Lieberman offers clear assessment on Iraq

[BlueHair]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

You aren't talking about selectively killing the terrorists. You are talking about wiping out an entire country with carpet bombing.

If the U.S. would have had knowlege of Hitler's whereabouts, I would have supported a nuclear weapon to be dropped on that city.

Truth be told, I hate war. I just think that if the cause is worth going to war for, total annihilation has to be an option. At minimum, your enemy has to believe that you would consider it. If I start a fight with a guy twice my size, I have to expect him to beat my ass hard. He's not going to only hit me as hard as I hit him. He's going to use all his skills to pummel me. I would also expect him to beat the crap out of my friends that are with me and were too dumb to keep me out of trouble.

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by il Padrino Ute

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor without warning or provocation. Japan was the enemy trying to kill American troops during WWII.

Al-Quaeda attacked the US with airliners without warning or provocation. The terrorists are the enemy trying to kill American troops today.

You already stopped trying to compare Iraq and Japan and instead focused on al-Qaeda and Japan. If the best you can come up with is that both attacked us without warning or provocation, you have a long ways to go.

Al-Qaeda isn't a country. They don't have citizens. They don't have an army. They don't have a central command that can surrender. They don't wear uniforms. They don't negotiate.

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by BlueHair

If the U.S. would have had knowlege of Hitler's whereabouts, I would have supported a nuclear weapon to be dropped on that city.

Truth be told, I hate war. I just think that if the cause is worth going to war for, total annihilation has to be an option. At minimum, your enemy has to believe that you would consider it. If I start a fight with a guy twice my size, I have to expect him to beat my ass hard. He's not going to only hit me as hard as I hit him. He's going to use all his skills to pummel me. I would also expect him to beat the crap out of my friends that are with me and were too dumb to keep me out of trouble.

So we don't want to leave Iraq in part because it would devolve into a civil war resulting in millions of deaths, but we are fine destroying Iraq and wiping out its inhabitants?

[MikeWaters]

Japan is a strange situation.

The Japanese love us. They consider Americans as their saviors in some respects.

I don't expect that many other cultures would have the same reaction to our nuking their cities.

The Japanese have always been impressed with the generosity of Americans. I remember hearing the Japanese ambassador speak at BYU. He said that Hideo Nomo had done more to improve Japanese-American relations than anything else in recent history. The reason being that Americans had embraced Nomo, and had selected him as the starting pitcher in the All-Star game. The Japanese realized that they would not have done the same, and this impressed them.

For all of our faults, we Americans are a generous people. We are the shining city on the hill. Let's act the part.

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by il Padrino Ute

Do you think the terrorists would not kill my children or wife if I did cooperate with them?

I realize I may sound like I think it's easy to say when not faced with the situation, but I honestly believe that I would not allow them to intimidate me.

Quite often they would not. Terrorists aren't completely stupid. They need at least a degree of support from the people. If they get everyone too mad at them, everyone will operate in concert to eliminate them. They need to make it easier and safer to do nothing than to act against them. If they rape and kill everyone who helps them, it will be easier and safer to exterminate them.

[il Padrino Ute]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Depends on what you mean by "allow". Let's say I had killed your parents and your brothers' and sisters' families. I have guns, you have nothing.

Me and my buddies move into your neighborhood. What, pray tell, are you going to do? You are probably going to try and save your family.

You are assuming a position of power and agency that most Iraqis don't have. The people with power and influence and money are long gone. The people remaining are those who can't leave. They are hardly in a position to fight against those that shed blood. This is unfortunate.

What about the VT killings? What are we to think of adult men cowering under their desks while one armed man shot women in the head? Are they not complicit in some way with these killings? And because of their complicity, are we not justified in killing them in our attempt to kill the shooter?

You probably think this is unfair. Those men, individually, were unlikely to overwhelm the shooter. But had they acted in concert they might have. Is it really fair to expect them to have acted in concert?

Is it fair to justify killing Iraqi civilians because they have not risen up against the insurgents/terrorists?

