DescentBB

As an OG opponent of the war in Iraq, I've felt a certain level of gratification over the past week watching Republican candidates stumble over the "knowing what we know now, would you invade Iraq" question. I know my pleasure is cheap and tawdry, and I'm ashamed. But the question doesn't illuminate much. And the answers have steered toward blaming WMD intelligence. But is it really the lack of WMD that makes Iraq a debacle?

I want to know what they think about the other major justification for the war: that militarily forcing democracy at the center of the Middle East to transform the region was a good idea with a good chance of success to minimize terrorism. I want to know if these pols believe America can or should be doing this. Would they seek to try this again but 'do it right this time?'

Yeah, amazing how the newsies only ask the GOP candidates that question. Why not ask Hillary, "Knowing what you know now, would you have still voted as Senator for the war"? Ask John Kerry the same. Or ask Obama, "Knowing what you know now, would you still not have signed a Status of Forces agreement with Iraq"? Too bad the GOP types are not nimble enough to know how to play the gotcha game.

amazing how Woody's only response is always, 'but how about the Dems?'.
To the original point, it has seemed for a while now that the entire reasoning behind neoconservative foreign thinking has been thoroughly discredited. However, that doesn't stop some of those candidates from bringing the Old Guard that pushed that idiocy on board.

Would those self same idiots include Billy Bob Clinton as he was promoting Iraqs WMD program. Back then all the Dems were for the WMD idea before they were against it. The lunacy of the left can change their clothes faster than a Vaudeville stage actor.

I think Woody raises a very good point. The GOP doesn't exclusively own the responsibility for the war and its aftermath. As much as slick and his fellow leftys in the media would like to keep the questions formulated that way it is irresponsible to turn an important line of discussion into a campaign tool reserved for one side.

The question he suggests for Obama (and by affiliation Hillary) is every bit as relevant as asking Jeb if he would he do it like his brother if he had the benefit of hindsight.

Taking the offer for a status of forces agreement, leaving boots on the ground to ensure the Iraqi forces could stand up to insurgents, was obviously the right thing to do now that we have the benefit of hindsight. The "B team" ISIS is nothing like Obama told us they were...just as much as the WMD's weren't where Bush told us they were.

The failure of Obama ignoring the intelligence on the threat that he allowed to grow is just as bad as Bush's failure to get good Intel on WMD's.

Worse in the sense that there was world wide intelligence agency belief that Saddam had WMD's. There was not a vast body of intel suggesting ISIS was a B team with no hope of becoming what they are today. Quite the opposite in fact!

And the whole other mess the left owns exclusively is the empowering of Iran by the poor work done in reaction to the BTeams victories.

So a candidate from the left who isn't asked about that is getting a pass from these so called journalists. Not asking the left to explain where they are on that issue is serving the Party on the left, not the country.

And trying to shout down this point is pure partisan bullfeces.

I do think any and all of them are fair questions for ANY candidate. The public needs to know both where folks stand, and what they've learned from our collective national experience. Part of why I support Jim Webb is that I think his grasp on the realities and ability to learn from past errors puts him head and shoulders around most of these pretenders on either side.

Hillary is in silence mode, in an attempt to control her campaign.

Yea, these kinds of questions should be addressed at a national level, not used as some sort of political stunt.

Nation building…domino effect….pffft both sides have a lot to answer for.

Will Robinson wrote:I think Woody raises a very good point.

You can interpret that erratic keyboard mashing? woodchip didn't raise a point, he put his fingers in his ears and screamed lalalalalalalal. The point I make is pretty modest, and starts with a premise it looks like you both would agree with: The question is weak and the answer doesn't tell us anything that isn't obvious. I have not and would not state that the what I ask for not be applied to every presidential candidate. It should be applied to every national politician.

If you want to talk about individual landmines we've stepped on, that's fine. I want to discuss the decision to walk through the mine field.

The decision to go was articulated by he Dems as much as the repubs. So questions that are formulated to vet candidates, based on that decision, should be equally interesting and valuable.
Unless you buy into the excuse they were against it before they were for it and Bush was so tricky he had them spouting off in favor of it BEFORE he was ever elected...

And to your core question: Is it just using american military that you object to? Because with Bush leaving and Obama replacing him that is the only difference. "Forcing democracy at the center of the Middle East to transform the region" is still the 'reason' for much of what has happened to stir up the hornets nest. And the inevitable american boots on the ground is still looming large in the wake of Obama's methods only it will happen after the enemy has had a chance to arm itself in a much better way!

