Should the U.S. attack Iraq?

[talltech]

Originally posted by j-man



I hate to say it but this whole middle east/afghanistan thing has vietnam written all over it. We are fighting a war against who ever we want (Iraq, Syria, and the rest of the axis of evil) but the public is feeling out of the loop...


I have to agree with webby... great thread!

That is exactly my point, for all the miliray might of the USA, she sails into this now with very limited support from the world outside of her most staunch allies. whats more how many afganistan style problems can the US keep a lid on, at the moment iraq has stable if not a desirable system of govenment and law, just remember pakistan falls somewhat into the specter of being a militant state. god help us if mr bin laden and his friends bring pakistan into the chaos they did afganuistan. Pakistan is a nuclear power

[Fubarian]

Originally posted by Draggar
Sometimes I don't get most people in this county. They complaain that its not safe enough, but when something is done, trying to protect us even more, they complain even louder because they're inconvenienced, or they feel they're being "singled out".

This country needs to grow up.

You're right. The general public is stupid, uninformed and blind. People don't like it when their way of life is disrupted. It drives them nuts. Just like road closures -- what do people do? whine and complain, ask why can't it be done faster, so on and so forth, others just accept it and move on and work around it.

[Darkstar]

I have a brother and a friend who work construction (different companies) and are outside all day. Both of them have independently mentioned they've seen about a half dozen all-black military trains in the last two weeks, completely filled with brand-new tanks and armored personnel carriers all painted with the Desert Storm paint scheme.

I think this has been in the works for a LONG time and is well underway. I'm guessing January.

[kingtbone]

Didn't the US put Saddam in power at one time?

And one more question, out of curiosity...

What percentage of Americans vote in the presidential elections?

[Draggar]

Originally posted by kingtbone
Didn't the US put Saddam in power at one time?

And one more question, out of curiosity...

What percentage of Americans vote in the presidential elections?

I don't think the US put Saddam in power, thats Mao you're thinking of.
We did support him during the Iran / Iraq war, though.

As for Americans who vote, probably not as many who bitch and moan about the polotics & poloticians..

[Darkstar]

The presidential election system and electoral college is a sham and has been forever. We need to get big business out of government and the media and create a true direct democracy and term limits on all officials except for judges.

This impending war is being fabricated by the Military Industrial Complex and is being sold to the politicians as a way to re-stimulate the economy and to the regular Americans as a way to prevent another 9/11.

whew...sorry

[Stalemate]

Personally, I think it's too late for military activities to be used as a deterrent for the onslaught radical islamic/muslim groups are/will wage upon capitalist democracies.

Islam is the fastest growing religious/philosophical group on the planet. Mix that in with military support from Russia and China, and you've got yourself a Molotov cocktail the middle-east will not soon forget.

I challenge those who voted against to read up on Islam - not the media/pop-psych propaganda, but actual sociological essays and research on these peoples and their true agenda.

It's no longer a question of us "democratic countries" setting an example and doing what's right. The very survival of freedom is in question here.

Islam Agenda by PROF. MOSHE SHARON, Professor of Islamic History at the Hebrew University, in Jerusalem

Here's a quote that sums it up:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Modern History…
Behind the Middle East Crisis
by John and Carol Loeffler

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

...

In the world media, the propaganda war still rages equally fiercely, paralleling the conflict it describes. Every night, talk channel pundits and their Israeli or Palestinian guests scream a bewildering array of claims, counter claims, propaganda and information, leaving the uninformed Westerner with the impression that this is a bad family feud that any wise person should remain far from. It is virtually impossible to sort out the arguments presented by Israelis and Palestinians without a lot of effort, but one thing is painfully obvious: both sides can't even agree on the historical facts that spawned today's conflict. It is also clear that both groups operate from two fundamentally incompatible worldviews, something the global secular community is using to point to religion as the cause of all the world's problems.

...

The Six-Day War (1967)

The events surrounding the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War is perhaps the biggest bone of contention regarding today's conflict: borders and who started the fight. Frequently, demands are heard about UN Resolution 242, which requires Israel to keep to its pre-1967 borders with its Arab neighbors, but no one can agree exactly what that will mean. At the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, no peace treaty was signed; a cease-fire armistice was the only thing defining borders and the terms of peace. A peace treaty was to be hammered out later, something which the Arab countries subsequently refused to do, since they still intended to retake the territory of Israel when the occasion presented itself.


