posted
Funny... I would have though that the cost in HUMAN LIVES was quite more important. OK, this money could have buy a lot of things to help people, but for me there is a difference between no help and killing people, don't you think ?
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Of course the cost in human lives is more important. Unfortunately, Americans (and Europeans alike) tend to turn a blind eye to the deaths of, as George Carlin puts it, "brown people." Maybe if you can't touch the heart, you can point out the drain in the wallet.
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posted
That's not what I mean, Doug J, and you know that. I just say that the cost in human lives, brown or not, is more important to me than what it costs in money.
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
So wait... if I made a page with a script counting up and called it something like "the lives war has saved," then I could post that here as proof that the cost is worth it to save the lives of those who would have been otherwise oppressed and treated like cattle?
If so, I'll put together a little counter tonight when I get home.
I don't totally disagree about the mismanagement of funds currently, Ed, but the extreme of your argument and the really bad link totally turn any sympathy I would have had for your argument.
Posts: 6907 | Registered: Nov 2001
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posted
First off you have to be able to justify that human lives are worth more than money, in a sense they aren't. A human life is not priceless, its something that day to day living should have taught us all a long time ago. I could bring up about a dozen examples, but I for one am tired of talking about Iraq or anything pertaining to the matter.
Plus you could always bring up the point why worry about the money being wasted on Iraq when its being wasted on "insert some other waste of cash here." What I wonder is why something thats only taken around 300 American lives ( And countless Iraqis) Yet people would complain about the loss of life. Mostly I just dislike things like our rules of engagement, and the way we execute certain tasks. ::sighs:: Anyhow, on to something a bit cheerier.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:So wait... if I made a page with a script counting up and called it something like "the lives war has saved," then I could post that here as proof that the cost is worth it to save the lives of those who would have been otherwise oppressed and treated like cattle?
Well, no, because that number would probably be negative, if you factor in those killed in the war, those killed in the chaotic period afterward, and those that will inevitably be killed because of the help the war has provided al Qaeda in its cause. (Not to even guess about the number of lives that whatever new regime arises in Iraq will take out, or to compare to the number of lives we would have saved had we just GIVEN the money out to starving people around the world.)
quote:What I wonder is why something thats only taken around 300 American lives ( And countless Iraqis) Yet people would complain about the loss of life.
posted
That or we could stop pussyfooting around with everything that we did and simply do something, we can't even invade a nation and follow through. Believe me when I've lost most of my good humour and patience over here, not so much because of any fighting etc., simply the environment over here. Just Glass the place, I'm rather tired with peoples as a whole. More and more I realize that the problem is the common person here. Perhaps if they had a decent eduation it would work okay, but they don't Personally i could say a lot of non pc things at the moment, but I aught to cool down for a bit. i'm going to go pump some iron, or something equally useless.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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quote: So wait... if I made a page with a script counting up and called it something like "the lives war has saved," then I could post that here as proof that the cost is worth it to save the lives of those who would have been otherwise oppressed and treated like cattle?
I am in agreement Leto. The only objective data provided is the cost of the war. Value judgements placed on that cost are subjective.
Lalo said this:
quote: Of course the cost in human lives is more important. Unfortunately, Americans (and Europeans alike) tend to turn a blind eye to the deaths of, as George Carlin puts it, "brown people." Maybe if you can't touch the heart, you can point out the drain in the wallet.
Do you mean to say that PEOPLE IN GENERAL tend to turn a blind eye to the value of human life? Or are you saying that all other groups of people value human life more than Europeans? Firstly, you would have to assume that all europeans, not just those in power, would have done the same thing. Secondly, you must assume that countries outside of Europe and America have not invaded other countries and that they value human life. I would say that the government of China places very little value on human life and the previous government of Iraq valued human life even less.
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posted
Who knows how many Iraqis have been killed? I remember reading somewhere that in the last gulf war it was somewheres around 40,000, and that conflict was shorter, but still didn't get Saddam out of the way.
Last I read, around 350 soliders have been killed since the conflict began and over a thousand have been maimed, as in loss of a limb. But we don't hear about this on the news.
This war is costing this country a ridiculous amount of money, but we've made a commitment now. We just bombed the living crap out of this country and have nearly destroyed it. We've taken out its government as well. We've made the mess, now we have to clean it up. Just like Afganistan, who we don't hear much about anymore.
I was not in support of this war when rumour of it began last year. I was not in support when we attacked. I am still not in support of it (note: I don't mean Saddam should have been left in power, he shouldn't have, I just feel this country went the wrong way of doing it). Despite all of this, I believe we should stay there and finish what was started.
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posted
I think the whole point of this war was something to do with long term results, because ultimately, the human future of millions, perhaps billions, perhaps trillions of people has been changed forever, perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse. As of today, we cannot judge the outcome.
