DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Christians4LessGvt on March 02, 2010, 10:56:08 PM
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Dateline: Democratic Iraq
March 3, 2010
Media: It's a journalistic refrain that President George W. Bush's war in Iraq stained U.S. history so irreparably that only an Obama-Biden administration could redeem it. But now a pillar of the media, Newsweek, sees a thriving democracy taking root in ravaged Mesopotamia.
Go figure. Since the U.S.-led coalition invaded Saddam Hussein's desert despotism seven years ago this month, elite news organizations depicted the military campaign as the mother of all fool's errands. Every setback was magnified as a harbinger of our imminent humiliation, each misstep told as evidence of Bush's malign intentions.
To pore over the archives of the dominant news outlets, you would think that Bush's speaking aboard that aircraft carrier, a banner declaring "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" behind him, constituted the single most embarrassing moment in the history of U.S. foreign policy. When a subsequent insurgency turned frustratingly bloody, Bush's political foes found an opportunity to reverse their initial support for the war, and the media's hostility deepened.
On Sunday Iraqis will cast ballots on which will appear 6,100 parliamentary candidates. And Newsweek's cover proclaims the "Rebirth of a Nation." It's as if the late comedian Gilda Radner had commandeered the magazine's editorial chair and, caught in a colossal misreading of history, simply said, "Never mind!"
Confesses Newsweek: "(I)t has to be said and it should be understood, that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East."
Consider that last sentence. Though it starts off with what sounds a lot like doubt, it ends up giving generous credit to a prescient George W. Bush for the success there. The cover story leads magnanimously with these November 2003 words from the former president:
"Iraqi democracy will succeed, and that success will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation. "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution."
There follow several pages of comprehensive reportage detailing that multiple, once-warring factions have discovered they have a real stake in their fledgling democracy. They're even learning the democratic art of compromise, especially when it comes to their most precious resource, oil.
Somewhere in the Dallas suburbs George W. Bush "miss him yet" ? must be smiling.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522693 (http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522693)
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Someone needs to tell Harry Reid that. Poor Harry thinks we lost the war.
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Someone needs to tell Harry Reid that. Poor Harry thinks we lost the war.
Well, from his perspective that's absolutely right. A US victory in Iraq (or any war) is a terrible defeat for liberalism.
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<<A US victory in Iraq (or any war) is a terrible defeat for liberalism.>>
Depends on the war. A U.S. victory in Iraq is a defeat for liberalism, sure, but much more significantly, it is a terrible defeat for international law, a step backwards of a hundred years into lawlessness and barbarism, IMHO. A U.S. victory in the Civil War was a victory for liberalism.
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The US cannot win Iraq's civil war. It never could.
It is hardly a positive thing when it takes 3000 deaths, a trillion dollars, and eight years to change the regime of a war-ravaged country with only 22 million people. The cost was too much to pay a second or third time, and THAT is what was proved by this debacle. It is better than it could have been if Al Qaeda had taken over Iraq.
It pretty much proves that we can't do a repeat performance, and now the world knows this.
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The US cannot win Iraq's civil war. It never could.
It is hardly a positive thing when it takes 3000 deaths, a trillion dollars, and eight years to change the regime of a war-ravaged country with only 22 million people. The cost was too much to pay a second or third time, and THAT is what was proved by this debacle. It is better than it could have been if Al Qaeda had taken over Iraq.
It pretty much proves that we can't do a repeat performance, and now the world knows this.
As usual your vision is blurred by your blind and narrow view of the world. Iraq being a flourishing democracy, in the middle of the Middle East, speaks huge volumes. I hope I don't have to list the benefit to risk analysis, meaning you should be able to figure that out on your own. Another nice benefit was that thousands of radicals flowed into Iraq and they were killed. The irony is whilst Iraq continues to move towards freedom and democracy the US, Europe and Canada move to Socialism and taking away individual freedom of speech, religion, ownership, and health care decisions. I wonder if I should move to New Zealand. The USA is so rusted up and frozen that we aren't able to undertake something is complex as building another Hoover Dam, Empire State Building, Mount Rushmore or put a man on the moon. Liberals have so tied us up that even building a highway is next to impossible. About 10 years ago a road was being worked on (by our house) the the road had to be redesigned and constructed around a nesting Gnat Catcher bird. If that isn't the stupidest thing you ever heard? Well even dumber than that is California is in a man-made drought -- well not really, the reason for the water shortage is a little tiny endangered fish. A poor little endangered fish has caused all of California into a drought because a judge has ruled for the fish over the people. We live in insanity and it's mostly due to liberalism. Yes folks liberalism is indeed a mental disorder.
