If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

[Zythus]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

I remember reading that some minorities liked Saddam in Iraq. And so here is the question: "Shall people be sacrificed under a dictator's wrath to keep the stability of a country?"
Saddam did kill and destroy, but it was an omnipresent stability. Now hes gone, its beginning to crumple into itself.

[devonin]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

The whole of the "middle east" has been desperately needing a massive shakedown for decades. It's just finally happening.

[rzr]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

@ zythus: It really depends on how large the scale of genocide is. I mean, if he wipes out 30-100% of his population he sucks. But if he kills some business men and opposing political parties to keep order of his dictatorship, it's ok.

Note: I am in no way advocing genocide or murder or torture.

Note 2: also remember those figures and examples are all theoretical.

[Zythus]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

Devonin is in all ways right about the shakedown, the Middle East need to get a taste of themselves and then acquire resolution. There is no peace without war, I suppose.

[atalkingcow]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

After taking a nice long break from CT...I RETURN!!

@ dev : I love you ^_^ I have yet to disagree with a single thing you've posted in this thread.

@ rzr : It seems to me that you just regurgitate what you see and hear on the news, and I don't get the feeling that you've actually thought about it very deeply, or bothered to look for another viewpoint. Democracy is just peachy, if you can get it to work...good luck with that though, the U.S. isn't even a true democracy. -.-

@ zythus : There can be peace without war, however, since a certain idiot and his idiot friends got control of the country and started ****, in this particular instance, a war is inevitable after we withdraw. And we _will_ withdraw, we have no choice in the matter, as we simply don't have the ability to occupy Iraq forever.

Adios,
Cow

[Zythus]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

Welcome back, Cow.

Irony is that without war, there would be peace, yet you sometimes need a war to establish peace. I guess its a more generic debate over the definitions and reasoning of war and peace. To me, the US always boasted themselves as "Democracy", yet they lean on the authoritarian system. For one example, it would seem US has never deemed any problem to be solved by arbitration, they hate to stride that low to have another party or nation to judge and resolve their issues. One leader pulling the strings and propels the "autonomous" nation. The extravaganza at Iraq only fueled their distinction as undemocratic in ways.

[MixMasterLar]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

You guys sort of act as if people shooting guns in the streets doesnt happen every 5 minutes.

The US are not allowed--by Bush-- to attack anyone that isnt shooting at them, after that happens, they can radio back and ask permission to return fire. That is why there is a huge mess everywhere: Bush is more or less sitting on his ass and doing nothing but...sitting on his ass over there. If Bush would have went over and said "Ok anyone that shoots anything needs to get shot at" then things would have been better now. This thoery is inline with Dev's "Civil War has to happen sometime" one, execpt that we get to have it all happen there instead of somewhere else

By the way, Ive talked with soldiers about this (Im in Pensacola, there are alot of soldiers here) so I am pretty sure this is all true dispite what you may have heard.

As far as the US shouldnt have been over there---I do believe that the group who attacked us where connected to groups in the Middle East. Now rather to attack who attacked us Bush attacked people who may have helped (I say may, since I cant quote my source) and Im not sure if that was the best thing, but I guess without helpers you cant do much =/

This all said, it's time to get out. Bush will not fix the proplem, he is making it worse. If he would fix it then I feel that we have to be there....but as it is now we might as well leave.

[rzr]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

At the risk of being redundant I must repeat myself to make my point.
If the US withdraws from Iraq right this very second it would only be to appease the public opinion on Bush. The truth is, if America leaves then we take our intelligence with us. Now, without that intelligence (meaning the FBI and stuff, not being smart) we have no way to monitor the situations leaving the Iraqi's free to plot an attack.
If we don't withdraw from Iraq, we at least have a better chance, with our intelligence there, of discovering a future attack. Refer to my previous example a few posts back for elaboration.

@ Mix: Yes, you're perfectly correct (I have several recently returned family members from over seas who've stated the same thing). When they're attacked they must get permission to return fire, leaving them sitting ducks during an attack.
What should be is that if fired upon you have the right to fire back [upon reason].
But that problem wasn't founded by Bush, as inadequate a leader as he is, it's been a standard military procedure for quite some time. I know for a fact that the same instances happened in the Vietnam war (father's war stories, he was a radio operator).