But is money a good way to measure or judge anything? Everyone knows that a rich man cannot be judged based on the money he has, and nor can a poor man.
Should we really judge the war based on expenditure?
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posted
No--not entirely. Though it has put our nation into deep debt.
Money should not be the only factor, though. I'd put it at the bottom somewhere because I believe human lives are more important.
Posts: 463 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: Money should not be the only factor, though. I'd put it at the bottom somewhere because I believe human lives are more important.
I agree with this.
quote: Last I read, around 350 soliders have been killed since the conflict began and over a thousand have been maimed, as in loss of a limb. But we don't hear about this on the news.
Exactly what don't we hear about on the news? I hear a running total every day of killed and wounded. Perhaps you need to seek for more media sources.
quote: We just bombed the living crap out of this country and have nearly destroyed it.
What did we nearly destroy? The civilian infrastructure? The military of Iraq? What?
quote: Just like Afganistan, who we don't hear much about anymore.
Again, perhaps your news sources are lacking, I hear about Afghanistan every day.
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I live in a very rural area, and I don't get cable channels. So, no CNN and whatever else they have.
I really should at online news.
The dead count I got from a publication just the other day, but I'm sure that number is out of date by now. The severely wounded # I got from Nightline with Ted Koppel a few weeks ago.
And come on---you don't invade a country and not damage it. There were many problems with invading Iraq--ie--some civilians fought back to defend their homeland.
Yes, the infrastructure, yes, the military, yes, the government. A lot was destroyed. There is no denying that. And if we went into this war to better the lives of the Iraqi people, we better damn well fix their country since were the ones that came in with our guns and started shooting up the place.
Afganistan---I don't hear much about it on mainstream and world news that they have on regular broadcast stations. From what I've heard lately, the taliban are not completely wiped out and have been causing problems outside of Kabul.
Posts: 463 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: And if we went into this war to better the lives of the Iraqi people, we better damn well fix their country since were the ones that came in with our guns and started shooting up the place.
No, we didn't do this for the Iraqi people, we did it for the American people. The whole point is, if you wait until there's an immenant threat, you have failed. However, it is in the best interests of the American people to rebuild all Iraq in a timely way.
quote: Yes, the infrastructure,
What infrastructure? We deliberatly avoided civilian infrastructure, to an amazing degree.
quote:yes, the military,
Most of the current critics are saying that we did too good a job at this, and should have kept many of these people around to help with security. This may have been a good idea, but at the time, the concept of having an intact military that was built by saddam, seemed like a bad thing to do. That question, I think, is still unanswered.
quote:yes, the government.
The government was the problem, all those people whom Saddam picked to help him loot his country and made him a threat to the world. This was a good thing, destroying their government.
quote: There were many problems with invading Iraq--ie--some civilians fought back to defend their homeland.
Not really, not even the military did much to stop us. Most of the civilians were and still are glad we are there.
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: Of course the cost in human lives is more important. Unfortunately, Americans (and Europeans alike) tend to turn a blind eye to the deaths of, as George Carlin puts it, "brown people." Maybe if you can't touch the heart, you can point out the drain in the wallet.
I find this personally very offensive and extremely unfair. It paints all Americans as racist and provincial, which, in my experience, is an incorrect stereotype based on the idea that there is some massive body of "normal Americans" that go about their lives eating cheeseburgers, driving to the Mega-Mart in their SUV, and like to bask in their central heating/cooling. I still have yet to see more than a handfull of such people. Maybe because I live in Vermont, I dunno. It was a part of the United States last time I checked.
EDIT: Oh, yeah. For the few people who remember me from a few months ago, I'm back, I guess. Posting here is more fun than playing computer games and is a good diversion from writing abstract tree-based computer programs.
quote:Teshi said the human future of millions, perhaps billions, perhaps trillions of people has been changed forever
Interestingly, there are probably more people alive today than have ever died. This is counterintuitive but fairly easy to demonstrate:
The world population grows pretty consistently. This means that every day more people are born than die.
So starting from 2 people living and no one having died, the number of births has continued to outpace the number of deaths.
The obvious problem with this is if there have been long periods where deaths have outnumbered births. Some obvious examples would be the Black Death plague, World Wars, etc.
The black death happened long enough ago (when the population was MUCH smaller) that its effects have very likely been erased if it did indeed drop the number of births below the number of deaths over that whole period.
I believe I read somewhere that the world population was actually higher at the end of World War II than before it, but I can’t find the source.
If this is true, we’re not going to affect a trillion future people until the population of the earth reaches 500 billion.
I’m not picking on you Teshi or minimizing the effect of the war (nor am I contributing anything substantive to the thread), it’s just this fact has always fascinated me and your statement reminded me of it.
quote: No, we didn't do this for the Iraqi people, we did it for the American people. The whole point is, if you wait until there's an immenant threat, you have failed. However, it is in the best interests of the American people to rebuild all Iraq in a timely way.