I'm still surprised Hillary's name get brought up so often considering no one on this board likes her. What's the point? Who are you trying to impress when you mention Mrs. Clinton?

vision wrote:I'm still surprised Hillary's name get brought up so often considering no one on this board likes her. What's the point? Who are you trying to impress when you mention Mrs. Clinton?

What makes you think there is an attempt to impress anyone? When talking about the current field of candidates, or the leaders who voted for the war, it is quite reasonable to mention her name.

What is the purpose of your question?

Will Robinson wrote:What is the purpose of your question?

Hillary Clinton is repeatedly used by the right-leaners on this board as a way to tarnish the left... except Hillary isn't representative of the left, and if you think she is then you have no idea what you are talking about. She's a centrist, and an extremely uninteresting one at that. Don't think she's a centrist? Look at Sander's campaign to refresh your memory. Every time I see her name brought up I remember the right-leaners on this board are so far to the right that anything in the center looks a million miles away. Is she the top Democratic pick? Maybe, but then again that isn't saying much now is it? She's just more of the same. She might as well be named Hillary Romney McCain.

vision wrote:

Will Robinson wrote:What is the purpose of your question?

Hillary Clinton is repeatedly used by the right-leaners on this board as a way to tarnish the left... except Hillary isn't representative of the left, and if you think she is then you have no idea what you are talking about. She's a centrist, and an extremely uninteresting one at that. Don't think she's a centrist? Look at Sander's campaign to refresh your memory. Every time I see her name brought up I remember the right-leaners on this board are so far to the right that anything in the center looks a million miles away. Is she the top Democratic pick? Maybe, but then again that isn't saying much now is it? She's just more of the same. She might as well be named Hillary Romney McCain.

How does that answer my question? How does it refute the point I made about why she was brought up?
You aren't making sense in any context of this thread or even your own comments, just railing against some nebulous perception you have.

Will Robinson wrote:How does that answer my question?

Will, we all know there are no answers to the questions you ask. All you do is find excuses to be right. The only one who seems to pay attention to you is Slick. Personally I don't even read any of your posts that are longer than three lines because it is usually nonsense.

vision wrote:

Will Robinson wrote:How does that answer my question?

Will, we all know there are no answers to the questions you ask. All you do is find excuses to be right. The only one who seems to pay attention to you is Slick. Personally I don't even read any of your posts that are longer than three lines because it is usually nonsense.

I understand your problem. You keep trying ok?

Will Robinson wrote:The decision to go was articulated by he Dems as much as the repubs. So questions that are formulated to vet candidates, based on that decision, should be equally interesting and valuable.

No. It's only valuable when directed at Republicans.

That's a pretty silly statement, right? I don't see where I'm making it. My point seeks to illicit further clarification of foreign policy position that has nothing to do with (R) and (D).

Will Robinson wrote:And to your core question: Is it just using american military that you object to?

Pretty much, yes. Not using our military seems to be quite outside the mainstream. It is the law of the instrument. When we walk around with the biggest hammer, all of our problems look like nails. (D) is guilty. (R) is guilty. It took both parties to get to where we are now. I'm not a pacifist. I believe in having a strong defense. But I do not believe in using it for offense. It is antithetical to our American experiment, and we are, by nature of our form of government, ill-equipped for it.

Changing direction is an election away, so why do we think ourselves capable of such a decades long endeavor? Now, you can blame feckless liberals if you'd like, but this country is made up of conservatives and liberals, and we hand off power to each other. Why shouldn't our foreign policy take this reality into consideration?

This is why the "bad WMD intel" answer is unfulfilling to me. If the past 15 years were exactly the same, except we found caches of WMD, would these pols answer differently?

This whole effing mess is the result of a past president, Bush, and his cabinet and cronies deciding that they wanted to go to war in Iraq, for God only knows what inane personal or business reasons. To do this, they manipulated and inflated any smidgen of "intelligence" they had against Saddam just to make their case. Then conveniently, they took advantage of our nation's fears right after 9/11 so that everyone would be behind this imperialist war 100%, even the press. No one else, not even Congress or members of either party can seriously be considered planners or schemers in this absolutely boneheaded blunder of a war. Any other "explanations" are attempts at rewriting history to save their butts and legacies, plain and simple. Now we have this monster of a terrorist organization called ISIS that hates our guts and wants us dead at all costs. Thank you Bush/Cheney and crew. The future looks so bright.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 29274.html

This whole effing mess is the result of a past president, Bush

You don't get to cherry pick the start of history. Their decisions built upon previous decisions. This is just as unhelpful as people saying everything sucks because Obama pulled troops out of Iraq. The mess is the result of the paradigm of American foreign intervention.

