Everyone's for Peace

[there buster]

My 'claim' in this thread is simply that modern 'peace' movements have produced pompous posturing within the movement and obscene slaughter of innocents in the objects of their 'concern.' Far from moral purity, they have actively aided and abetted the world's butchers.

Rather than saying war is 'morally justified' I would classify war, along with government, as 'necessary evils.' The question is one of when violent action becomes necessary.

Looking to the Bible and history for examples, I see several such 'causus belli.'

Abraham freed Lot and repelled aggression against several kings.

The Israelites rebelled against PHaraoh. Then they destroyed a number of cultures with truly horrific worship practices.

Numerous accounts of national self-defense.

The problem in the current conflict is that critics are trying to freeze frame current conditions and ask if this is an acceptable end-state. Because it is not, they want the whole enterprise abandoned.

But that game can be played with any conflict at any time.WWII was not in an acceptable endstate until around 1950. In some ways, it didn't end for Germany until 1989. People conveniently -- or ignorantly-- overlook the Marshall Plan in Europe and the McArthur rule in Japan after hostilities had ceased.

We stayed and helped rebuild those countries because, notwithstanding they had started wars of unprovoked aggression, and hosted regimes with horrific abuses of their citizens and even more so of those they conquered, leaving those countries in a state of collapse was not an acceptable end-state. We didn't spend our blood and treasure to simply destroy our enemies. Nor have we since.

The devastation in Vietnam came about because 'peace' politicians decided that we should betray our allies and withdraw all support--not just troops, but money and materiel as well. Meantime, the Soviets kept pouring in support.

That policy produced predictable results. The conquest-bent North didn't stop fighting because the South stopped resisting-- always a favorite prophecy of 'peace' advocates. On the contrary, when those who would have defended liberty in the South could no longer resist, the North came in and slaughtered them, destroyed their cities, moved masses from the cities to re-education camps, butchered any who resisted their indoctrination, and led to desperate escape attempts across the sea. The 'boat people' often were drowned, were murdered and raped by pirates, or simply starved or died of thirst on the sea. All this carnage was the product of 'peace' movements.

And as the victims of their moral posturing languished and died, the 'peace' activists celebrated their moral purity.

[Bravus]

But I think we're in agreement on that issue. (I guess that means I'm not one of those peace activists.) I'm with Colin Powell - you broke it, you bought it. From where we are right now, the only direction forward that makes sense is to work toward a peaceful and secure future for Iraq, and I agree that that does not mean leaving immediately. There's a long hard road ahead. Discussion about the steps on that road, though, ought not to be prohibited. It is appropriate to ask whether more, less or the same number of soldiers is the best step at this time, and to talk about the importance of dimplomacy alongside armed force. It is important to think about the things that are needed in addition to armed force to reach an appropriate endstate, and I agree that that will take a long time, and can't be judged now.

So I don't think we're in fundamental disagreement on that point: and I'm not Jane Fonda. We might be in disagreement on some details.

But the thing I find incredibly frustrating is that this discussion of 'where to from here' is only necessary because the war was started... and you're refusing to look seriously at the issue of whether it should have been. I submit that it absolutely should not have been - that there were appropriate sanctions and measures in place to contain Saddam, that those measures could have been improved and strenghtened (Shane's comments about the brokenness of the Oil for Food program, for example, say to me that you fix that program, not start a war). Saddam was a bad, evil dictator, but there are many bad, evil dictators in the world, including some allies of the US. 'Pre-emptive war' is the name of the doctrine, but it did not pre-empt an attack on the US by Iraq (as a nation-state, not as terrorists trained within one.)

This was a war of choice, and while it must now continue to be prosecuted to find a solution, it should never have been started. We can't wind back the clock, but perhaps at least we can learn something from *this* one to keep the next one from happening.

[Dr. Shane]

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fix that program, not start a war

The problem was that we didn't know the oil-for-food program was corrupt until after we invaded Iraq and came into possession of the evidence. Saddam was actually bribing members of the Security Council to lift sanctions!

Had we known then, what we know now, most certainly war could have been avoided and there would have been better ways to deal with the situation.