I still don't believe that at the time we attacked, there was an immenent threat from Iraq.
quote: Not really, not even the military did much to stop us. Most of the civilians were and still are glad we are there.
This is utter and complete BS. Did you watch any of the coverage during the beginning of the conflict? Any at all? I saw the military ran into some problems> Problems, that they even have to deal with now. I may not get cable, but I still read the news. There have been carbombings in Baghdad in the last couple of weeks, there have been shootouts with American soliders all over the country, since the conflict supposedly ended.
Not all of the Iraqis are happy with us. You may see ones on the news that are, but try watching BBC for a change. Not all of them are happy with us.
Don't believe everything on the news. A lot of it, especially tv, is biased. Of course they want to paint a pretty picture. The media and the government are in bed with each other. Watch BBC world news--you get a lot of different numbers and facts and figures from them than you do on the American front.
quote: Personally i could say a lot of non pc things at the moment
BF, since you have direct experience with what's going on over there, I think any of your observations are valuable. Don't let what other people think should be stop you from telling us the way things are.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote: I still don't believe that at the time we attacked, there was an immenent threat from Iraq.
But I had previously said:
quote: The whole point is, if you wait until there's an immenant threat, you have failed.
Meaning, we didn't wait for the threat to become immediate.
quote: This is utter and complete BS. Did you watch any of the coverage during the beginning of the conflict? Any at all? I saw the military ran into some problems>
Would you not characterize the initial phase of the war a total success in terms of lives lost and military objectives met? I certainly would say it was a success.
quote: but try watching BBC for a change.
quote:Watch BBC world news--you get a lot of different numbers and facts and figures from them than you do on the American front.
This explains a lot. The BBC, a TV network, is notoriously biased.
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quote: Meaning, we didn't wait for the threat to become immediate.
Robespierre By this logic, essentially the Bush administration's logic, any country may attack any other country pre-emptively whenever it perceives a potential future threat. Unfortunately, it is a direct contavention of the UN charter which the US is signatory to, as well as other treaties and international law principles in general.
Ultimately, this will be the worst legacy of Gulf II-- justifactions and rationales for pre-emptive war.
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quote:This explains a lot. The BBC, a TV network, is notoriously biased.
And other news organizations are not? Do not get me started on this. Because of the Telecommunications act of 1996, which was supposed to open up the business to competition, actually cut down on it. The media companies became dog-eat-dog and now about 5 media companies control everything we watch, listen to or read in the United States.
I'm sure there are shareholders in these companies in the government. And, like I said before, the media is in bed with the government. So, we can pretend all we want that the media is no way influenced by the government, but the bottom line is---it is.
Posts: 463 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Would you not characterize the initial phase of the war a total success in terms of lives lost and military objectives met? I certainly would say it was a success
No, I would not. The phase of the war, though supposedly over and now an occupation, is PR bull. There is still fighting going on. Lives are still being lost.
As for military objectives---the WMD have not been found, even though it has been on the news there were facilites that could have been used to make them found, there is still no proof that there were WMDs in Iraq.
And okay, Saddam's out of power, his two sons are dead. Now, where the hell is he?
This war is not over. The administration may like us to think so, and that the military is only picking up the pieces, but this is not so.
If there is anyone out there that has expieriences from over there, please correct me if I am wrong.
quote: By this logic, essentially the Bush administration's logic, any country may attack any other country pre-emptively whenever it perceives a potential future threat. Unfortunately, it is a direct contavention of the UN charter which the US is signatory to, as well as other treaties and international law principles in general.
I agree completely with Morbo. Pres. Bush basically gave the UN the middle finger in going on and attacking Iraq.
Posts: 463 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Good point, John. There's no way for me to verify the authenticity of this information. I can't even verify that the interest is being added correctly. But for a debt that large, what's being shown seems more than reasonable.
Have you noticed anything amiss that may substantiate your suspicions about the site?
From the explanations on how they calculated the debt (italicizations mine):
quote:To keep the Cost of War counter accurate, we periodically readjust our estimate to keep up with the the announced costs of the invasion. The most recent adjustment occurred on August 5, 2003. Department of Defense Comptroller Dov Zakheim on April 16, 2003 briefed the press on the Pentagon's estimate that to date the war had cost between $10-$12 billion in military operations, including the cost of airlift and sealift of troops and equipment, plus another $9 billion in the first 3 1/2 weeks of conflict. He added that the cost of returning troops and equipment to base would be another $5-$7 billion, for a total of between $24-$28 billion. We have taken the middle figure, $26 billion, and used it as the cost of the war up until April 17.