Vander is correct. Iraq was the apex of the whole neo-con way of thought around reckless use of American military force and trying to force other cultures to our type of culture. That point was only reached after decades of stupidity and while it SEEMED completely discredited, there seem to be plenty of fools(and I don't use that term lightly) willing to go right back to that paradigm.

Is flying drones around the planet bombing people a defensive tactic? Is it any less 'big stick'?

I'm thinking we are still breaking up foriegn governments and killing people to effect change but the current administration is worried about body bags more than the last one and I'm betting it is the reaction their base has to the bags that is the tipping point, not the carnage of foriegn brown people.

If Repubs didn't own the oorah voter base they would try it with only air power too. Same ★■◆● different media spin...

Will Robinson wrote:Is flying drones around the planet bombing people a defensive tactic? Is it any less 'big stick'?

insofar as it doesn't wish to impose the US system of things upon others, and merely prevent attacks, yes, to both.

I don't think it makes sense to try to phrase things in terms of "defensive" and "offensive", as if it's a game of football. Warfare is multifaceted, and involves economics, politics, deterrence, covert ops, infiltration, deception, and so on. Nations will sometimes hold back on the most overt military actions, trying to get the other side to make the first overt move so that they can claim the moral high ground as "defensive". IMO one of the best things about Bush was his willingness to call BS on that -- when the Taliban provided a staging ground and unofficial cover for AQ, he was like "nope. If you harbor people who kill our civilians, you're responsible and we'll strike back with full force." And when Saddam provided staging grounds for terrorists, plus kept firing at US aircraft, plus kept trying to develop WMD (even though he was unsuccessful), again W was like "nope, you're responsible for hostility and we'll strike."

There's a lot to be said against the war. The overemphasis on WMD in the public explanation stage. The underplanning. Disbanding the Iraqi military. Failure to plan for the sectarian divisions within Iraq. Pulling troops out at the wrong time. Failure to respond properly to ISIS. It's arguable that Saddam could have been dealt with in other ways, and I certainly don't begrudge anyone the right to claim that the war itself was a worse choice than sanctions or a targeted strike or whatever. If you want to argue that, argue that. Just don't make this naive "defense vs offense" argument; it's an exercise in misguided oversimplification.

Will Robinson wrote:Is flying drones around the planet bombing people a defensive tactic?

Drone warfare makes what I'm discussing here even more insideous. It minimizes our sacrifice, making our use of force that much more effortless. Death and destruction should be hard.

Lothar wrote:Just don't make this naive "defense vs offense" argument; it's an exercise in misguided oversimplification.

I think it's a necessary simplification when we're speaking of concepts like "invasion as defense."

Like I said earlier, my thoughts are, sadly, out of the mainstream. Our republic wasn't built for global military hegemony. We will collapse under its weight.

Vander wrote:

Will Robinson wrote:I think Woody raises a very good point.

You can interpret that erratic keyboard mashing? woodchip didn't raise a point, he put his fingers in his ears and screamed lalalalalalalal. The point I make is pretty modest, and starts with a premise it looks like you both would agree with: The question is weak and the answer doesn't tell us anything that isn't obvious. I have not and would not state that the what I ask for not be applied to every presidential candidate. It should be applied to every national politician.

If you want to talk about individual landmines we've stepped on, that's fine. I want to discuss the decision to walk through the mine field.

What part of my mashing do you find erratic? You posed a single side question against the Rep. candidates as though they were the only players. I addressed that issue to show the Dems are equally to blame.
As for the justification, we had just gone through a major terrorist attack. If Saddam was too stupid to see the writing on the wall and his short megalomania memory was so short he forgot the ass kicking the last time he tangled with us, then lay the blame at his feet for not letting the inspectors in. While some here like to blame Bush for the mess Iraq is in today, don't forget when he left office the Iraqi people had proudly held up purple stained fingers to show they voted. Today we have the ex-Saddamist Sunni thugs trying to take Iraq over and that mess is wholly owned by Obama. We will eventually have to send troops in (contrary to Obama's admin stating airpower is enough...even after Ramadi was taken over) and we will wind up spilling more American lives. Obama will diddle around long enough that it will be up to the next Rep. president to fix and the left will of course label him a war monger. Keep drinking the kool-aid tho.

woodchip wrote:What part of my mashing do you find erratic? You posed a single side question against the Rep. candidates as though they were the only players. I addressed that issue to show the Dems are equally to blame.