http://www.palosverdes.com/eco/gnatcatcher.html (http://www.palosverdes.com/eco/gnatcatcher.html)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/23/60minutes/main6014897.shtml (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/23/60minutes/main6014897.shtml)
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<<It is better than it could have been if Al Qaeda had taken over Iraq. >>
The prospects of which were slim to nonexistent. The two competing sides were Shi'a religious and Sunni secular. al Qaeda was the shit-disturber who jumped in on one side (the Sunni side,) something like the French in the American Revolution.
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New Zealand is a lot more Socialist than here. And the government would reward the local Maoris from YOUR taxes, and that would be sure to piss you off.
But I agree, you need to leave. The US-owned Pribilhof Islands are so sparsely populated you could do pretty much as you please. When you got pissed off, your could just go down to the beach and punt a seal or whale away on a walrus. AND it is still a part of the US so you could wave your Stars and Stripes and cheer for all the dumb wars Republicans get us in to.
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Way to facilitate that civil debate you keep claiming is missing Xo. Your students must be proud
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AND it is still a part of the US so you could wave your Stars and Stripes and cheer for all the dumb wars Republicans get us in to.
World War I - Woodrow Wilson - Democrat
World War II - FDR - Democrat
Korean War - Truman - Democrat
Bay of Pigs - Kennedy - Democrat
Vietnam War - LBJ - Democrat
Grenada - Reagan - Republican
Persian Gulf War - Bush - Republican
Bosnia and Herzegovina - Clinton - Democrat
War on Terror - Bush - Republican
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AND it is still a part of the US so you could wave your Stars and Stripes and cheer for all the dumb wars Republicans get us in to.
World War I - Woodrow Wilson - Democrat
World War II - FDR - Democrat
Korean War - Truman - Democrat
Bay of Pigs - Kennedy - Democrat
Vietnam War - LBJ - Democrat
Grenada - Reagan - Republican
Persian Gulf War - Bush - Republican
Bosnia and Herzegovina - Clinton - Democrat
War on Terror - Bush - Republican
XO was dropped on head and isn't playing with a full deck of cards.
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Bay of Pigs - - JFK only executed the plans already drawn up by the preceding Republican administration, which had pretty well foreclosed on any diplomatic options for Kennedy by breaking off diplomatic relations with Cuba as one of the final acts of Ike's lame duck presidency. The men required for the project had already been recruited and trained when JFK took office.
JFK avoided the risk of wider war that would have resulted from Eisenhower's plans by withholding previously promised air support when the predicted popular uprising failed to materialize.
The most plausible explanation of the JFK assassination that I've ever seen claims that it started when JFK canceled promised air support and then fired the three top CIA guys in the wake of the fiasco, an act which turned out to be the equivalent of signing his own death certificate.
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If Kennedy wanted diplomatic relations with Cuba, why didn't he restart them when he took office?
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I guess Eisenhower knew what he was doing. The GOP were experts at painting the Dems as "soft on communism" and Kennedy, probably with the concurrence of his Cabinet, figured that the political losses of restoring relations with Cuba weren't accompanied by sufficient overall political gain. Ike had basically put JFK into a political closet that he didn't have the guts to walk out of, as far as Cuba was concerned. Same question, different form: If JFK didn't want to invade Cuba, why'd he go ahead with the Bay of Pigs plan?
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Perhaps JFK was not so fond of Cuba?