The Fiscal 2003 Supplemental Appropriations Bill, (H.R. 1559) allocated some $8 billion to garner foreign support for the war (in further military and economic aid to several countries, including Jordan, Israel, and Egypt) and to help reconstruct Iraq (including over $400 million to ensure the proper functioning of Iraq's oil industry). The entire legislation is available through the Library of Congress legislative database; the Council for a Livable World published a useful summary. The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Joshua Bolten, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 29 that by June 30 the US had already spent $2 billion in reconstruction funds, but Administration officials avoided saying how much would be spent on reconstruction in the coming months. We have included this [/i]$8 billion figure[/i] although it may be slightly high; if so, CostofWar.com will readjust it once the government provides more exact information.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 9 and in an interview on ABC's "This Week" on July 13 that the US military occupation is costing at least $3.9 billion a month.We began that rate on April 18.
quote:With the government projected to run one of the largest deficits in history, it is not enough to simply consider the cost of the war today; we must also consider how much money we will be spending on it for years to come. To this end, we include the cost of interest payments in our total cost of war. We have chosen to use 10-year Treasury Notes for this calculation, and we use an interest rate of 4%. These decisions are explained in greater detail below. The net result, however, is that the cost of the war is 40% higher than the stated cost, due to 4% simple interest for 10 years. Therefore, although the stated cost of the war on April 17 was $34 billion, the actual cost was closer to $47.6 billion, due to the $13.6 billion we will be spending in interest. In addition, the cost of occupation is more accurately stated as $5.46 billion monthly, of which $1.56 billion is interest.
Now, granted, they're marking off all the red ink -- but it's not an unreasonable action, though the counter may then more accurately reveal Bush's deficit than Bush's spending on Iraq.
quote:What I wonder is why something thats only taken around 300 American lives ( And countless Iraqis) Yet people would complain about the loss of life.
quote:I find this personally very offensive and extremely unfair. It paints all Americans as racist and provincial, which, in my experience, is an incorrect stereotype based on the idea that there is some massive body of "normal Americans" that go about their lives eating cheeseburgers, driving to the Mega-Mart in their SUV, and like to bask in their central heating/cooling. I still have yet to see more than a handfull of such people. Maybe because I live in Vermont, I dunno. It was a part of the United States last time I checked.
Wheatpuppet, read Black Fox's post -- the one I posted above your own. Isn't it stunning, the casual writeoff of "countless Iraqis" then the complaint that people whine about loss of life? This is not an uncommon attitude in the US. I had to scrabble to find some kind of record of the Afghani dead, a year ago; even then, as I recall, the very few polls of death that were conducted were flawed, as the organizations refused to count any reports of dead Afghanis unless they were the immediate family of the reporting Afghani. I have yet to see any count of the Iraqi dead. The media is not conducting one -- and why not? Because the media needs to sell itself, and while it has moments of silence for every invading US soldier, I have yet to hear of any report where they even mention in passing the sheer number of Iraqi dead.
Your caricature of the American -- drawn, I presume, to show how clearly it differentiates from you and the people you know -- is a straw man. Let's face it, most Americans don't care about the loss of Iraqi life, and may even complain if such polls are reported to the public. I stand by George Carlin's statement. So long as the people we invade are brown, I seriously doubt any huge current of sympathy will well out to them from the vast majority of the United States.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I hate getting involved in these political war threads, but I can't resist this one. Lalo, your emphasis on the word brown is ridiculous. You want to paint it as a racist thing. You want it to look like we don't care about that whole part of the world. I see it more as an enemy thing. Even if it's only a percieved enemy. Do you really think people felt any differently about the number of German dead in WWII? I don't. And imagine it, they were white. Crazy thought isn't it.
I'm not trying to detract from your argument for or against the war, I just doubt that you can blame this apathy towards the enemy solely on race.
posted
Iraqui civilians are the enemy? But I thought we were over there to rebuild after freeing the good people from a psycho dictator?
Also, Dagonee said:
quote: Interestingly, there are probably more people alive today than have ever died. This is counterintuitive but fairly easy to demonstrate:
The world population grows pretty consistently. This means that every day more people are born than die.
So starting from 2 people living and no one having died, the number of births has continued to outpace the number of deaths.
This is wrong...but may not be in a century.
Figure there were ~1.86 Billion people alive in 1920, 80 years ago(a good number based on lifespan). Assume for all intents and purposes they're all dead now.
In 1840 there were ~1.13 Billion. In 1760 there were ~.65 Billion. In 1680 there were ~.60 Billion In 1600 there were ~.55 Billion In 1520 there were ~.47 Billion In 1440 there were ~.45 Billion In 1360 there were ~.43 Billion In 1280 there were ~.40 Billion
That's already more people dead than there are alive now (~6.3 Billion), and we're not even in B.C. yet, nor have we counted the number of people who've died since 1920. And lifespan obviously wasn't 80 in 1280...but it's just accurate enough to show the faulty logic.[/tangent]
But, yeah. We're definitely not getting our money's worth in Iraq.
quote:Good point, John. There's no way for me to verify the authenticity of this information. I can't even verify that the interest is being added correctly. But for a debt that large, what's being shown seems more than reasonable.