We should just be thankful that's the only problem. In Vietnam the newly developed M-16s constantly jammed and backfired. Imagine if the American troops in Iraq had to endure that too?

[atalkingcow]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

At the risk of being redundant I must repeat myself to make my point.
If the US withdraws from Iraq right this very second it would only be to appease the public opinion on Bush. The truth is, if America leaves then we take our intelligence with us. Now, without that intelligence (meaning the FBI and stuff, not being smart) we have no way to monitor the situations leaving the Iraqi's free to plot an attack.
If we don't withdraw from Iraq, we at least have a better chance, with our intelligence there, of discovering a future attack. Refer to my previous example a few posts back for elaboration.

We will lose no intelligence gathering ability by removing the majority (if not all) of our troops from Iraq. We still have:
Satellites
Predator drones
and probably a crapload of other methods I'm not aware of.
Soldiers themselves actually gather very little information, esp. regarding plans of cross-ocean assault. (at least as far as I know...)

Not to mention, as dev and that other person whose name escapes me said, if we withdraw from Iraq right this very second...the 3 main religious factions would be too busy fighting each other for power to do anything to us.

[Zythus]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

Iraq was carrying a boulder over their head. US thought it was doing a good deed, so US went under the boulder too "assisting" Iraq to carry it. Iraq, due to the shared weight that US burdens, begins to get weak and dependent for US to help it carry the boulder. And so, now US is stuck in the framework. If it doesn't leave, Iraq is just getting weaker due to US hoisting and organizing them. If they leave, this boulder cannot be sustained.

Bottom line is, US shouldn't have gotten involved, or less influential or devastative with the fate of Iraq, but hey, what is done is done.

[devonin]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

I think the part I find the most amusing is that the world media is now so obsessed with the concept of wondering when America will finally withdraw their occupation that they've largely stopped talking about the fact that they had absolutely no acceptable right to invade them in the first place. I mean, realistically, the Americans just invaded a soverign nation and staged a coup on basically no reasonable evidence to suggest they had a right to.

That on its own is enough reason to want them out, and soon.

[rzr]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

So you're saying if America withdraws the boulder crushes Iraq, but if they don't the Iraqis feel more weak and it angry?

@ devonin: I agree somewhat. I don't think America had the right to invade Iraq, I do think that America had/has the right to put intelligence agencies in the Middle East.

[devonin]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

So why are a hostile invasion and occupation force, and a couple homegrown intelligence agents somehow intrinsically linked? Why on earth do you need both to benefit from the latter? Seems to me that spy types would work better in a country that wasn't all radicalized and actively opposing Americans and people who sem like they might be pro-America.

[Zythus]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

"weak" refers to the condition Iraq is in currently with the US in their vicinity, nothing more.

US and their "egotist fundamentalism".

[Chrissi]

Re: If Hillary Clinton gets elected...

I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like a huge idiot, because all of you seem to know a lot about this issue and I know so little.

However, this is what I've heard on it: the east likes america, if for the sole fact that america intervenes and stops people from hurting each other (sometimes). When a country is occupied by american troops, civil conflicts become less and things get a bit more peaceful. Since the americans are regulating everything... violent countries get toned down.

Of course, this is assuming a peaceful american presence. I don't really know if that's america's role right now. I do know that a lot of countries are happy to have the american presence - on an individual basis, the people like it. The government's not always too happy about it. Like in northern Japan, the american presence at their embassy helps a lot with civil matters. They're sort of like a father figure - asians look up to them and try to follow their model.

I'm not really stating these as facts. Since you guys seem to know so much about this, and I really don't, I'm more looking for confirmation of these points. I'd be very happy if I'm right. But maybe I'm not.

Anyway, what's this got to do with Hilary? In this case, if Hilary gets elected, and removes american troops immediately from the middle east, the government will be happy but there will be civil turmoil. Basically the country will fall apart because they don't really have a leader anymore - america's acting that role. Nobody knows what to do, so it'll just fall apart. And maybe some arbitrary part of the broken government will rise and try to take power, but it really won't work very well, resulting in more chaos...

Basically, once america's there, they can't leave.