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| Showing posts 1 to 13 of 13 results |
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 Thread: Anyone at all paying attention to... |
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| Originally posted by KultanMy original point was that a huge troop level is causing a lot of problems. It's necessary for now, but those problems aren't going to be resolved while a US military presence is so visible. |
And yet the evidence doesn't seem to agree with that, not entirely. Sadr City, to take just one example, benefited greatly from the troop presence, and what was once a violent pit has become stable and secure. And consider as well the list, above -- that's not a lack of progress, and has been made possible in a large part by the troop presence.
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| We're not going to end up with a completely stable country run by a just, equal government (reality not defeatist)...The questions is what constitutes a "stable enough" Iraq to justify withdrawal. And even then it should be a gradual bell curve pullout. |
That is the question, yes...and yes, whatever gets left behind in Iraq will have to be a bit more of a 'strongman'-type government than we would be used to, or accept, or even need in the West.
To take us back to the original topic of the thread, though, it's that exact timetable for withdrawal that's a major issue in this election, and the two schools of thought on the issue are quite clearly delineated. I can't think of a single Democrat candidate that's running on a platform that includes a realistic Iraq timetable, and even some of the Republican candidates have wavered on that issue.
The election will not be completely won or lost on this issue, but it will be affected heavily by it. And ultimately, the side with the better chance of victory is the side that adopts the more realistic view of the conflict...which, as you note, includes the realization that the troops are necessary for now, and that it's almost too premature to talk about withdrawal at this point.
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At least someone is defining victory. It works for me. Send it to Bush.
Seriously, I'll just avoid that one. I already stated several times I'm not interested in posing solutions. Sorry if that's disappointing. I just don't want to get into that debate. |
Interesting.
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| And I love debates like this... "I don't like you're point. You're stupid! (but I need to think of a really smart sounding way of saying it to make my point)" |
There's a bit of a difference, though...because it is indicative of an intellectual deficit to adopt the accusation of delusion as the default, fallback position in a debate. That's as true when lefties do it as when us righties do it. There's a measure of intellectual laziness in the practice, but unfortunately it seems to be the more prevalent practice in most debates today.
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| Settle down, that wasn't directed at you anyway (I should have just left it out). |
Hindsight. 
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You already did agree with me:
I was making the point that stating (what we both apparently agree are) facts doesn't make me a defeatist.
Should I look at your list of positive items in the next post and accuse you of being a hopeless optimist? |
You're right...merely looking at facts doesn't make us a defeatist or an optimist. It's how we interpret the facts that defines that aspect of our viewpoint. The difference, as far as I can see, is that I look at the facts and see a situation that is still volatile, but definitely improving. I can still see ways it can fail, but I see the successes that have been made as well -- successes that have come about because of the presence of U.S. troops in some cases -- and I can see ways it can succeed. If that's the functional definition of hopelessly optimistic, then I accept the label.
But that's a long way from saying things will *never* work while U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq. And saying that is a lot closer to defeatism.
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| Because it just opens up more and more cans of worms. Again, the troops have to stay there for a time. How long should depend on set goals, which no one will establish. I really do feel we need milestones. |
Set goals can be a dangerous thing in war, though, if there is too much specificity.
Take the last World War...the set goal in the Pacific Theatre was stopping the aggression of Imperial Japan. Should the U.S. have planned for that to take two years, say, and then called off the war because they got bogged down in the Solomon Islands and the rest of that chain? Should they have withdrawn from the theatre of combat because the victory took almost four years instead?
Setting milestones is all well and good, but combat is not a corporate business quarter, and military targets can be set in as firm stone as sales targets can. That is also a reality that we need to take into account in this discussion.
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| Not as a reason to pull troops if they're not met, but as a measurement of success to make it more clear how things are actually going. The administration hasn't done that in the past because it knew how things were going. |
And because it understands, I suspect, that you can't measure the success of a war effort as clearly, or with as sharply-defined metrics, as you can measure...say...an employee's work performance.
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Bush is starting to come around and face the reality of the situation though (Rumsfeld's departure and Bush's more recent statements prove that to me), and I'm not as cynical about the situation as I used to be.