Have you noticed anything amiss that may substantiate your suspicions about the site?
Mostly the glut of misleading information about such hot topics right along this vein, and the non-affiliated ownership of the site (I looked up the site on a database called WHOIS, and it's not affiliated as far as I can tell). I would suspect their numbers, as well as how they are displaying the counter (as far as the code being used). I read the page on how they got the numbers, but those are budgets, not actual money spent. Indeed, the money spent is high—well into the billions, as I've worked out in other debates with people—but I have seen little supporting the pages total claims.
Tresopax:
quote:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So wait... if I made a page with a script counting up and called it something like "the lives war has saved," then I could post that here as proof that the cost is worth it to save the lives of those who would have been otherwise oppressed and treated like cattle? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, no, because that number would probably be negative, if you factor in those killed in the war, those killed in the chaotic period afterward, and those that will inevitably be killed because of the help the war has provided al Qaeda in its cause. (Not to even guess about the number of lives that whatever new regime arises in Iraq will take out, or to compare to the number of lives we would have saved had we just GIVEN the money out to starving people around the world.)
Then you are not counting the known half million killed under Hussein's rule, as well as the close to 1 million number that is purported. This is also not taking into account the many killed regularly by al Qaeda fundementalists by bombings, and the regular citizens victimized (and killed) as a result of standing up to or resisting such groups. By and large, you're only examining the symptoms and not the cause.
By your flawed logic, WWII caused more deaths because it was fought, even though almost 20 million (if not more) were killed by Nazi and Japanese forces in the manner of concentration camps and mass murders. In case you didn't know, we fought to stop that. Wars fought in and of themselves (example: the Crusades) are not logistically ethical, sensible, or moral, but for you to equate all war as such is a fallacy on your part.
Posts: 6907 | Registered: Nov 2001
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quote: Iraqui civilians are the enemy? But I thought we were over there to rebuild after freeing the good people from a psycho dictator?
That's exactly why I used the phrase "perceived enemy" Frisco. I can't help it if you decided to ignore it since it discounted the argument I knew someone would pose.
quote: I have yet to see any count of the Iraqi dead. The media is not conducting one -- and why not? Because the media needs to sell itself, and while it has moments of silence for every invading US soldier, I have yet to hear of any report where they even mention in passing the sheer number of Iraqi dead.
I dont know if this is substantitive or not but the last count I saw from amnesty international was around 9,000 iraqi civilian casualties and about 28,000 military fatalities. (However military casualties are notoriously hard to count for obvious reasons)
Also, I see the talk about "brown" people on this board and I think it is true that most people let death tolls gloss right over them if they are not affected by it. If you arent American then it doesnt matter. I once heard a quote about Africa that said, "if the kind of epidemic Africa faces now were apparent in Europe, we would have had a solution yesterday". I think that does apply but not to all.
quote:I hate getting involved in these political war threads, but I can't resist this one. Lalo, your emphasis on the word brown is ridiculous. You want to paint it as a racist thing. You want it to look like we don't care about that whole part of the world. I see it more as an enemy thing. Even if it's only a percieved enemy. Do you really think people felt any differently about the number of German dead in WWII? I don't. And imagine it, they were white. Crazy thought isn't it.
I'm not trying to detract from your argument for or against the war, I just doubt that you can blame this apathy towards the enemy solely on race.
--ApostleRadio
As do I. Of course this war isn't based on race, nor is American apathy entirely based off of racism. (A cynic would say [accurately] that the war's based on oil, and [accurately?] that American apathy is based off of ignorance and distrust of biased news sources.)
You identify the problem yourself. "I see it more as an enemy thing. Even if it's only a percieved enemy."
It's much more difficult to empathize with someone who isn't your race or religion. I promise you, if the US were to invade a white European power -- one that wasn't painted as a caricature, such as Nazis, Communists, or even the French -- such as modern-day Germany, there would be a huge outcry. While this isn't an adequate analogy (modern-day Germany isn't run by a dictator), nor the focus of my argument (my race comment was a bitter by-product, not the thrust of my post), I have serious trouble believing white America would be as content with the slaughter of thousands of Caucasians as they are with the thousands of Arab deaths that have occurred already.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Well, the million Saddam killed over his long period of rule are already dead. All I'm saying is, I suspect the number that will die in the new disorder of Iraq and whatever regime follows, when combined with the number we killed in the War and the number terrorists will kill around the world in direct or indirect response to this war, will probably be greater than the number Saddam would have killed had he remained in power. This might not be true if a stable democratic order is instituted in a fairly quick timeframe, but that is doubtful at the moment. Civil war continued indefinitely is probably an equal likelihood at this moment.
