Iraq & the War on Terror

[GQ_jumper 4]

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Using that definition, since 'the war on terror' was started, terrorism has increased by several orders of magnitude.

You have a good point in saying that the war has increased the terrorist attacks, but its the only way to stop terrorism. We could either jump in the middle of it all and start laying waste or we could tread lightly and arrest a few guys hear and there. These terrorists may be attacking us on a regular basis, but they are being killed on a regular basis as well. Also before the war, the terrorist attacks were usually aimed at innocent civilians or government official, with the exception of a few such as the barracks in beirut or the USS Cole, but even in those it was against soldiers who didn't have the tools to defend themselves on-hand. In iraq at least the playing field has been leveled a little bit more because they are attacking soldiers that are ready to fight back at any time.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower

[testpilot 0]

Would invading a country and killing woman and children classify you as a terrorist?
Would shelling a country with weapons greater than any they have classify you as using weapons of mass destruction?

As an outsider I would just like to say I don’t know the difference between the democrats or the republicans but I do know the difference between a peace keeping force and a terror attack, and the big USA looks like the biggest terror organization in Iraq at present. If you are going to wage war on terror the white house is a good place to start.

Dave
D830
http://www.skydiving.co.za

[crozby 0]

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You have a good point in saying that the war has increased the terrorist attacks, but its the only way to stop terrorism.

If History teaches us anything, it teaches us that simply isn't true.

Beating people into submission has never worked. It wouldn't work on you or me, and it doesn't work on 'them'.

[Tonto 1]

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Beating people into submission has never worked.

Well.. that's not true. The Spanish destroyed countless civilisations in South America, and the British and later US expansion into North America and pursuit of manifest destiny destroyed over 500 "nations" of native Americans. That worked. Those people will never again pose a threat to the US, or the UK, or Spain.

Those who colonised Africa were less successful, having withdrawn from their colonies over the last 50 years or so, but look at the mayhem that colonial border drawing through "lines on a map" have divided nations and stimulated ethnic murder.

Beating people into submission can work for a while. It may even create an ally out of the beaten party. 12 years after Afrikaaner women and children died in their 10's of thousands in British concentration camps, their brothers and fathers were fighting for Britain against the Germans. Of course, this move created a power shift allowing them to beat the native population into submission for nearly a century until 1994 when those beaten parties recieved their freedom.

Beating people into submission works, especially considering the term of a US president, but I have no doubt that in 30 years time, we'll be seeing "Deerhunter" type movies about Iraq.

t

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[Gravitymaster 0]

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Can you provide a source for this statement?

I can
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
and
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/28/news/toll.html

so estimates actually range from 14000 all the way up to 100,000.

Please note that 14,000 is the accepted bare MINIMUM of civilians killed

is this justification for 9/11 somehow?

TK

You are kidding me, right? This is the level of "proof" you are willing to accept? Heres what IBC says about the Lancet figure of 100,000 dead.

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The Lancet study's headline figure of "100,000" excess deaths is a probabilistic projection from a small number of reported deaths - most of them from aerial weaponry - in a sample of 988 households to the entire Iraqi population. Only those actual, war-related deaths could be included in our count. Because the researchers did not ask relatives whether the male deaths were military or civilian the civilian proportion in the sample is unknown (despite the Lancet website's front-page headline "100,000 excess civilian deaths after Iraq invasion", [link] the authors clearly state that "many" of the dead in their sample may have been combatants

So first off we have one source you cite saying the other source you cite if full of crap. But hey, it's on the internet, so it must be true, right?

Secondly, IBC collects data mainly based on "witnesses " to events. In other words a US bomb hits a building that has been determined to be a terrorist safe house and destroys it and everyone inside. The newspeople show up and interview people in the area who all claim it wa full of innocent women and children. IBC then reads this in the newspaper and puts it down as innocent civilians killed.

Accepting this as "proof" is a little like believing the newspaper account of a skydiving fatality when they say "his parachute failed to open".

I'm not saying that many innovent civilians haven't been killed, but I am not so naive as to believe a number based on this methodology

[tkhayes 124]

ahem, I gave TWO sources of information, one stating 14,000 and one stating 100,000

You cannot, although you tried, negate the entire post by disputing the second. I know the second is somewhat hokey, however, I do believe that probably MORE than 14000 have been killed.

The post I replied to disputed that ANY had been killed and asked for the proof of a number around 14-15K dead, which I provided.

Now, on that note, the second study was done by 3 universities, including John Hopkins. Are you saying that they are not at all credible? 'cause I find that hard to believe.

I did not like the way that they did the study, however that does not mean that they are wrong either.

If you expect us to go over there and actually count bodies, then there will never be an end to the arguement, since probably thousands of bodies were buried quickly (Islamic traditions) and many were vaporized I am sure, or permantently buried under rubble and in craters left by bombs.

Back to the original point - we have KILLED at LEAST 14,000 civilians in this war - hardly justification for 9/11.

TK

[Trent 0]

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we have KILLED at LEAST 14,000 civilians in this war -

We've had this out a few times here at SC. Even if you use the IBC to count "innocent" civilians... you will see that MANY of the people killed were killed by insurgents/terrorists and not the coalition forces. Furthermore, the IBC counts iraqi police as well. Going EVEN further, you can read the likely causes and situations surrounding the deaths and determine that many of them might not have been so innocent. Keep reading, a lot of the IBC's numbers come from generalized accounts from hospitals and morgues, which seem to thing everyone is innocent since they're not clutching weapons in their dead hands.

Their count is not 100% solid of course, but even if you like it for a ballpark number, there are problems with labeling all the deaths counted as "innocent" civilians. Take a close look and see.

Oh, hello again!

[billvon 2,380]

>Even if you use the IBC to count "innocent" civilians... you will see that
> MANY of the people killed were killed by insurgents/terrorists and not the
> coalition forces.

Agreed. If you count _only_ the ones we killed, you're at about 7000.

[tkhayes 124]

you make that sound like 7000 is somehow OK

Let's review:
-we went to war to disarm Saddam who has WMD's (false)
-we told the world that he was not complying with the terms of the 1991 war, which apparently he was since there were no WMD's
-we bomb to hell out of the country and kill civilians (if you want to argue the exact number, then go ahead)
-whether they are killed by insurgents or us, they were killed because we started a war.
-Now we can justify staying there and continuing the operation 'because that is war and we have to finish the job'

sounds COMPLETELY sensible to me

TK

[billvon 2,380]

> you make that sound like 7000 is somehow OK

I don't think it's OK. It's the inevitable result of a war of this scale. The time to decide you're not OK with tens of thousands of innocent people dead is BEFORE you declare the war, not two years afterwards when you claim "but we thought they'd welcome us as liberators, and it would be a walk in the park!"

In any war, you have to decide if the good you do (i.e. preventing Japan from bombing the US again, protecting the UK from destruction) is worth the bad you do (i.e. killing 350,000 innocent people with two bombs.) And then you act on that decision. Good leaders make the decisions beforehand, based on good information and wise decisions; poor leaders make bad decisions and then stick to them even when it's clear they were wrong.

But there's no going back now. There's no way to undo those deaths. All we can do is try to manage this quagmire the best we can, and try to minimize both US and innocent Iraqi deaths as we try to extricate ourselves from it.