Due to Russian intelligence, we also believed Saddam was about to attack the US using terrorists and WMDs. After the invation we came into possesion of evidence to showed us that intelligence was outdated - from 1996. So again, hindsight being 20/20, we could have handled things differently. Given the information we had at the time, I still believe President Bush and Tony Blair did the responsible thing.

[there buster]

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because the war was started... and you're refusing to look seriously at the issue of whether it should have been.

No. I'm not refusing to look at whether it should have been. I'm simply refuting specious measures. You were making a moral statement based on a quantity. I refuted that.

As to whether it should have been started, I would say, "No."

Al Qaeda should not have hijacked our peaceful planes and attacked our cities. Terrorists should not have bombed the Cole, or our embassies, the Khobar towers, or the WTC in 1993. Muslim terrorists have been at war with us for 28 years, and the only question is when we were going to realize it and begin to defend ourselves. Saddam was aiding and supporting those terrorists both directly and indirectly. He had invaded Kuwait, and continued to violate the treaty he had signed (and U.N. sanctions he had not).

There's no point in talking about "international law" unless that law is enforced. The U.N., morally crippled by the membership of so many tyrants, was never going to act. The U.S. was guarantor of the treaty with Saddam. It was clear he would never obey its provisions.

So there are plenty of technical reasons for invading Iraq. Broken treaties, violated U.N. resolutions, internal human rights violations, use of chemical weapons on his own citizens.

Why don't we invade every dictator? Frankly, it's not a serious argument. A moment's actual thought reveals several obvious reasons.

1) Our resources are finite. We could not, even if we should.

Oh, yes, and the very voices who ask this ridiculous question always want us to cut back on the military we have, not expand it as would be necessary. So they're just posturing.

2) Not every dictator threatens us, his neighbors, or civilization itself.

3) Not every dictator engages in wholesale slaughter or imprisonment of his citizenry.

Oh, and then there's the question why we didn't intervene in Rwanda.

Meanwhile, the Europeans refused to deal with slaughter in Eruope, in Bosnia, etc., until we became involved.

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This was a war of choice, and while it must now continue to be prosecuted to find a solution, it should never have been started.

Really, I expect more from you. Every war is a war of choice. Nations choose to fight or not. No one forced us to fight back against the Japanese. We chose to. No one forced us to fight the Germans in Europe. We chose to.

"We had no choice" is a shortcut at best, a fiction at worst, for saying, "the other choice was unacceptable."

Well, for 23 years we chose to treat the issue as a legal one, as our citizens were tossed off of cruise ships to drown, mowed down in airports with machine guns, blown up as they slept in embassies, and finally incinerated and crushed as they went about their daily work in the WTC.

Islamofascist terrorism has gone largely unopposed for more than twenty years. They were at war with us, be we did not return the favor. And as long as innocent American tourists suffered the casualties, the morally pure bystanders clucked their tongues in sorrow.

Now we've launched a war--too constrained in many ways--to come to grips with the murders of the innocents that have been perpetrated against us. We chose to do it in Iraq, for the many, many reasons I've mentioned and more.

Because those who embrace terrorism now visit it upon each other instead of us, we're to blame. This is both nonsensical and morally vapid.

Mistakes have been made. Wow, now there's a headline! Read history. More than a thousand US casualties were suffered during a training exercise for Operation Overlord. War is a tragedy. Mistakes in war are a tragedy. But we live in a broken world, where tragedy is the norm.

You, along with many others, have tried to draw a distinction between the war on Al Qaeda, and the war in Iraq. But since such arguments are not serious, no one examines them seriously.

Do you really want the U.S. sending Special Forces, air strikes, Tomahawk missiles into Sudan, Pakistan, Tora Bora, Jordan-- wherever Al Qaeda operatives may flee?

Don't be ridiculous.

We must strike at this evil ideology--which sacrifices its children to Molech no less than did the ancient Canaanites--where we can. At the moment, Afghanistan and Iraq are where we can.

And it has worked. Terrorists are attracted to conflict like flies to carrion-- and our soldiers are killing them there, instead of bagging body parts of ordinary civilians in our great cities.

Is it messy, mistake-prone, grim, and tragic? Certainly. Such have been all wars.