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posted
prolix- I was only miscronstruing your post because you were doing the same to Lalo's, which he has sufficiently explained in his recent post.
Race has little to do with it. Ethnocentric thought and sheer ignorance is to blame.
Woohoo! Go America! Let's glass the place because not all Iraquis see the proverbial light that is democracy.
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quote:Well, the million Saddam killed over his long period of rule are already dead. All I'm saying is, I suspect the number that will die in the new disorder of Iraq and whatever regime follows, when combined with the number we killed in the War and the number terrorists will kill around the world in direct or indirect response to this war, will probably be greater than the number Saddam would have killed had he remained in power.
Do you ever get tired of making stuff up without substantiating? I can't believe you are disregarding the people killed between 1992 and 2003 like that just because it surpasses the current toll of the Iraqi War (and the previous Gulf War combined).
You have some serious logistic problems, Tres.
Posts: 6907 | Registered: Nov 2001
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posted
Lalo - I understand your point and take it well. I just thought the emphasis on race was overdone. Obviously seeing the "enemy" as being the same as yourself would make it much more difficult to ignore their deaths. But I figure if we were for some reason attacking Canada or France it would probably be about the same. You wouldn't see alot of dead French people counts on the news either. (Perhaps France is a bad example, considering the current climate, but you get the drift)
posted
Frisco, I wasn't misconstruing lalo's post. In fact I believe from his recent post that he and I are pretty much in agreement on the subject. I assume by association that you are as well.
My point is the same as yours. I just wanted to take the focus off of race. It isn't the "brown-ness" that makes it easy to ignore their deaths, just their status as percieved enemies.
quote:Frisco, I wasn't misconstruing lalo's post. In fact I believe from his recent post that he and I are pretty much in agreement on the subject. I assume by association that you are as well.
My point is the same as yours. I just wanted to take the focus off of race. It isn't the "brown-ness" that makes it easy to ignore their deaths, just their status as percieved enemies.
--ApostleRadio
Well, yes, you did misconstrue my post. Such as when you claimed I "want to paint it as a racist thing. You want it to look like we don't care about that whole part of the world."
We aren't in agreement, either, though we aren't in complete disagreement. If America were to go to war with, to use your example, Canada or France, I think the public would see the death polls of the white Canadians or French, exactly because it's so easy for white America to sympathize with white Canada or white Western Europe. The point where we come close to agreement is where you claim Americans wouldn't care about those they've been told to perceive as the enemy; while it's an over-simplification of the us-vs.-them paradigm, that method of controlling the masses relies on having the enemy ("them") be as different from "us" as possible. And in those methods of mass manipulation, race (and religion and political beliefs) are powerful tools. It'd be difficult, though not impossible, to caricaturize other white races as lesser or enemy beings; just look back to the Cold War for an example of a conflict being shifted away from race (since little conflict could be created from race friction) and emphasis on economic and governmental policies. Or, more astounding, the American Right's recent successful attempt to polarize America with France. I'm still having difficulty understanding how this country was dumb enough to go to the extremes it did; "Freedom Fries"?
Frisco's making a good point, again referring back to Black Fox's rather insensitive (and arrogant, and insulting, and possibly [hopefully] ignorant) dismissal of "countless" Iraqi deaths (who cares, so long as few Americans died?) and his decision to "Just Glass the place, I'm rather tired with peoples as a whole. More and more I realize that the problem is the common person here. Perhaps if they had a decent eduation it would work okay, but they don't."
Black Fox is not a lone voice in America. If anything, his opinions are representative of many Americans' opinions, and those who wonder how many Iraqis we've killed are in the minority. It's not these Iraqis' status as "perceived enemies" that allow people such as Fox to see the Iraqis are ignorant savages who, if sufficiently frustrating in their refusal to be controlled by the US, may as well be nuked. It's their status as the conquered people of a poor country; it's their status as the brown peasant class who were supposed to cheer when the US exchanged Saddam's rule for its own; it's their status as supposed Muslim fanatics whom many (most?) Americans believe are bent on the destruction of the United States. They're a different race, they're a different religion, and they speak a different language. Black Fox can ignore how many of them have died precisely because they aren't his people, and because he can (if anything, he's encouraged to) go without relating with their current situation.
Or do you really think the US could get away with treating a white, English-speaking race in this contemptuous and exploitative manner?
