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I refuse to defend the Iraq War but I think you'd have to be pretty ballsy to argue that removing Saddam Hussein from power wasn't an objectively good thing.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:05
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SedanChair posted:It's really not clear at all, and I think expecting Gore to have been less war-crazed than Bush by 2003 is committing the old error of comparing an incumbent to a politician who never held the office. The neocon narrative was pretty much the only one going in foreign policy circles after 9/11. They asserted that they had been proven right, and the only people with a counternarrative were the war protesters that everybody was ignoring and calling traitors. Imagine the pressure Republicans would have put on Gore to invade. Imagine the invective they would have hurled at him unceasingly until he capitulated.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:06
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Fojar38 posted:I refuse to defend the Iraq War but I think you'd have to be pretty ballsy to argue that removing Saddam Hussein from power wasn't an objectively good thing.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:07
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ColoradoCleric posted:Mustard gas and Sarin are pretty easy to mass produce. He already used them once and even the U.S. was wary in the second invasion and made sure as poo poo he wouldn't get a chance to launch more scuds just in case. The only people who were wary of Iraq having chemical weapons were Tony Blair and the Bush administration. Literally everyone else in the world knew that Iraq didn't have any. Fojar38 posted:I refuse to defend the Iraq War but I think you'd have to be pretty ballsy to argue that removing Saddam Hussein from power wasn't an objectively good thing. Just because removing Saddam from power was a good thing doesn't mean that the Iraq War was a good idea. Removing Putin from power would be a good thing, should America go to war with Russia?
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Apr 10, 2014 01:08
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Thursday. Thursday. Thursday! 9AM. Book it/her!
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Apr 10, 2014 01:09
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We were pretty neutral in the beginning of the Iraq Iran war until it became obvious Saddam started something he couldn't finish. Then he has the balls to get involved in the tanker wars and then occupy another country. Any foreign policy person is going to look at this and think "Yep this guy is a problem"
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Apr 10, 2014 01:09
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i think bush was the best president of the 21st century and history has already vindicated him
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Apr 10, 2014 01:09
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Fojar38 posted:I refuse to defend the Iraq War but I think you'd have to be pretty ballsy to argue that removing Saddam Hussein from power wasn't an objectively good thing. Well yes though really I think the debate is was post-Saddam Iraq worse than before, which to be honest is an apples to oranges thing because misery isn't quantifiable.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:10
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Whiskey Sours posted:The only people who were wary of Iraq having chemical weapons were Tony Blair and the Bush administration. Literally everyone else in the world knew that Iraq didn't have any. What about the Libyan regime change?
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Apr 10, 2014 01:11
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Well yes though really I think the debate is was post-Saddam Iraq worse than before, which to be honest is an apples to oranges thing because misery isn't quantifiable. Now we have a playground for iranian and sunni insurgent proxy war.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:12
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ColoradoCleric posted:What about the Libyan regime change? Enforcing a no fly zone and providing air support to one side in an active civil war is not the same as invading a sovereign nation based on faulty intelligence.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:14
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Whiskey Sours posted:Enforcing a no fly zone and providing air support to one side in an active civil war is not the same as invading a sovereign nation based on faulty intelligence. But we killed 2 tinpot paper tiger dictators. I'm sure Saddam was really popular in his home country.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:15
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ColoradoCleric posted:But we killed 2 tinpot paper tiger dictators. Yes, and if Iraqi rebel groups and military regiments started fighting against Saddam's regime and America responded by enforcing a no fly zone and attacking ground targets with broad international support you might have a point.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:18
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Whiskey Sours posted:Enforcing a no fly zone and providing air support to one side in an active civil war is not the same as invading a sovereign nation based on faulty intelligence. A nation with one of the largest military's in the world no less.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:18
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Fojar38 posted:I refuse to defend the Iraq War but I think you'd have to be pretty ballsy to argue that removing Saddam Hussein from power wasn't an objectively good thing. Saddam was a monster, but removing him the way we did created a power vacuum and the region erupted in sectarian violence.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:26
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Abortion: it's kinda like buying a car, or some carpeting:quote:State Rep. Chuck Gatschenberger (R) explained to his colleagues on the Missouri House's Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities committee that when he goes to buy a new vehicle, he doesn't just make a snap decision.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:27