Yes, this is a war of choice. If the French had chosen to resist Hitler's re-militarization of the Rhine in 1934, Hitler would have retreated--we have his own words to that effect. His air of invincibility might have been strangled at birth, and the generals might have resisted his foolish ventures. But the French chose 'peace.' And millions upon millions paid for that choice in blood, tears, and sweat.

Sadly, in this broken world, we seldom get to choose between pristine good and ugly evil. We generally have to choose between not-so-good and worse. Any mature discussion of any war must start with that realization.

[Bravus]

Fair enough: then in effect (and I realise I'm simplifying down a large and detailed case you make - but please take this as responding to the whole case), it boils down to whether you believe that Saddam and Iraq were behind those terrorist attacks in any meaningful way or not. I do not: they were financed, trained and supported in other places, including Saudi Arabia, *far* more than in Iraq, if at all. The links between Saddam and Al Qaeda are tenuous and minor at best, I firmly believe, based on all the evidence I have seen. You clearly believe differently.

[Bravus]

One other comment: the logical fallacy in the 'fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here' theory is that it assumes a finite number of terrorists/insurgents, and that once they're all killed it's over. It does not recognise that the war itself is *creating new terrorists*, possibly faster than they can be killed.

[there buster]

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One other comment: the logical fallacy in the 'fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here' theory is that it assumes a finite number of terrorists/insurgents, and that once they're all killed it's over. It does not recognise that the war itself is *creating new terrorists*, possibly faster than they can be killed.

But there are a finite number of terrorists. It may be growing--or it may not be--but it is indeed finite. As to whether the war is "creating new terrorists," that's another silly statement.

The foolishness of this statement resides on several levels.

1)No doubt our entry in WWII made recruitment easier for the Nazis and the Japanese. But we had to defeat them. That logic applies here as well.

2)It assumes that people are choosing terrorism because of the war who would not have done so in the war's absence. Perhaps. But there were many recruited when there was no war. In fact, we know our failure to strike back encouraged people to become terrorists.

3) As pointed out, the number is well short of infinity.

4) It assumes that choosing terrorism is a logical choice. Hmmm, let me see. Precision munitions are raining down on my obstreperous neighbors. Should I 1) seek cover 2) find a way to accommodate the Amreicans, or 3) strap explosives on my body and blow myself up? No, no, don't tell me-- I'll figure it out.

5)"creating them faster than they can be killed." ROFLOL. Even in a culture--which Iraq is not-- in which every baby is reared as a terrorist, it still takes nine months to make a new one. Killing only takes an instant.

That ludicrous statement is victim of it's own fallacious premise: that the number of potential candidates for terrorism is in fact infinite. This is demonstrably false. Even in Palestine, the proportion of the population who become terrorists is tiny.

It also ignores the numerous intercepts and captured documents where Al Qaeda operatives and other terrorists in Iraq decry the lack of resources, including their dwindling numbers.

Finally, by misstating the fact that there are in fact a finite number of terrorists, who have a finite number of weapons, and a finite amount of money, it assumes that they, like God, can be omnipresent. The simple fact that they are attracted to Iraq, right now, means they are NOT blowing up shopping centers in Omaha-- Or in BRISBANE, I might add.

Those who follow the terrorists agree that, under pressure from our forces around the world, the terrorists don't have the resources--even simple time for planning--that they had before.

Oh, yes, and even if your statement were true, it does nothing to advance your case about the morality of this war. Just the opposite. If it were true that any culture could turn out an unlimited number of homicidal maniacs, that would be justification for eliminating that culture.

Iraqis, Arabs, and Muslims in general are not so stupid as all that. When it becomes clear that terrorism is counter productive, when useful idiots in the West cease to cave in to the terrorists murderous demands, then the larger Muslim world will abandon it.

But so long as misguided 'peace' elements urge us to reward murderers, and we heed their feckless counsel, the number of murderers will increase.

[Bravus]

The war between the descendents of Isaac and those of Ishmael, started almost 3000 years ago, doesn't seem to have run out of combatants yet.

[there buster]

A similar point is made here: "Why the Middle East is Such a Tinderbox"

[Bravus]

I love it when we agree. :D