The Iraq war

[mythbusterfan]

I found this following poem. It was for something else but here goes.

War is a Monster

It doesn't feel,
It doesn't think,
It doesn't laugh or cry.
All it does from dawn till dusk,
Is make the soldiers die.

[Small town]

*Is scared*COMMUNISM?!?!?COMMUNISM SUCKS CUZ IT ALMOST ALWAYS ENDS UP IN A DICTATORSHIP!!! And thats all im saying.

[magicalmike]

Its wierd but when bush inveded iraq he seamed kind of impulsive, dont you think. Going in without the support of the UN. was he worried that they might not back this operation or was bush hiding alterior motives?

Also i saw a guest on the Cobert report that talked about how people are less conected to the war then they were in world war 2. I think the reason that bush has lost the suport of the american people is that he has had nothing but falure after falure. Every day you hear on the radio stuff like 4 US soilders were killed bye a roadside bom today. I dont support the war. Actualy it shouldent be called a war, it should be called a sluaghter because US soilders and iraqes are killing each other to the piont where we have lost sight of what were realy fighting for.

[mythbusterfan]

i havn't been watching the news on the iraq war lately have we had any more casualties?

this is sick the only press now that the war gets is when people die. which probably means that there is nothing good that the war causes that can be covered by the newspeople we have over there.

when do our troops get to come home i think they've been there long eneough they should get to return home to their families and loved ones i think they've done eneogh and eneough people have died to warrant a pullout of iraq

[tori]

Okay..I will limit my self to what I type for the reason this may use up a awhole page of i wanted to.
IRAQ WAR: Blames the whole thing on bush. That is my opinon. I donmt think the Iraq war was suppose to happen..Yes i know that the guy bombed us but bush didnt have to end out a bunch of us Americans just because fo that..Capture the man and be done with it.
Now we have so many other Contries who hate us. We are becoming "un-united" with all this war. I HATE it so much. I just dont get why bush can just get over it.
I havent seeen the news in quite a while so i dont know if they did catch the bomber. I forget his name..(yea im not good with poltics). And youknow i have friends who have brother or family members in that war and i dont like it. Friends and Family die with that.

I hate to see it but it does and bush should have never been President in the first place. Now i dont know whatKerry would have done but i dont think it would have turned out this bad. For 3 freaking years has it been now? More like 4 right, But come on it has been so long. Dont surrener but come on be real we cant have this last for ever.
Catch the guys put him in jail or better kill him yes that sounds bad but it is what has to happen for this to clear up. Most of the ppl in Iraq dont even like him.(the old President) They had to vote for him else they would be killed.
It is mass pandonmionuiam! It just isnt a wrold anymore. Its felling apart piece by piece. its sad to think about. I wish they would put more on the news. How are they doing with progressing the ppl in Iraq? I just hate thinking about how bush destroyed this world....
I dont get why he is puttting us through this?..! iF i were to freaking meet the man i would just be like "Hi, how are you planning on ruinning the world (US) now?" If i were hit for saying that i wouldnt freaking care i would be happy to let him know that i one peson just a samll girl felt about all this.
I just cant think of it it isnt fun and its not good. If it keeps going i will be mad and just not want to live in this world (US). Im going to keep going and this my get nastier so i will stop.
Dai all Hope the world dosent fall to pieces!
Tori

[mythbusterfan]

I apologize for this incredibly short post and i will prolly never do it again.

but all i can say here now is I agree with tori

[alla]

Ah, see this is one of the reasons why we don't short post. You have to try and keep the conversation going.

Why do you agree with Tori?

Personally, yes I agree that the war should have never happened in the first place; yes, it is sad that soldiers have died, and that its placing a rift between countries (and friends) just because they hate what one man has done. Yes, it is sad that soldiers have died over there, but they did choose to serve in the armed forces.

"How are they doing with progressing the PEOPLE in Iraq?" To answer that exact question honestly, I think they are doing quite well. To answer what I think Tori meant, they have got rid of a dictator, they have introduced democracy, etc...

Yes, this war was fought for all the wrong reasons, and should never have happened in the first place. But the fact is, that it has happened.

My condolances to everyone who has lost (or known someone who has lost) a friend or relative in this war.

[Countryfan1394]

well alla and tori have there pionts but ppl have and do hate us because of r indentpendence. Which has helped us in some spots. but we do not always hurt ppl we have helped them. but if we just gave up would we have anything there country would over run us. think about every thing you have and that it disappeared and you wee runed by a dictactership.

done thinking yet. well we have given them a chance to have their own goverenment.
but I still wonder why more ppl cannot comeback yet.

[Lamarquise]

I'm going to have to take a different line than most on this subject, I think.

On the one hand, I don't like the idea of invading another country. I don't like having our people dead and at risk over there.