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Well for one I don't see them as the ignorant brown peasant class, neither do I treat them as such. I work with Iraqi men all the time ( FPSF ICDC)and joke around with them as much as the regular joes I work with. They don't get paid as much as I do, don't get as many cool "widgets" and they don't get as much respect. Yet I can count on them to not put a round through my skull when I'm sleeping. No, who I'm angry at is the common human being who can so easily gloss over death in both ways. See when was the last time that you saw a dead body? When was the last time you saw some poor Iraqi dude catch a round because he is working with the Americans. You know that 2/3rds plus of the Iraqi people are not just happy that the coalition came in, but want them to continue to stay there!
I suppose I aught to clarify more often what I mean by what I say. What I mean in a way about just glassing this whole place is that we might as well. The Europeans don't care, the Asians don't care, Americans don't care, No one cares but the other middle eastern countries. Enough of those are just letting trigger pullers get through their borders anyhow. Americans cry because three hundred soldiers have died over 7 months. Yeah its sad, but more soldiers have died in the opening seconds of major battles. Why dwell on it, the reason I say countless Iraqis is that I've seen some gun tape ( Apaches etc. always have their cameras on) from the AH-64s and they just chewed people up. There is no way you could really honestly accurately get the body count. That and their records aren't all that great, who knows who died or who is just hiding etc. Plus I don't think its about race as much as power and money. If there is a European problem we get dragged into it for one we are a part of Nato and two all those countries have big economic and political ties with us. Not because their white, but the major economies of the world happen to be in caucasian countries, shoot me because its the truth. We protect the heck out of Taiwan, why? Well for one they are democratic, for two our computer industry would have some major issues if Taiwan were to participate in a large war. Make sense to you. A successful country can't be involved in too many idealistic wars, its just too expensive. You know why we spend so much money here btw? Because we have loads of heavy armor divisions and aviation like crazy. All this junk we have to airlift in etc. Gosh a pair of my PVS-14s ( night vision) costs the army a good 3K dollars. My unit breaks at least ten a month. Thats only 14s, not to mention the 7 series we bust etc. Weapons that go kaput, just regular wear and tear. Stuff like that. Plus remember, they aren't saying how much more we are spending here in a combat environment than say back in Fort Campbell. Ahhh, didn't think of that did you. We still train out here etc. ( weird to train in a combat environment lol)
Anyhow.. honestly you come across pretty Charlie Foxed. I gotta go though.. just think about what you say. Just so you know a dead or wounded "brown" man looks pretty much the same as a dead or jacked up looking white dude. Not just that but they even smell the same. Thought you might like to know
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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quote: Last I read, around 350 soliders have been killed since the conflict began and over a thousand have been maimed, as in loss of a limb. But we don't hear about this on the news.
Because the US military looses that many each year from accidents.
Lets look at comparable losses: 6 months WWI : 58,000 killed over 100,000 wounded 6 months WWII : 50,000 killed over 80,000 wounded 6 months Korea : 7,000 killed over 14,000 wounded 6 months Vietnam: 2,100 killed over 6,000 wounded
6 months Gulf war II: ~340 killed (including non-combat deaths) and several thousand wounded.
quote: I still don't believe that at the time we attacked, there was an immenent threat from Iraq.
Correct, and President Bush even agrees with you.
Posts: 7083 | Registered: Nov 2000
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quote:Do you ever get tired of making stuff up without substantiating? I can't believe you are disregarding the people killed between 1992 and 2003 like that just because it surpasses the current toll of the Iraqi War (and the previous Gulf War combined).
What? How could taking Saddam out now possibly save people who are already dead??
quote:Correct, and President Bush even agrees with you.
quote:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Do you ever get tired of making stuff up without substantiating? I can't believe you are disregarding the people killed between 1992 and 2003 like that just because it surpasses the current toll of the Iraqi War (and the previous Gulf War combined). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What? How could taking Saddam out now possibly save people who are already dead??
By that logic, how did stopping the nazis and the Japanese possibly save those millions who were already dead?
Are you intentionally missing the logic here, or is it just habit now?
The point is that if Saddam did not stop and continued at his current rate, that within 11 years 1 million (or more) would have been killed. Same thing with groups like al Qaeda. And until you can come up with real numbers to quantify your ridiculous statements of logistics, Tres, you are seriously coming off as someone who doesn't see the point of stopping individuals and groups who are out to cause mass murder.
Posts: 6907 | Registered: Nov 2001
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He said this from the beginning. Why do you think he (and our allies) came up with legal justifications that did not invoke the right of national self defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Dagonee *It’s déjà vu all over again.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Leto, the fact that Saddam killed so many people earlier in his regime does not imply he would have continued to kill that many, particularly not if we had continued to place pressure. That figure would be a guess at best.