At the same time I truly believe that many of the problems we're seeing are being fueled by a large, visible military presence. This thing isn't going to be "won" with an army. |
Not entirely. But the army will do much to bring the "win" about.
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| Didn't you say that everyone was/is?
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Yes. Do you believe it? |
What, that I have my biases? It is as you say...everyone does. But people are also capable of reason and discernment, and the trick is to sort out those persons who can report on things in a way that either does not obviously suffer a strong bias, or in a way that at least presents both sides of the story. It is possible to give a report without imbuing the taint of ideological goals into it...if one chooses to do so.
Increasingly, in media portrayals of the situation in Iraq, this dual-sided, non-ideological nature is not nearly as evident.
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| I do in fact have a bias, although it is not particularly left or right in nature. My bias is my Catholicism, and the way that reality shapes my viewpoint. Left, right, and all politics are mere subsets of truth, and then not always truth. |
Interesting. From my experience the right is particularly conservative in nature. |
x = x? Or did you mean to phrase that last sentence a bit differently?
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Originally posted by wtf_dragon
...but I'll approach it from the conservative angle because a) I am one and... |
Doh!
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Well, this was initially a political discussion, and I tend to find that the right side of the political spectrum is a bit of an easier pill to swallow when it comes to reconciling the politics I support with the faith I hold. Even then, it's not a perfect match...but it's a better one than on the flip side.
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| I was knocking Bush. He's an arrogant, stubborn ass. Let's not get into degrees of Good ol' Boyness and what distinguishes one from another. |
Eh...ok.
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I wouldn't argue that they don't have conditions for fomenting radicalism. But I believe the Iraq conflict was a catalyst for motivating volunteers to take action, not an inhibitor.
From a group that claimed responsibility for the London bombing:
We have repeatedly warned the British Government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.
We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the Crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused. |
The mere use of the word 'Crusader' indicates that these people have a list of reasons for terrorism extending back to...what? The 12th century or so? If the U.S. weren't in Iraq, then we'd be hearing them using Israel's airstrikes against Gaza as justification. And if Israel weren't bombing Gaza, then it would be something else.
Iraq is a convenient rallying point, but the whole point of the jihad is that it has almost a thousand years of 'justifications' fueling it. There wasn't a war in Iraq back in 2001, after all...or in Afghanistan. At least, not a war that the U.S. was involved in.
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| I didn't mention France. |
And yet it works as an example: French is adamantly not involved in Iraq, and yet it too suffers terrorist attacks...because ultimately, Iraq is a convenient excuse for the jihad, not a raison d'etre. And absent the involvement of a nation in Iraq, terrorism will find other justifications.
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I was more referring to us trying to nation build by impressing our systems of government onto a culture for which they are not compatible.
As far as the reverse invasion, that's pretty fascinating too. |
I agree on the lack of compatibility, and were it up to me I'd have suggested that the U.S. hand over the task of rebuilding the Iraqi government to the Brits -- they, at least, have a history of fusing a democratic system of government on to a variety of different cultures, and a vast deal of experience in the enterprise.
And indeed, if you look at the parts of Iraq that the Brits were responsibile for, the picture is quite different from what the U.S. has to deal with...southern Iraq is quite stable.
WtFD
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| Thread: Anyone at all paying attention to... |
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Although, one more thought on the subject of limited progress being made in Iraq, consider:
- 47 countries now have embassies in Iraq (that's a pretty high number)
- 3100 schools have been renovated/modernized, an additional 364 are being rehabilitated, 38 new schools have been built, and 268 more are in various stages of construction
- 20 colleges, 46 research centers, and 4 universities are operating
- 3600 new police officers graduate every 8 weeks
- 1100 new building projects are underway
- 96% of Iraqi children under the age of 5 have been vaccinated against polio, and 4.3 million Iraqi children are in school now
- There has been a 158% increase in phone usage in the country (that's about 2 million new phone owners/users)
- 78 radio stations, 180 newspapers, and 10 television stations have been established
I don't know about you, but I see the above as a rather strong indicator that the U.S. mission in Iraq is beginning to bear real fruit. I don't see the above trend reversing with continued American troop presence, at least until such time as that (rapidly) growing police force is able to keep the nation policed and reasonably secure on its own.