Your response to a perception that I was somehow assigning blame is what I find erratic.

As for the justification...

I don't terribly care to get into this debate again. Not because anything has changed in the 10 years since we last had this discussion, but because it's irrelevant to my point.

For the sake of argument, and I'm sure this won't be hard for you, lets assume that every single Democrat is a horrible foreign policy tactician. That only Republicans are good at this stuff. Why do we think this type of regional transformation endeavor has any chance of long term success? Isn't it denying the reality that half of this country is bad at this stuff? If you think Obama is c0cking it up, it's a symptom of the point I'm making. America isn't set up for this.

Change in foreign policy strategy is an election away, and that election may be decided on lower taxes or healthcare or gun rights or social security. And 4 years later it has the chance to change again. And again and again.

We got hit on 9-11-2001 because of the way we do business as much as any meddling by way of military might. So it seems a little naive to think we can 'stay-out-of-trouble'. So if we are in it by virtue of just existing we may as well be one of the players under the net elbowing for possession of the ball. It isn't like all the other players will watch us unilaterally disarm (or any other selfless gesture of good faith/submission) and will follow suit.

The Chinese would laugh at that as would Putin. And the nutbags think the one true god is building them a paradise on our bones.

Winter is coming.

Will Robinson wrote:We got hit on 9-11-2001 because of the way we do business as much as any meddling by way of military might.

how'd you come up with this? Al Qaeda itself was formed due to the presence of Israel, and it's unilateral support by the US. They've stated that repeatedly, so how did you reach your alternate universe sort of theory?

So it seems a little naive to think we can 'stay-out-of-trouble'. So if we are in it by virtue of just existing we may as well be one of the players under the net elbowing for possession of the ball. It isn't like all the other players will watch us unilaterally disarm (or any other selfless gesture of good faith/submission) and will follow suit.

I see you've swallowed wholesale the whole line of BS that the neo-cons would have you believe. NO, we are not targetted merely for 'existing'.

The Chinese would laugh at that as would Putin. And the nutbags think the one true god is building them a paradise on our bones.

Winter is coming.

followed by Spring, precedeed by Autumn and Summer. And, the cycle repeats.

Will Robinson wrote:We got hit on 9-11-2001 because of the way we do business as much as any meddling by way of military might. So it seems a little naive to think we can 'stay-out-of-trouble'.

It's not about staying out of trouble, it's about understanding our limitations to avoid the consequences and collateral damage of reaching them. Our ever-changing leadership is a limitation. But it's a feature, not a bug. When a leader commits us to such a generational endeavor as Bush did in Iraq, he is either stripping us of self determination for the duration of the endeavor, or he is dooming the endeavor to failure for lack of follow through.

Before this devolves further into recitations of history, does anyone at least understand the point?

Vander wrote:

This whole effing mess is the result of a past president, Bush

You don't get to cherry pick the start of history. Their decisions built upon previous decisions. This is just as unhelpful as people saying everything sucks because Obama pulled troops out of Iraq. The mess is the result of the paradigm of American foreign intervention.

Oh, I understand that quite clearly. I am almost 60 years old and I seen and lived during all our glorious foreign policy mistakes of the past. Our leaders must be masochists because they never seem to learn from the past mistakes of their predecessors either. Presidents from both parties are at fault too, so I can't blame just Republicans, although NeoCon foreign policy has turned out to be the mother of all stupidity ever vomited out of some think tank. But the men who finally took the lid off the already boiling pot were Bush and Cheney. Another president could have been responsible later on anyway since we've become a giant military industrial war machine that needs constant feeding and we can't resist meddling in the Middle East, even to our detriment. But removing the lid that covered the pot full of religious sectarian hatred that was Iraq, falls squarely on Bush's shoulders. So does the formation ISIS. I say we send the both the Bushes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Jimmy Carter over there to clean up their past messes instead of letting our young soldiers die or get maimed fighting to clean up someone else's epic messes.

yes, Vander, I get your point. In fact, it was that long-term commitment to a really bad concept that led my Father(who's been around since 1920) to state that the decision to invade Iraq was the single worst foreign policy decision he'd ever seen in his lifetime.

callmeslick wrote:
I see you've swallowed wholesale the whole line of BS that the neo-cons would have you believe. NO, we are not targetted merely for 'existing'.