On the other hand, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He had his own people killed and tortured and starved to pay for his own lavish lifestyle and the military he needed to sustain it. I can't think of many human beings more reprehensible except his sons. He refused to abide by the conditions of the treaty that ended the Gulf War. He was aiding and abetting terrorists and providing them safe haven. He hated the United States and took every opportunity to stir up trouble for our country and cause friction among his neighbors. He was actively posturing about nuclear and chemical weapons and interfering with any inspections, and then people expect concientious leaders not to take him seriously? Especially after 9/11? And we'll never know how much stuff he buried or sent to Syria and other places. He certainly had the time to get anything he wanted out of the country. The Iraqi people were in no position to effectively oppose him. Many of them didn't have the will or the means.

I don't like the war. But it has given the Iraqi people their first chance to build a government that will serve them and not the whims of a dictator who's currently on trial (with good reason) for war crimes. We have gone to great lengths to help them start to rebuild a country that will actually give them opportunities. It is a chance to bring the West and the Arab world into a dialogue, so ordinary people all over the Middle East will see how the fanatics are wrong about us. And right now, the attention of the really dangerous fanatics is largely focused on Iraq, not more ways to attack the United States. Directed at our military, who is trained to handle those threats, and not innocent civilians at home.

Sure, not everything has gone smoothly. But it never has in any war. Do we think Japan or Germany just sprang from the dust again? And it doesn't help that the news media loves to make everything sound ten times worse than it is. Actually, what the servicemen I've heard from have had to say is largely pretty positive about what's happening over there and how they are helping people.

It's not a great position to be in, but I think it could be a whole lot worse.

[alla]

Originally posted by Countryfan1394:
well alla and tori have there pionts but ppl have and do hate us because of r indentpendence. Which has helped us in some spots. but we do not always hurt ppl we have helped them. but if we just gave up would we have anything there country would over run us. think about every thing you have and that it disappeared and you wee runed by a dictactership.

done thinking yet. well we have given them a chance to have their own goverenment.
but I still wonder why more ppl cannot comeback yet.

Ummm... I don't mean to be rude, but could you please edit this, so that its grammer is understandable, and so that there is no chatspeak contained within. I really cannot understand what you have written at all.

Larmarquise:

And it doesn't help that the news media loves to make everything sound ten times worse than it is.

Awesome point and I totally agree. The media loves to overplay everything and its very annoying. Its even worse over here, as we don't hear that much about it anymore. It was really annoying when the war had just started. We got no more news than what was happening over there - and they were pretty much the same reports over and over and over and over again.

What I find curious, though, is that the vote in the US is not compulsary, and yet so many people complain about what the president is doing/has done. It really does intrigue me. (And yes I know and realise that most people here are not old enough to vote yet).

Alla

[db_pr]

I hate how americans think iraqis hate them because they have freedom and independence. That's bull****, they hate you for all the suffering your government has caused over there, like the Iran-Iraq conflict, the Israeli-Palestine conflict (The US didn't really cause that one, but by helping Israel it's furthering the conflict).

So don't be as arrogant as to say they attacked you because you have your so-called "democracy".

[Lamarquise]

(Fully revised now. Thanks for your patience!)

You don't think Western culture has anything to do with the problems in the Middle East? You don't think there's a very virulent, active hatred over there among many people, specifically for the United States?

Oh, no no no, my friend. Most of the problems over in the Middle East right now have everything to do with Western culture. For centuries after the Crusades, the Muslim world was basically ignored. Then came World War II, and suddenly Britain remembered that the Middle East actually existed. Read the other thread we had going about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and you'll get a lot of the background.

Since early in this century, a new variety of very fundamentalist Islam has been gradually taking over in many parts of the Middle East. It is taught in many schools...and especially in places of religious teachings. It considers even Christians and Jews polytheists to be smitten down. It considers our culture--the blatant sexuality, the secularism, the debauchery, the foreignness of it--extremely dangerous and contrary to all their teachings. To them, America is the Great Satan because it is the most prominent example of much of what they loathe. And many of them don't know enough to be able to see the other side of the picture. This variety of Islam has spread as fundamentalist religious leaders have been able to play secular leaders of Muslim countries against their people and the people have mostly sided with with their religious leaders.

The problem with this variety of Islam is that it is militant. It believes conformity should be enforced, if necessary. It is not open to other points of view and, in many cases, will not tolerate them. Osama Bin Laden only took it a tiny step further by declaring that even innocents and non-combatants, women and children and civilians, were fair game.

For centuries, the Muslim world has been divided and impoverished, wondering where so many good things passed it by. Now, with more wealth from oil, the people are beginning to feel their power. Many of the young people have begun to think of a kind of jihad against the West as another Crusade to bring the Muslim world into its own and into the glory and prominence it had in Europe's Dark Ages.