WtFD
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| Thread: Anyone at all paying attention to... |
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Originally posted by Kultan
Stability can only be achieved through US forces staying in Iraq is assumed in the question. |
Of course, built in to the rejection of that assumption is the reciprocal assumption that an understrength, still somewhat inexperiences national police force and national military (of the Iraqi government, just to be clear) would be able to stand on its own against an insurgency that recruits its members from places like the Sudan and arms them with weapons purchased with Iranian finances.
That's ultimately what the insurgency amounts to, a third-party-fought proxy war being waged by Iran. Think the Iraqi military is at a state of readiness yet to take than entity on without assistance?
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| Yet experience teaches us otherwise. |
Until the wolf shows up.
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| At current cost (not just in dollars) 30 years is ludicrous and will never happen regardless of the end result in Iraq. That's why I used it as an extreme example. It's unrealistic to assume any country would tolerate Iraqis' internal animosity by taking the brunt of their frustrations towards each other for that long. Do you really believe that? Sorry, that's La La Land. You can argue its merits and moral necessity until you're blue in the face. It's not happening. |
I realize that, and personally I'd rather see this thing resolved sooner than way later. Privately, I believe it will be.
But even if it takes a little longer, all I ultimately concern myself with is what the right thing is to do, and while I have not yet resolved that completely in mind, I do know that the absolutely wrong thing to do is withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq prior to the point at which the Iraqis are able to maintain a measure of stability in their own nation without that additional assistance there. I do know that it is absolutely wrong to set up a situation whereby the Sunni Triangle becomes a second Darfur.
And the weight of that responsibility trumps many considerations of raw cost.
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No. The man himself can't define success of the US mission in Iraq. His outlook for the eventual outcome becomes less and less optimistic with each address. Without a definition of success, how is my point of view a defeat? If anything, Bush's "either we'll win or we won't" statement is more defeatist than anything I've stated. Wish I had a link to where that's quoted.
Anyway, saying you can't win one way isn't saying you can't win at all. |
So propose an alternative solution for achieving victory in Iraq, where "victory" is defined as the creation of a nation that is able to self-police and self-defend against the current proxy war being waged upon it.
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| Defeatism doesn't factor in with that statement. That's reality. Believing otherwise is delusion. |
I love debates like this..."agree with me or you're delusional!" becomes the normative argument of virtually everyone I debate, and boy does it make me feel despair at the intellectual deficit of the age.
I still wonder, though...you say you're not a defeatist, and yet all you've said thus far is that Iraq won't stabilize while the U.S. is there. You haven't spoken to specific strategies, but to the actual presence of U.S. troops in the nation. So let's not have any of this talk of "saying you can't win one way...", because you've thus far been primarily focusing not on specific strategies but on any and all U.S. action in Iraq, and dismissing it as a losing proposition.
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| What about a reporter who is ideologically opposed to anything involving Democrats and liberals? There are several on that side as well. Or are you *gasp* biased? |
Didn't you say that everyone was/is?
Of course bias exists in the opposite direction as well...but one can't help but notice that right-wing bias is not nearly so evident in most of the media as left-wing bias has become.
I do in fact have a bias, although it is not particularly left or right in nature. My bias is my Catholicism, and the way that reality shapes my viewpoint. Left, right, and all politics are mere subsets of truth, and then not always truth.
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| I'd group them all along with FOX News, CNN, MSNBC (Olbermann is such a tool), or any other news media outlet under Things Whose Opinions I Don't Trust and Facts I'll Verify... except for Stephen Colbert, he's irrefutable. |
He's funny, I'll give him that.
But here's another thing about media bias: 18 UN peacekeepers have died so far in Darfur, just in the last couple months. When will we start seeing the "grim milestone" headlines and the calls for withdrawal of troops from that war-torn region?
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| Don't lump me with either. I get along with both just fine though. |
That's as may be...but I notice that you didn't knock on the lemon-almond biscotti set.
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| It's not serving all that well as we've seen in Britain and Spain so far. |
Point, although those nations have additional problems that would have exploded anyhow, I suspect...the problem, in this case, being large communities of culturally isolated, essentially unassimilated immigrants from Muslim nations. In and of itself, such communities aren't a bad thing, except that the extreme level of cultural isolation allows for radicalism to take hold and find both a captive audience and willing volunteers.