But even if he managed to hold control for another decade and did kill a million more in the next decade, I still think the number that will die because of the Iraq War could very likely be greater. The history of new regimes in the Middle East suggests there is a distinct possibility the coming one will be no less bloody than Saddam. And the period of unrest that even now continues is certain to continue to bring high death counts for months, if not years if we fail to stabilize it. If we have a smashing success and Iraq develops a real democracy in a year or so, death rates could be very low. But it's also possible that we fail, Iraq breaks into complete civil war, and death rates are far far higher. Or it's possible that certain muslim extremist groups seize control and murder as many or more than Saddam would have. I could make up numbers if you want, but I think it's pretty clear that any estimations of how the future would progress are also going to be guesses.
But, we should also factor in the possibility that, as a result of this war, terrorists will gain the support needed to get their hands on nukes or chemical weapons. If this is so, they could kill a million rather quickly - and it might be a million Americans.
My point is not that I know how many lives will be saved or lost as a result of this war. My point is that it's mistaken to claim we know it has saved a million lives, because (1) we don't know Saddam would have killed anywhere near that many in the next decade, (2) because there's a fairly good chance the disorder in Iraq will continue to a sufficient extent to surprass this number, (3) because the new regime could be no better than Saddam, and (4) because the resulting setback in the war on terror that this has caused could very well lead to vastly increased terrorism. The number of lives saved or lost is guesswork.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:He said this from the beginning. Why do you think he (and our allies) came up with legal justifications that did not invoke the right of national self defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
He certainly implied that there was an immediate threat. Just go back and look at the posts of the pro-war Hatrackers back before the war began - you'll see most of them refer to an immediate threat Iraq poses as the reason the Bush administration was entitled to go to war.
Besides, I'd have to ask if he didn't think there was an immediate threat, why in the world did we have to attack NOW and could not wait four months to satisfy the U.N.?
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:He [Bush] said this from the beginning [basically, that Saddam posed an immediated threat]. Why do you think he (and our allies) came up with legal justifications that did not invoke the right of national self defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Dag
I thought they had said that too, Dag. I ranted at length about Bush saying "imminent threat" many times this summer after WMDs failed to materialize.
Yet NOW the administration is spinning it out that Bush never said imminent threat, after no "smoking gun" was found in the WMD snipe hunt. 2 trailers with possible dual uses is not a smoking gun. The DIA's own experts disputed the fact that the trailers are biological weapons labs. At best that evidence is unclear.
WTH?? The administration cannot have it both ways: either Saddam was perceived by the administration as an imminent threat to the United States, or he was not.
If Saddam was indeed perceived as an immediate threat, then war was justified under the UN charter. Unfortunately, without WMDs, he just was not an imminent threat. Shoddy WMD programs and the weak Iraqi military (compared to our awesome military) is not an imminent threat--a potential huge future threat, but not enough to justify a pre-emptive invasion in international law terms. Of course those terms are debatable, and many Americans would dismiss the entire international law argument--which is exactly why so much of the world is unhappy with the US this year. Best case: poor intelligence led to war, exacerbated by a disinformation campaign by Saddam that purported that he had WMDs or credible, effective WMD programs. This is a big possibility, I feel there was a huge amount of disinformation coming out of Baghdad since Gulf I, for various reasons. I'll leave the worst case as an exercise for the student.
If Saddam was indeed NOT perceived as an immediate threat, then war was not justified under international law, the UN charter, and various Christian "Just War" doctrines.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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See this thread for the discussion to date on the legality of the war. If you want to discuss further, it may be better to use that thread since lots of people have already commented on the legality of the war under international law there.
quote:Leto, the fact that Saddam killed so many people earlier in his regime does not imply he would have continued to kill that many, particularly not if we had continued to place pressure. That figure would be a guess at best.
Can you prove that? Considering there were defectors all the way up to the time war wass looming, I would say that qualifies stating that Saddam had absolutely no intention of changing his regime, especially after eleven years of pressure. In fact, the more pressure put on, the more he allowed that pressure to damage and kill and starve the lower-most classes and castes in Iraq. Your logic doesn't stand because you are actually trying to say that the proverbial crap does not roll downhill in terms of mistreatment. The more political and economic pressure put on, the more Saddam was starving people and brutalizing them.
quote:But even if he managed to hold control for another decade and did kill a million more in the next decade, I still think the number that will die because of the Iraq War could very likely be greater.
That's a very nice opinion, but you have no basis in fact to draw from, and are only doing the "war is bad" line to justify it.
quote:My point is not that I know how many lives will be saved or lost as a result of this war.
Yes it is. You said that the lives lost would be greater than the lives saved. You can't quantify the numbers (because you have no proof), but that's what you said. That is your logistical and logical flaw.
Posts: 6907 | Registered: Nov 2001
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But I figure if we were for some reason attacking Canada or France it would probably be about the same. You wouldn't see alot of dead French people counts on the news either. (Perhaps France is a bad example, considering the current climate, but you get the drift)
