May 1 marks three years since George W. Bush staged his "Mission Accomplished" aircraft landing in San Diego Harbor and "delivered good news to the men and women who fought in the cause of freedom: their mission is complete and major combat operations in Iraq have ended."
As of April 27, at 3:15 p.m. EST - 2,393 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.
The count of US wounded is around seven times that number, and Iraqi civilian deaths are officially between 34,000 and 39,000, and actually between 200,000 and 300,000.
8 comments:
Nadir: I assume you share my frustration and disappointment that Iraq is besieged by homicidal tyrants devoted to preventing the populace to govern themselves within a self-checking, popular format that codifies individual liberties. Why do you and Tom believe that because there are such people there that this makes the war more justified, and a bigger mistake? The gangsters and murderous religious bigots there, then, need only kill more children and US troops to bolster y'all's opposition to Bush establishing a democracy there.
I'm glad that Lincoln didn't to fight enemies that practiced terrorism in this manner; people like you guys back then would have demanded that he withdraw and turn the slave states back to the slavers.
Yes, Nadir, Bush is a horrible person for not accurately realizing the high number of horrible people in Iraq.
The war is not justified. The people who are fighting the US's puppet government can be accurately called "freedom fighters" because they are in combat in an effort to free their nation from an outside imperial force.
Those people may be tyrants, but the US is the greatest tyrant of all. The United States had no right to invade Iraq, and any people who fight against the US soldiers because they invaded their homeland, are justified. Period.
I am a supporter of Hugo Chavez, but if Venezuela invaded my home, I would take up arms against them. They have no right. Period.
No matter that the jihadis want to establish Islamic law. They are more justified than the US which is in Iraq merely to rape, pillage, plunder and gain strategic military advantage. It is their home, and it would be up to the people of Iraq to decide what type of government they want. Period.
US TROOPS ARE DYING IN AN UNJUST WAR MERELY TO CREATE PROFITS FOR OIL, WEAPONS, SECURITY AND FINANCIAL COMPANIES. This is the truth, and your talking around the issue will not make it untrue.
The blood of those soldiers and the dead people in Iraq is on your hands for voting for Bush, and on my hands for not doing more to stop him.
Nadir: I disagree with nearly everything that you said, except for opposing Hugo Chavez invading a democratic nation. In a dictatorship, might is the only arbiter; there exists no universal rights for anybody, though you believe -- apparently -- that mutual residents have more of a "right" to oppress each other than a non-resident does to invade and impose the universal concepts that compose the term, "democracy."
I sort of agree that the US govt invaded Iraq merely to boost corporate profits... since the advocates of that invasion believe that nations ruled by the universal laws of self-rule and personal liberties produce and distribute more profits than any other sort of governments (tyrany).
The people opposing this in Iraq are not "freedom fighters"; they are tyrants. They oppose self-rule. They oppose individual liberties. They advocate tyrany. People in Iraq who support the erection of a government "of the people and for the people" support the US effort there.
You think that any external establishment of a governmnet is wrong, even if the government is a democracy; and you think that any internally established government is correct, even if it's a tyrany. I believe the opposite: democracy is the only just and universally legitimate form of government, weather established purely by internal forces or not.
First of all, how can you assume that the "tyrants" who are opposing US forces and US installed forces in Iraq oppose self rule? Have you taken any polls of the insurgents about the type of government they would install?
The only thing that we know about the insurgence and its aims is that it opposes the current regime. Violent attacks against Saddam Hussein were perpetrated by other groups. This does not mean that the current insurgents support Hussein. It means they oppose the regime that is being forced on them by Western miltary might.
I do not believe that any external establishment of a government is wrong. I believe that a government should not be established at gunpoint. At that point it becomes a government that does not reflect the will of the people on the barrel end.
Paul will cite US troops enforcing laws during reconstruction after the Civil War, and will say that this proves it is sometimes a moral imperative to force people to do the right thing. I say the US Civil War is a different circumstance, but it still proves the point that people on the barrel end of the gun are not willing participants in the establishment of said government.
Democracy is not democracy if it is not established by the will of the people. Gunpoint democracy is not democracy at all.
The people who are waging a war on the US effort in Iraq are certainly tyrants because (1) they target civilians, (3) they target civilian resources, and (3) have not even given the US promise of democracy a chance. What would happen if the supporters of the US plan did not have to expend resources countering those opposition measures? Among the endless reasons for proclaiming Bush's war a wrong-headed defeat include the failure of this effort to reconstruct and ameliorate Iraq'a civilian infrastructure. But who has been destroying it?
Nadir, you could have a case for your certain conclusion here if the violent opponents had waited two years to see what the US forces delivered. But they have not. They immediately began attacking Iraqi civilians and infrastructure, to say nothing of attacking the US forces who have made self-rule possible. I find it inconceivable that anyone unwilling to even give a chance to those who toppled a tyrany and promised a democracy, could themselves have any intention of constructing a government based on the universal principles of self-rule and self-ownership.
Futhermore, I have find not a single shred of evidence that any of these anti-US advocate such a government. To the contrary, the only people in Iraq who advocate "democracy" are participating in the processes facilitated by the US, and oppose those who are attacking it.
I am very curious and eager to consider any evidence that you have to the contrary.
"The people who are waging a war on the US effort in Iraq are certainly tyrants because (1) they target civilians, (3) they target civilian resources, and (3) have not even given the US promise of democracy a chance."
The US army has killed thousands of Iraqi civilians and targeted civilian resources which US taxpayers are paying money to Haliburton not to rebuild. I certainly wouldn't give that type of democracy a chance given the choice!
The US forces tried to force US corporate democracy down the throats of the Iraqis. If I were in their shoes, I wouldn't give them any time to sink their teeth into my government either.
In our speculative invasion of the US by Venezeula, would you allow Chavez two years to show Americans that socialism could work if he used a gun to enforce his policies?
There is no such thing as a universal principle of self ownership. The Universe giveth and the universe taketh away. You don't "own" anything that is given to you by the universe. It is yours to use, and if the universe chooses to take it from you, it will be gone.
Have you found any evidence to explain what type of government the insurgents advocate? Have you found any interviews with a suicide bomber who explained that he was blowing himself up because he thought authoritarian rule was the way to go? Have you found any interviews where a sniper said he was opening fire on US troops because he hates freedom?
I doubt it.
There is no evidence of why any particular group is attacking US troops or Iraqi puppets. Most signs indicate that there are different groups with presumably different purposes. Former Baathists certainly wouldn't advocate Islamic rule because they were a secular nation before. Islamists certainly wouldn't advocate a return of Saddam because they hated him in the first place.
You're speculating.
Plus the so-called "democracy" that is being set up is an Islamic republic anyway. Why are you supporting that type of government when you believe Muslims are "backward and primative"?
I think you are just supporting the war because you don't want to admit you were wrong.
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