest standard deviation possible, yet be "ahead of the curve," meaning the part of the curve that forms the bell?
And what do you mean, no basis in fact? Just where the hell have you planted your cameras?! Posting at some god-awful time of the morning (ah, that's right... got a "phppphhhft", had to copy and paste and post later) doesn't qualify? You think I'd be doin' dat if I had company??
Ah, the great ponderables.... or is that imponderables...
Ya know, you folks take some of this stuff just a liiittle too seriously.
Last edited by EFLtrainer on Thu Dec 15, 2005 11:04 am; edited 1 time in total |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 10:59 am Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| efl trainer, you have a lot of time on your hands. That's all I can say about that posting. |
Sleepless is a better description.
Don't you figure he's looking for attention if he's posting pointless responses? 
I kinda figured he needed the attention and I was in a jolly, though sleep-deprived, mood.
Just trying to do my share for my fellow persons. |
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