It appears you don't know what a neo-con is. So let me help you out:

"Neoconservatism first manifested in the early 1970s. It started among disaffected – mostly Jewish – liberals and some former leftists (yeah, we know it doesn't make sense) from the Schactmanite branch of Trotskyism who were upset at mainstream liberalism's "unwillingness"[2] to confront the Soviet Union and its "soft" stance on national security, and aversion to the counterculture."

Kindly don't use the term when trying to define conservatives.

oh, I know the origins and I know the current active players, too. I keep them separate from 'Conservatives' because I know they are NOT one and the same.Actually, modern 'conservatives' in the US have no real philosophical base, as merely blaming liberals or wanting low taxes isn't exactly a robust political philosophy. Also, many modern 'conservatives' bought the neo-con line about nation building, American Exceptionalism, projection of strength and all, hook, line and sinker. It is that thinking that gave us the BS about 'they attack us because they despise our way of life'. And, that truly can ONLY be characterized as BS. It simply is not true. Say what you will about the Islamist radicals, they stated their beefs with the US pretty clearly as early as the 1990s, and our 'lifestyle' was not one of them.

Yet they label us "The Great Satan" because they love our live style.

woodchip wrote:Yet they label us "The Great Satan" because they love our live style.

no, they do so because we've acted, on the world stage, like a nation of spoiled assholes for over 30 years.

woodchip wrote:It appears you don't know what a neo-con is. So let me help you out:

"Neoconservatism first manifested in the early 1970s. It started among disaffected – mostly Jewish – liberals and some former leftists (yeah, we know it doesn't make sense) from the Schactmanite branch of Trotskyism who were upset at mainstream liberalism's "unwillingness"[2] to confront the Soviet Union and its "soft" stance on national security, and aversion to the counterculture."

Kindly don't use the term when trying to define conservatives.

So what's Cheney's definition? Here's the Wiki entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism

Neoconservatives frequently advocate the promotion of democracy and promotion of American national interest in international affairs, including by means of military force, and are known for espousing disdain for communism and political radicalism.

So when you break it down, Neoconservatism is essentially American Imperialism. Plus, I don't see these NeoCons promoting democracy. I see it more as a business cronyism type of philosophy all enforced by using the military if you ask me. That's about as politically radical as one can get, force everyone to do things your way looking down the barrel of a gun, so I guess they're hypocrites too since they don't like political radicals, like themselves. So who's the real Satan?

callmeslick wrote:

Will Robinson wrote:We got hit on 9-11-2001 because of the way we do business as much as any meddling by way of military might.

how'd you come up with this? Al Qaeda itself was formed due to the presence of Israel, and it's unilateral support by the US. They've stated that repeatedly, so how did you reach your alternate universe sort of theory?

I reached my real world understanding from reading the founder of al Queda's own words.
What you have done is cited one small complaint he listed.
You want it to be all about Israel because you are committed to the rhetoric of your party. It is your choice to be ignorant on the subject.

The first victim of al Queda was bin Laden's mentor and leader of the Arab contingent that fought beside the Afghans against the Soviets. They gathered on the side of a mountain after their last fight there where they kept a home base and he told the young bin Laden and his fellow radical wannabe's that 'The war was over, the Soviets are defeated, the mujahideen have their country back so go home and live your lives.'

bin Laden argued they should continue the jihad back in their home countries, to drive out the non-devout muslims from the governments and install sharia law in their place. The man and his son were killed hours later after he refused to hold the group together. bin Laden re-named the group "The Base" that night and he took control of those that would follow him. The US support for Israel is a tiny part of that dark puzzle.

Will, your own quote(or paraphrasing) illustrates that the focus was on re-establishing their view of correct Islam in their home nations. Where did that involve the US, as we were not the home country to any of those folks?

Somewhere in that past 30 years, america (not the citizens) got it in its head that the world can't function without it.

Ferno wrote:Somewhere in that past 30 years, america (not the citizens) got it in its head that the world can't function without it.

Last time America divorced itself from the world led to WW2.

callmeslick wrote:Will, your own quote(or paraphrasing) illustrates that the focus was on re-establishing their view of correct Islam in their home nations. Where did that involve the US, as we were not the home country to any of those folks?

You really aren't paying attention are you?
Yes that illustrates their core purpose was to rid their world of the impure Muslims..... and thus it refutes your assertion that Al Queda was all about US involvement in Israel.