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Fojar38 posted:I refuse to defend the Iraq War but I think you'd have to be pretty ballsy to argue that removing Saddam Hussein from power wasn't an objectively good thing. Well then I have balls the size of grapefruits. It was objectively bad. The country was more or less stable, had a decent middle class, and wasn't exactly high up on freedoms but it isn't any loving better now, now it's a lot more dangerous, a lot more poor, with hundreds of thousands dead for no loving reason. It's a god drat waste land with an ineffective governing power, sectarian violence and no hope. So yes, removing Saddam from power was a loving mistake.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:27
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Taking out Saddam probably didn't matter much either way, but de-Baathification was a colossal fuckup.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:33
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quote:It's really not clear at all, and I think expecting Gore to have been less war-crazed than Bush by 2003 is committing the old error of comparing an incumbent to a politician who never held the office. The neocon narrative was pretty much the only one going in foreign policy circles after 9/11. They asserted that they had been proven right, and the only people with a counternarrative were the war protesters that everybody was ignoring and calling traitors. Imagine the pressure Republicans would have put on Gore to invade. Imagine the invective they would have hurled at him unceasingly until he capitulated. While we're throwing hypotheticals around, Gore probably wouldn't have compromised Afghanistan - perhaps catching bin Laden. The poo poo are the neocons gonna say then? They can brush it off with Obama cuz it's a decade later. Bush'd probably be up there with Reagan in the conservative mind if he had caught bin Laden. TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 01:36
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Bush'd probably be up there with Reagan in the conservative mind if he had caught bin Laden. He'll be joining him soon enough.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:46
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Mitch McConnell posed a query to the facebooks. Let's see how people answered...  
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Apr 10, 2014 01:51
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ColoradoCleric posted:A tinpot dictator who just casually throws around chemical weapons and actually captured kuwait is just a paper tiger. At what point after Desert Storm did he capture Kuwait. I specifically qualified my timeframe, and you contest that, so please, post when he captured Kuwait after Desert Storm was complete
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Apr 10, 2014 01:55
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Joementum posted:Mitch McConnell posed a query to the facebooks. This, combined with Ted Cruz's idiocy on facebook earlier in the week gives me the warm fuzzies. 
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Apr 10, 2014 01:55
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The internet is generally pretty hostile to Republicans outside of a few hugboxes.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:57
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Stalin McHitler posted:This, combined with Ted Cruz's idiocy on facebook earlier in the week gives me the warm fuzzies. I expect that, if this sort of thing continues, the messaging will change to "  See? Obamacare has made Americans dependent on government just like we said it would! We must repeal Obamacare to restore all that independence it tricked people into surrendering! "
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Apr 10, 2014 02:00
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In which Lindsey Graham uses a Senate hearing to complain about his TV service.
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Apr 10, 2014 02:05
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ColoradoCleric posted:But we killed 2 tinpot paper tiger dictators. That a disarmed dictator was disliked makes it part of our interests, how? And then, explain why those hypothetical interests are served by pursuing them in the most incompetent and costly means available. Because here's the thing - even from the point of view of Empire, the Iraq war was complete horseshit
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Apr 10, 2014 02:06
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Stalin McHitler posted:This, combined with Ted Cruz's idiocy on facebook earlier in the week gives me the warm fuzzies. I missed it, did Cruz step in it online or something? Last I heard was him trying to bar Iran's diplomat to the UN.
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Apr 10, 2014 02:08
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ArchRanger posted:I missed it, did Cruz step in it online or something? Last I heard was him trying to bar Iran's diplomat to the UN. http://www.mediaite.com/online/ted-cruzs-obamacare-facebook-poll-totally-backfires-on-him/ Not the best description of what happened, but I'm sure someone will post screenshots of it e: the original is still up! https://www.facebook.com/SenatorTedCruz/posts/517779935000978
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Apr 10, 2014 02:12
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More disappointing: Cruz's latest Facebook post is about Churchill's honorary natural US citizenship and more people are posting birther comments about Obama than Cruz in it 
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Apr 10, 2014 02:14
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Phone posted:I'm an advocate for open carry knives. Just for yuks, I googled the guy's name to see what else he's been up to, and I just now found out he's been known to write for WorldNetDaily. I know I shouldn't be surprised or anything, but now I'm wondering whether his book cover shows up in this forum so often because of the ridiculousness of the subject matter, of if it's considered topical to GOP rebuilding because of his bizarre politics.
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Apr 10, 2014 02:23
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ColoradoCleric posted:The dude repeatedly tried to invade neighboring countries and had the military to accomplish it. That makes Saddam the Santa Ana of the Middle East.