In reality, the reason we are in Iraq is the opposite of genocide. We are there to preserve life, hence our police action. Bush and McCain warn of blood running in the streets if we leave. We have destabilized a country, now we hope to restabilize it. It's a tall order to ask a military, that is being attacked, to sustain and preserve life. It is noble. Whether you think it is worth the sacrifice, no doubt, influences your opinion of whether we should leave or not.

If you were to come into my home, I would do all I could to kill you in any way I could.

There was one man on the VT campus that sacrificed himself in order to save the students in his classroom. Had he not stood up to the student with the gun, there would have been more than 31 casualties.

[Detroitdad]

Originally Posted by BlueHair

This is dead on. I can't remember exactly where I read the following but it goes something like this: You have to do whatever it takes in war to take away your opponents will to fight. A "proportionate response" never works. A disproportionate response does. If you want to blow up one of our military vehicles, we'll blow up a square mile around it. You shoot from a Mosque, we'll level it. Fire shots out of a house, we'll firebomb the neighborhood. Civilians are not innocent. They are the very people that allow the terrorist to operate in their neighborhoods. They allowed their government to put them in this awful situation. Why was there law and order when Saddam was in power? Because the citizens were scared to death he would kill them all. They don't have that fear of us.

This idea reminds me a bit of the famous quote about a village in Vietnam, "It became necessary for us to destroy it, in order to save it." It also misses the point of the "war" we are fighting, which is to create a country that respects the rule of law. Killing indiscriminately is not within the rule of law as established by the Geneva convention to which we are a signatory. Perhaps most importantly it would not win us any friends or any trust in fulfilling the ultimate mission in Iraq.

We can kick anybody in the world's ass that we want to in a conventional war, and consequently we will probably never fight one again. Like it or not these are the rules of engagement for the forseeable future.

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by BlueHair

If the U.S. would have had knowlege of Hitler's whereabouts, I would have supported a nuclear weapon to be dropped on that city.

Truth be told, I hate war. I just think that if the cause is worth going to war for, total annihilation has to be an option. At minimum, your enemy has to believe that you would consider it. If I start a fight with a guy twice my size, I have to expect him to beat my ass hard. He's not going to only hit me as hard as I hit him. He's going to use all his skills to pummel me. I would also expect him to beat the crap out of my friends that are with me and were too dumb to keep me out of trouble.

If you knew where he was, why wouldn't you use something smaller, like a grenade?

What sense does it make to wipe out millions to get one person when you could wipe out only that one person and preserve the millions?

There are lots of ways to intimidate the opposition that don't involve nuclear weapons.

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by il Padrino Ute

If you were to come into my home, I would do all I could to kill you in any way I could.

There was one man on the VT campus that sacrificed himself in order to save the students in his classroom. Had he not stood up to the student with the gun, there would have been more than 31 casualties.

Honey- cancel our dinner appointment with Il Padrino!!!

Yes- one man was very brave. And we honor him and applaude his sacrifice. But do we do so while simultaneously claiming that the other 30 dead deserved to die for fleeing?

[BlueHair]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

So we don't want to leave Iraq in part because it would devolve into a civil war resulting in millions of deaths, but we are fine destroying Iraq and wiping out its inhabitants?

I want us to leave Iraq. I don't support the loss of even one U.S. citizen to build a democracy in another country. Bottom line is Bush attacked the wrong country. I don't believe the war in Iraq has improved anyone's lives. Not Iraqis and certainly not Americans. I want our military used only to defend U.S. citizens. It's not our job to force democracy on people that either don't want it or can't handle it. Who are we to say that everyone has to have democracy?

Now that we are there and the mess is made, I think you have to let them sort out what they want. Civil war? Of course. Either way, tens of thousands of lives are going to be lost. I would prefer that none of those are Americans.

Now as far as the theory that us leaving would embolden the enemy. I don't buy it for a minute. Why would they attack us? They know we'll bomb the piss out of them and leave their country to civil war like we did in Iraq.