FirmhandKY
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quote:
ORIGINAL: philosophy
quote:
ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
I'd really be interested in why the war in Iraq was "illegal" seeing as the attack was certainly Constitutional, as it was approved by the Congress.
...ok, let's lose the word illegal. It's only real use was in the context of international law anyway and we all know that can be problematic.
Let's go with irrelevant and dishonest. We went in to Afghanistan to remove a real threat to the security of multiple nations. No point in just shooting a few people and leaving, they'd just come back. So it had to be a long term commitment. i think most of us can agree with that.
Iraq was a different matter. The stated reason for going in was WMD's. None were found. Now i know some argue they all got shipped off to Syria but i've yet to see any compelling evidence of that. So the question remains. Why go in to Iraq, at the expense of doing a good and speedy job in Afghanistan? SH had next to nothing to do with 9/11. His activities shooting at US aircraft were confine to within his borders, which in one rioght wingers definition stated on these boards, makes him a freedom fighter not a terrorist.
It seemed that the Bush Administration had a major hardon for invading Iraq and kept moving the goalposts in order to justify it.
Anyway, thats why i don't see the syymetry you referred to earlier. Afghanistan is a job that needs doing, Iraq is an unnecessary adventure. The former is an honourable risk of brave military personnel.......the latter is not.
Well written philo, and logical, granting that your assumptions are correct.
Of course ... I disagree with some of your assumptions. 
The use of the concept of "illegal" is indeed very problematic in international terms, but clearly in US Constitutional law it was a legal use of military force.
International law, at the end of the day, is whatever the more powerful nations say it is, and therefore you are correct that it is rarely a good point of departure.
However, the term was what Owner used, and I believe used for a very specific purpose: to cast it in an illegitimate light. This is an example of lefty newspeak, used to make honest discussion difficult if not impossible, because the real issues of disagreement are hidden.
"Irrelevant and dishonest" are (excuse me) honest discussion points.
I disagree that it was either, however.
Dishonest: You mention primarily that it was about WMD's. This is based on a lot of media hype, and was one of the rationales for the war, I agree. As far as it went, it was an honestly perceived threat, IMO.
But far from the only reason, it's just that it's easier for opponents to latch onto, and I'll admit that the Bush Admin didn't do a very good job of justifying and explaining the point after the fact.
And the fact is that all major Western intelligence services believed that Saddam had WMDs, as did most of Saddam's own inner circle. His deception operation was a success in it's application, although not in its final result.
Combine this honest belief in WMD's, with Saddam's propensity for mass murder and invasion of his neighbors, along with his hatred of the US (witness his likely assassination attempt against an American President), his growing involvement with Islamic Jihadists, and the US's realization that Islamic terrorist would use WMD's if they ever got their hands on them ... the danger that SH represented became important enough to warrant action.
You may disagree with the final actions, but the supporting points up to that point are pretty clear.
Irrelevant: I would guess you mean "irrelevant" in the sense that there was no direct connection between the events of 9/11, and Saddam's Iraq, and therefore the war against him was "irrelevant".
This claim, in that narrow sense, is valid.
However, the real question wasn't whether or not he was directly responsible for anything related to 9/11: the strategic question was how to eliminate the ideological underpinnings of Islamic Jihadism.
Taking on the Taliban in Afghanistan would certainly "take care of the day", but it wouldn't (and hasn't) really addressed any of the "root causes" (!!) of the movement.
Of course, the "root causes" - according to many of our lefty friends - was and is US and Western imperialism. In fact, Jihadism is and was encouraged by repressive Arab and Islamic regimes as a scapegoat mechanism to retain power, and focus their populations away from their own rulers corruption and inequity.
So a long term solution to the Jihadist problem isn't simply going into an Islamic country and killing them all. The long term solution is to give the Islamic world an Islamic example of a rich, successful and relatively free Islamic nation.
That is how Iraq is relevant, and important to the long term suppression of radical Islamic Jihadism.
We can discuss any of these ideas in detail, but that's the summary.
Firm
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