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When Joe Kennedy was laying the groundwork for his son's Presidential run, he met with Henry Luce, the publisher of the enormously influential TIME and LIFE magazines, who had to be brought on-board, if not to support JFK, at least not to savage him in print. To Luce's concerns as to whether JFK had any pro-Communist leanings, Kennedy reportedly told him, "You know no son of mine could ever be a communist," which was apparently good enough for Luce. (So the story goes, anyway.)
JFK IMHO was something like Obama - - appealing to the young and hip, who take for granted that he can't afford to say what he really tninks about hot-button issues like communism during an election campaign, but take their chances on him being young and fresh enough to break with the Old Guard once in office, only to realize afterwards that in order to win election, he HAD to have sold out to them before the campaign even started.
Yes, it is more than possible that JFK did not like Cuba. My point originally was that the invasion was really bipartisn, like all US aggression, not from one "party" or the other.
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The news out of the fourth debate was Cuba, and Kennedy's day-before statement that the U.S. government should support "non-Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in exile ... who offer eventual hope of overthrowing Castro." Nixon called Kennedy's plan "dangerously irresponsible" but actually supported the idea in private. The issue helped Kennedy look tougher on Cuba than Nixon. The remainder of the debate was a reiteration of previous themes.
http://www-cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/debates/history/1960/ (http://www-cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/debates/history/1960/)
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Yes, it is more than possible that JFK did not like Cuba. My point originally was that the invasion was really bipartisn, like all US aggression, not from one "party" or the other.
Funny, then, that you didn't correct XO when he claimed that wars are Republican.
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Bay of Pigs was a bit more than "eventual hope," no? It included in its plans the use of American air power. The "exiles" were trained and equipped by the CIA.
<<Funny, then, that you didn't correct XO when he claimed that wars are Republican.>>
The issue that really needed to be addressed was the phony dichotomy between Democrats and Republicans, the whole phony nature of U.S. "elections" and the "two-party" system. It went a lot deeper than which "party" starts which wars. I was too fucking lazy.
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I wonder why the CIA didn't have a plan that was more likely to actually work?
Was it hard to know that the population would not support the invaders?
I think that quite often the CIA has too few agents on scene.
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<<I wonder why the CIA didn't have a plan that was more likely to actually work?
<< Was it hard to know that the population would not support the invaders?>>
I think it's the old story of your biases colouring your perceptions. To those of us who loved Castro and the Revolution, it was inconceivable that the Cuban people would rise up against him. Those who hated Castro had no problem believing the Cuban exiles who fled his Revolution that everyone left behind on the island hated him too.
Who would a CIA agent have listened to, a raving Communist lunatic like me, or some sleazy exile former member of the Batista secret police?
<<I think that quite often the CIA has too few agents on scene.>>
The agents they woulda picked would have been anti-Castro, with their own agenda, so they would have heard the same crap from them as they got from the exiles in Miami.
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<<I think that quite often the CIA has too few agents on scene.>>
The agents they woulda picked would have been anti-Castro, with their own agenda, so they would have heard the same crap from them as they got from the exiles in Miami.
When you put it that way , it not only seems likely , it seems like a general principal that could apply to the spy trade anywhere.
Good thought.
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The Bay of Pigs invasion was begun under Eisenhower, and was planned from the very start as an invasion of anti-Communist Cubans. Eisenhower was noted for his ending of the Korean War, and did not wish to end his term with another war where any sizable number of US troops would be involved. The only US support was air support, consisting ofa few old B-24 bombers disguised as Cuban Air Force planes. That minimized US casualties greatly.
Kennedy felt that he had to go through with the invasion, or he would seem weak.
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<<Kennedy felt that he had to go through with the invasion, or he would seem weak. >>
Ironic. If that was why he went through with it, it proved that he WAS weak.
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Ironic. If that was why he went through with it, it proved that he WAS weak.
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And of course, that is precisely what it proved, because the Bay of Pigs/ Playa Giron was a disaster, and was followed by the Soviets installing missiles on Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crisis, which pretty much ended in a draw, with both sides retiring missiles.
Kennedy seems rather overrated if you ask me. Had he not been assassinated, I don't think he would have been as successful as LBJ at much of anything, even in pursueing the useless war in Vietnam.