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Apr 10, 2014 02:34
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ColoradoCleric posted:What about the Libyan regime change? Whiskey Sours posted:Enforcing a no fly zone and providing air support to one side in an active civil war is not the same as invading a sovereign nation based on faulty intelligence. 1. It wasn't just the US, it was a joint effort with NATO. 2. Said joint effort only started after the US agreed, we didn't just charge in head first without thinking. 3. We actually had a plan going in and what to do when the war was over. 4. Our "intervention" was more putting our thumb on the scale, while the Libyan forces took on Gaddafi. 5. We didn't send in ground troops, air and naval support only, which means US casualties were very minimal. (Hell, possibly even non-existent?) 6. Since we didn't send in ground troops, once the war was over, withdrawal was much easier than any other middle east conflict we've gotten involved in. 7. The whole thing was over in eight months, compared to almost 9 years for Iraq and 13 loving years for Afghanistan. 5. Afterwards the Libyans actually liked us because we helped them out. (I remember someone posted a poll that showed something like 76% of Libyans supported the intervention) I realize that Libya is still having problems post-civil war, and that things aren't sunshine and roses just because Gaddafi's gone, but I really don't see what else the US could do (besides not intervene, but for once I think that was a bad option). Our track record on rebuilding is not good, and in the end it was a civil war, we just helped out a bit. Basically, to me that was the perfect example of "how to successfully intervene in a Middle Eastern country". The irony that Obama managed to pull off what I'd call a successful Middle Eastern intervention while Bush started two failures has got to grate on Republicans something fierce. Unfortunately, anything related to Libya is tainted by loving BENGHAZI!  and Vilerat's death.
fade5 fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 02:37
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Joementum posted:More disappointing: Cruz's latest Facebook post is about Churchill's honorary natural US citizenship and more people are posting birther comments about Obama than Cruz in it If I were Cruz, I wouldn't want to remind anyone of that time I said Obama can't be compared to a great president like Churchill. What is with this guy's Churchill obsession? fade5 posted:5. We didn't send in ground troops, air and naval support only, which means US casualties were very minimal. (Hell, possibly even non-existent?) Not including Benghazi, there were 0 US casualties and 1 NATO casualty, a Brit who died in a traffic accident in Italy on the way to his deployment.
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Apr 10, 2014 02:55
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dinoputz posted:Just for yuks, I googled the guy's name to see what else he's been up to, and I just now found out he's been known to write for WorldNetDaily. I know I shouldn't be surprised or anything, but now I'm wondering whether his book cover shows up in this forum so often because of the ridiculousness of the subject matter, of if it's considered topical to GOP rebuilding because of his bizarre politics. Martial artists and gun nerds have known that they can always hawk a column to right-wingers since Soldier of Fortune and Black Belt days. I'm plugged into this knowledge 
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Apr 10, 2014 02:58
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fade5 posted:. The irony that Obama managed to pull off what I'd call a successful Middle Eastern intervention while Bush started two failures has got to grate on Republicans something fierce. You've put your finger on precisely why BENGHAZI turned into such a hotbutton. The republicans had to distract everyone from Obama's success in Libya.
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Apr 10, 2014 03:00
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Not including Benghazi, there were 0 US casualties and 1 NATO casualty, a Brit who died in a traffic accident in Italy on the way to his deployment. Hieronymous Alloy posted:The republicans had to distract everyone from Obama's success in Libya. 
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Apr 10, 2014 03:13
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comes along bort posted:Abortion: it's kinda like buying a car, or some carpeting: And yet he would doubtlessly vehemently object to mandatory 3 day waiting periods to buy a car as government over regulation.
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Apr 10, 2014 03:21
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Stalin McHitler posted:This, combined with Ted Cruz's idiocy on facebook earlier in the week gives me the warm fuzzies. Not to rain on your parade of warm fuzzies, but Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are 2 of the most hated politicians in America. Democrats hate them for being Republicans, and what feels like about half the Republican base, at this point, hate both of them for compromising with Democrats too much and obstructing the true conservatives like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio also used to be on that list of true conservatives until they decided to take middle of the road positions on immigration. So more than a few of those comments criticizing McConnell in that image are actually criticizing him from the right.
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Apr 10, 2014 04:39
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Aren't questions of bush's bloodthirsty-ness settled by the conversation he had when he drunk dialed the French president and started ranting about Gog and Magog? Along with the bible themed covers and war quotes on his status updates? You can't help but get blood on your hands in that job. But you don't have to revel in it or start calling yourself god's sword.
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Apr 10, 2014 07:24
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