[extropy-chat] Re: Iraq and legality again

[The Avantguardian]

--- Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> Tell it to the Russians after Afghanistan.  What is
> our goal?  Of  
> what does completion consist?  Killing until all
> that fight the  
> occupation are dead or imprisoned?  What?

I agree with you that Iraq has the pontential to
become our Afghanistan or another Vietnam. Time is not
on our side in this venture. An enlightened strategy
would consist of a concise set of military objectives
that ended the conflict quickly and decisively without
a minimal amount of lives lost on either side and
minimal collateral damage. Killing ALL the insurgents
is definately NOT the answer. Flushing out the leaders
of the insurgents and killing them and then offering
to buy all the rest of the insurgents' weapons might
be. Such is hard to tell. I am not the field
commander. I don't have access to his on the ground
intel nor do I have a reliable assessment of the
disposition of the enemy's forces. 

> An underground resisitance to occupation nearly
> always resorts to  
> terrorism.  It is no "victory of terrorism" if the
> occupier goes  
> home.  It si a victory for self-determination for a
> people.

      That is exactly what we are trying to do there
now is give those people self determination. There are
Iraqis that want self-determination. These are the
Iraqis that risked their lives to vote in this last
election. These are the courageous Iraqi cops (hands
down the most dangerous job in the world today) that
are being captured, tortured, and shot en-masse by
your so-called underground resistance. The insurgents
are misled into thinking that they are fighting to
drive out the foreign invaders but what they are
really trying to do is topple the fledgling democracy
that has been formed by the Iraqis with our guns but
THEIR votes. That is why more Iraqis are dying by the
hand of your underground resistance than are American
troops. Our troops are defending liberty yet again but
this time it is not ours, it is the liberty of our
defeated opponents.
     This might be an expensive proposition but will
not be a waste of money, unless we fail.

> The message should be sent again and again that
> bullying and  
> occupying a country for largely imperialistic reason
> is costly and a  
> mistake.   Saying that right is on the side of
> grinding the  
> resistance into the dirt is about as evil as it
> gets.

     Samantha, your idea of occupation is one that is
no longer valid when it applies to American troops.
American soldiers are, for the most part, good kind
people. They are not vikings. They do not rape and
pillage the conquered. Every country that America has
occupied short of France has loved us for it. Our
troops bring rule of law and spend lots of money in
the local businesses.

 
> 
> >       If we pull out before Iraq's government is
> able
> > to fend for itself, it will be spun by every
> terrorist
> > rag in the world as a "victory for holy Islam".
> The
> > enemy (the true enemy and not the Iraqui
> insurgents)
> > will see this as an encouragment.
> 
> Organized terrorism has been strengthened
> immeasurably by our  
> actions.  We are our own worse enemy.

     Organized terrorism has been strengthened a
little, yes, but it has also been drawn out into the
open and into the range of the guns of the most
powerful military on this planet. This had to be done
sooner or later. We have to stabilize the Middle East
somehow. We picked the easiest country that we could
to put a huge military presence in the region. Would
you suggest, we withdraw from Iraq and attack Syria or
Iran? Would you rather we occupied Jerusalem? These
options would cost us far more dearly than staying the
course in Iraq. But the benefit would remain the same.
     I guess you could call it the bug-light manuever.
We bait the terrorists into attacking our troops
rather than our civilians and we kill them one by one.
The effect will not be immediate but sooner or later
our backyard will be relatively free of bugs. I would
rather fight this battle in Iraq than on the streets
of New York. 

> 
> We are making the ranks swell now.   Don't threaten
> with more  
> Reichtaggs please.
> 
Samantha, have you read Bin Ladin's letters? Do you
know what Jihad means? It means that they want us all
to convert to Islam and put their clerics in charge of
our lives or they will kill us. There is no diplomatic
solution to such an ultimatum. So what if that's a
laughable threat, THEY take it seriously and therefore
so do I. The biggest trap we can fall into is to allow
ourselves to underestimate them. I used to believe the
WTC/Reichstagg conspiracy theory. But when the Bush
administartion failed to produce Bin Ladin in the lead
up to and since the 2004 election, I came to the
conclusion that the U.S. Government was not involved.
Then I noticed that most of the literature on such
conspiracy theories were sourced in other countries
like Germany, France, and Canada. Countries that have
a vested interest in discrediting Bush.
     No American President no matter how slick his
willy or empty his ten gallon hat would EVER order
such an atrocity. And if he did, the Secret Service
men guarding him would shoot him down themselves.

> 
> Is Iraq itself our enemy?   There is no "decisive
> victory" in this  
> kind of conflict.  If you believe there is then
> please explain  
> exactly what it is.  The whole world is watching us
> do whatever the  
> hell we want militarily witho or without sanction or
> reason.   We are  
> creating more enemies than allies in Iraq and
> because of Iraq.

Iraq is not the enemy any more. Now they are an orphan
that needs protection. Too many times in the past the
inherent flakiness of a foreign policy that changes
every 4-8 years has caused us to topple governments
and allow whoever has the will to power to fill the
vacuum. We have messed up whole sections of the world
by doing this. Let's do it right this time so that we
don't have to do it again. There is a decisive victory
to be had in this conflict. It is the stabilization
and integration of the middle east with the rest of
the world. In a world with nukes, biotechnology, and
soon nanotechnology, we can't afford to have even one
percent of the world ideologically trapped in the
dark-ages.



The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson


		
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