A Bellicose Chronology

On May 15, 1967, Israeli intelligence discovered that Egypt was concentrating large-scale forces in the Sinai peninsula - remember this is before the days of satellite intelligence. On May 19, the United Nations Emergency Force stationed on the border between Egypt and Israel was evacuated at the demand of Egypt's president, Gamal Abdel-Nasser. During the night of May 22-23, Egypt's navy blockaded the Straits of Tiran opening into the Indian Ocean, prohibiting passage to Israeli ships. On May 30, Jordan joined the Egyptian-Syrian alliance of 1966 and placed its armies under Egyptian command. Iraq followed suit shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, military detachments from other Arab countries began arriving. By the end of May, Israel confronted a Muslim force of 465,000 troops, 2,880 tanks and 810 fighter aircraft along the entire length of her borders with Arab countries, which had not been there less than a month earlier.

... Despite a huge Egyptian army threatening its southern border, Israel tried to diplomatically defuse the crisis by approaching Britain and France, who had guaranteed freedom of Israeli navigation. Those counties reneged on their promise. U.S. President Johnson proposed breaking the blockade with an international armada. In a May 28 broadcast, Israel's Prime Minister Levi Eshkol agreed to wait and see.

By June 4 it became clear that diplomatic channels had failed. Faced with imminent danger, Israel launched a preemptive air strike to shatter Arab air forces while their aircraft were still on the ground, a move which succeeded. During the six days of the war, in fierce fighting Israel took the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Desert from Egypt, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan - all of the territories that have been on the table for negotiation during the Oslo Peace Process. Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt during the historic Camp David agreement under President Jimmy Carter, negotiated between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Sadat would later pay for this with his life as the result of an assassination. The remaining territories are still held by Israel. The Palestinians view these lands as having been seized and occupied by Israeli aggression, while Israelis view them as spoils of a war they didn't start or want.


The Jerusalem Block

Jerusalem remains a stumbling block to peace as the Palestinians claim the city was theirs before the 1967 War, while the city is the heart and soul of the Jewish nation and religion. It was the once-great capital of King David and the site of Solomon's and, later, Herod's temple. Even though Muslims considered Jerusalem to be a holy site, building the Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount in a.d. 687 to commemorate the site from which Mohammed made his Miraaj or Night Journey into the heavens, the city itself was virtually ignored until Jewish immigrants returned in significant numbers. The city is now the greatest source of division between Israelis and Palestinians, since the side that rules Jerusalem will hold dominion over the other's holy sites. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians can agree to willingly give up any part of the Temple Mount. It is the ultimate point of honor.

The Oslo Accord established most of the West Bank and Gaza as Palestinian-controlled areas with the understanding that future negotiations would be required to settle the questions of boundary lines, the establishment of a Palestinian state, the issue of Jerusalem, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees. It was deemed that these issues were too hot to handle, and indeed these issues torpedoed the most recent Camp David talks. In a drive to establish himself as the president whose legacy was to bring peace to the Middle East, President Clinton pressured Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat into addressing these issues prematurely. Coming to an agreement at that point would have meant political suicide for both men, and ultimately it cost Barak his position.

...


Why Do They Hate Us?

Many Westerners fail to understand the deeper religious nature of not only the Middle Eastern conflict, but also how that affects our own position in the world. September 11 caught the United States and the West by surprise, but it shouldn't have. The indicators were all there for anyone with eyes to understand what they were looking at, and it was clear something had to give. Western culture is viewed as a threat to Islam, which by now should have been well underway to converting the globe to the service of Allah. Indeed it really is, as in some parts of the western world it's the fastest growing religion. By 632, the prophet Mohammed had completed the task of conquering the Arabian peninsula, something he began only 10 years earlier. From Arabia, Islam swept through North Africa as well as modern-day Turkey and into the Balkans. From North Africa the Muslims invaded the Iberian peninsula and proceeded into the European heartland, where they were stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732. Muslims continued to have a foothold in Spain, contributing greatly to Spanish culture, until they were finally expelled under Isabella and Ferdinand in 1492.