If any of this were really about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Palestinians would have accepted settlements where they were offered pretty much everything they claimed they wanted. And they wouldn't have elected a government that absolutely hates Israel, the Jews, and the U.S. right when their people are supposedly getting most of what they demand. No, many of the people over there aren't looking for solutions. And that's why some of them bombed innocent civilians. And you condemn America for condemning those kind of tactics and insisting that the Palestinians renounce terrorism?

I couldn't speak to the Iran/Iraq war, really, but I'm not so sure that it plays a huge role in all of this. That was two Muslim countries fighting against each other, and both countries had their supporters among their neighbors. If it were truly important, I would have expected to hear more about it.

Do we realize that a large percentage of the militants in Iraq right now aren't Iraqi at all? They're militants from other countries who see Iraq as the front in a war against the West.

It's far more than a conflict over land; if it were that simple, lots of these issues would have been solved a long time ago. It's more than a fight over foreign influence and domination; the Muslim world is learning to assert itself and reasonable people are more concerned with their future than the past. It's a clash of tradition vs. modernity, ancient orthodoxy vs. the liberal, secularist tenets of Western thought. A fight to decide the character and future of Islamic people across the world. A clash of culture. Unfortunately, many Muslims have decided that their enemy is us.

If the West has made one main mistake in dealing with the Middle East, it has been more in ignoring it and being estranged from it for so many years than in interfering with it. Most of the people there don't understand us and our culture. Many of them have been indocrinated with lies and distortions about us. And as always, a lack of connection and understanding is only so far away from hatred.

Agent M. - Don't sell what America offers short. I may be sheltered, but I don't see much hate around me, much less racial hatred. People have better things to do than wallow in stupid, petty hatreds for no reason at all. We're all different, yeah. That's generally going to be awkward, and it's hard to build brudges like we should sometimes and we can be pretty lazy. But overall, we're pretty diverse and we pretty much live and let live. We're far from equal sometimes in our gifts, our abilities, our talents, and our situations, but that's life. The important thing is that, as a society, we try to work together and use all of our voices to try to work out what's best for everyone. And that we treat people equally under the law. I think we get closer to how things should be than any other system or people in the world, even if we're far from perfect. And I think Americans in general--even many of the most marginalized--have no idea how good they have it compared to others who went before.

[Agent M]

Both Lamarquise and Diego are right, Iraqi leaders get mad over what we, the United States, have done to them over the years and because we're more powerful than them. But a lot of the reason is because of the western culture. Almost every Middle Eastern country that has threatened us, attacked us, whatever has said that they hate our culture. They hate our magazines, our TVs, our clothing. And they especially hate women. They hate it that we aren't like them, but that's how everyone in the world is. A lot of Americans hated Middle Easterners before Saddam Hussein and before Osama Bin Ladin. Because they're not "like us." But the U.S. is supposed to be a free country where there is no "us", no segregation and where skin color, ethnicity, whatever doesn't matter. And that's complete crap, I don't know who believes that. And even the people that don't hate people because they're "different," start hating all muslims (I got this email that totally trashed muslims and basically said that all muslims were terrorists, which really got on my nerves) just because Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan are Muslim-based countries, and they're they countries associated with terrorism. *shrugs* we live in a messed up world.

[mythbusterfan]

[bradwart]

Okay, Here's how I see it...

You can rag Bush for as many things as you want, but that still doesn't mean you are correct. (Myself Included!)
Look at it this way.
How many Presidencies have had to deal with a terrorist attack on U.S. soil? (Pearl Harbor falls into this category). Hmm... The FDR administration, and the Bush administration.
How did both presidents react? We went to war in both cases.
However, when Roosevelt went to World War II, the American public supported him fully.
Now, fast fowrd to 2001, and the same style incident happens. We go to war, and at first, the American Public supports. Then, we declare a war on terrorism. We invade Iraq, and FREE an OPPRESSED PEOPLE from an EVIL DICTATORSHIP! After doing that, the American people decide they just don't want to fight anymore. Our troops fight valiantly on the frontier, and certain people decide that they don't care about their sacrifices, they just want "peace", even if it means leaving Iraq with a half built, ready to collapse government if the U.S. pulls out. Anyone who says that the war is wrong is completely (in my opinion) Anti-American.
May I point out to you the last time the World powers left a country devastated: WWI and Germany. Look what happened there. German people left in poverty, made them very suceptible to anyone willing to change their lives. That person came in the form of Adolf Hitler. Then came all the atrocities he committed.
Is this what we want in Iraq? People left without a stable government, hating America for dropping them like an old toy. And what do angry people do? They eventually get revenge. And they are willing to accept anyone to get it.

That's all I feel like typing for now.