Islam is a rich and complex culture in itself, which traditionally assumes one of two roles. In a country where it is not dominant, it takes on a submissive, negotiating role until it can achieve the upper hand. Once in dominance, it switches faces and assumes control, imposing itself on the culture in which it finds itself the majority. Ultimately Muslims believe that the whole world will be Muslim, even if it takes a few centuries and any number of setbacks.

Arab Muslims have a love/hate relationship with the West. Muslims view Western culture as being decadent (frankly, they're right), and are distressed that Western governments have intruded into Muslim lands since World War I. Virtually all of the countries of the Middle East today are the result of artificial borders drawn up by Western powers following the Great War. Israel is viewed as a Western thorn in the Islamic heartland; an intolerable cancer that ultimately must be dealt with. The question in the Islamic mind is not how much land Israel holds; it is the fact that it holds any land at all in what was formerly Muslim territory. This is one core reason why the Middle East can never have peace unless it is imposed from without, and once the external pressure is removed, war will return.

While adhering to 6th-century religious practices, especially concerning sexuality and women, Muslims steadfastly believe in the ultimate global victory of Islam. Still while deploring Western culture, Muslims love Western technology and money. They use email, cell phones, faxes, and the like. They buy Western weapons and clothing and use oil money from Western countries to finance their activities, including terrorism.

[WebHead]

Wow! Out of almost 30,000 registered users here at Windrivers.com, only 45 people voted in this thread?

[goinpostal]

I was in the Gulf War and it admittedly was a remote control war, but I suspect this time we will surely be sending in ground troops to track him down which means American lives at stake. I am assuming all that voted yes have an appt with their armed forces recruiter tomorrow...right ???

I am sure we will go 'cause Jr has to finish what senior did'nt.

I am a patriotic American but I think this is unnecessary at this time.

[Draggar]

Originally posted by WebHawg
Wow! Out of almost 30,000 registered users here at Windrivers.com, only 45 people voted in this thread?

Sounds like the elections here in the us.

[ilovetheusers]

I have read through this thread (and yes webbie it is a good thread) and I am seeing that many of us are not looking at the grandest view of why we are even discussing this at all. We have one reason that we care one iota about the people living in around the Middle East – OIL. A sensible person would have long ago looked up and said, hmm, maybe we shouldn’t use this polluting material and we should find alternatives to it through the application of our amazing technologies. But, as the oil companies virtually rule the world, this is not to be.

I have said this many a time and it is no less true today than it was 10 years ago. If American soldiers go die in a war in the Middle East it is for the money bloated oil companies and their investors and not the bulk of the American people. There is plenty of oil under US soil and in and around South America to sustain us for a long time to come. I would assume that many an oil company has serious money tied up in their investments in the Middle East and want to continue to reap a harvest of money.

If we really wanted to destroy Saddam and AlQueda (sic??) we would stop all money flowing to that region. No more oil money no more reason for fighting and no way to buy the weapons needed or to do research on weapons of mass destruction and thus little threat to us.

If we would spend what we do on destruction of other humans on research into new clean energy sources – cold fusion would be a reality today. Instead the energy policy of this nation and the other nations of the world is oil, oil, oil. If we were truly interested in peace and democracy in the Middle East and around the world I’d vote YES – lets go! But in reality we may see people die so can continue to have cheap oil while we use our sons and daughters blood to grease the wheels of industry and business.

Oh, and the voter turnout being crappy – so what? Both parties are virtually the same on every subject but not how to go about it. Many of us know that no matter who we vote for we will get another garbage candidate and be he or her a republicrat or a demopublican they are going to tax and screw us while they are in office.

politicians

[Spaceman Spiff]

Gee, ILTU, why don't you quit beating around the bush and tell us what you really think?

[ilovetheusers]

Originally posted by Spaceman Spiff
Gee, ILTU, why don't you quit beating around the bush and tell us what you really think?

[Zil]

I say take Sadaam out, don't let him have a free shot at us or Israel (he's done it before). If we don't, we may have another 9/11 on our hands. Sadaam is dangerous, why take the chance?

[D65536]

Killing ANYONE is wrong. War is not the answer. There I admited it. I am a freakin hippie.