France has rejected involvement in Iraq from the get-go, and they've had to put up with all sorts of violence in the last few years. Where does THAT fit in to your point?
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| Anyway, like I said before I'm not interested in debating what should happen to make it better. The reality is that in roughly 1 1/2 years the troops are going to start coming home whether you or I think they should or not. How slowly and how many will remain for a longer term has yet to be seen. That's just how the politics are going to play out. The burden is going to start shifting to the Iraqis for better or worse. Let's hope they're up to the challenge. |
I realize that sooner or later birds get pushed out of the nest, and one can only hope they've got good wings on 'em. Of course, that attitude and philosophy might work well enough for robins and sparrows...but for a nation of several million people, it's a far shakier thing to truly justify.
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| The greater historical aspect you brought up is something that interests me. I'm also fascinated by the huge cultural barrier between the West and the Middle East, and I feel that's one of the main problems. I liken it to some alien culture invading, telling us our forms of government are flawed, and trying to convince us to elect only dolphins as our leaders before we can be granted membership into the galactic alliance... Huh?!?! |
I appreciate, slightly, the Adams reference, but I think it serves to point out that a reverse 'invasion' of sorts is also underway. Many European nations are struggling now to deal with issues related to those large, unassimilated immigrant communities I referred to above, and in a lot of ways are losing ground.
There is a cultural clash, definitely. In the end, I wonder, are we on the side that is the more invasive, or the more invaded?
WtFD
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| Thread: Anyone at all paying attention to... |
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Cont'd
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Again, it's great to see the positive. But...
Car bombings, a gaping inter-cultural divide, troops dying, civilians being massacred in groups of dozens if not hundreds, corrupt police and military, armed militias, billions of unaccounted for dollars, a hopeless, corrupt, and bickering fledgling government aren't reality? I could go on. |
But you're not a defeatist, right?
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| We have to stay there at current levels a while longer regardless. But overall, it won't fix the main issues. |
Agreed...but somehow, I don't think Islam is going to have its equivalent of a Protestant Reformation anytime soon, so we have to make due with the solution options that remain open to us.
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| Basically, I think the policy towards Iraq has to go through major changes before things get better over there...They act just like him and vice versa. |
You should try living in Alberta, my home province. But then, I get along with that sort of person much more readily than a disinterested, decaf-latte-and-lemon-almond-biscotti urbanite, because though they may not score highly on any list of 'enlightenment' qualifiers, they are at least reasonably genuine people who can, typically, be counted on to do the right thing when it's called for.
So don't knock us good ol' boys too hard...we'll be the ones saving your butt when you're trapped in a burning building, after all.
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| Out of curiosity, how long do you think it would take if Bush stayed in office indefinitely and got his way until the situation in Iraq was acceptable to you, given that it has been four years already? |
I think that would depend on methodology. Your 30 years bet might be accurate if all the U.S. continues to do is allow its military to serve as a glorified police force with remarkably -- some might say 'unreasonably' -- constrained rules of engagement. Given a wider and more 'military' set of operational parameters, they might be able to rebuild the nation in 5 years. I'm speaking off the cuff here, and I'm not going to be so delusional as to think I can project with any concrete certainty how long it might take.
But here's some speculation I do care to stand by: how long did it take the U.S. to rebuild and modernize Japan after they pummeled that nation into submission at the end of World War 2? Iraq will take longer than that, because Iraqi culture, quite frankly, has farther to go than Japanese culture did in order to adopt a democratic government and social structure.
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| Maintaining a large troop presence in Iraq until things are fixed is not going to happen. Their presence is what perpetuates the insurgency. |
Well, yes and no. Their presence deflects the Sunni/Shia hatred that would otherwise fuel a Darfur-scale bloodbath in the Sunni Triangle. And until that animosity can be dealt with, there will be problems. That's why the U.S. has made it its priority to strengthen the Iraqi police and military, and to keep strengthening them, so that they are able to actively police warring sides.
That's the reality on the ground. And it's better to maintain a larger troop presence at the moment, in order to build up the Iraqi government's strength and ability to deal with that violence, rather than cut and run prematurely.
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| Military operations will not break that cycle....Will it happen under another one? We'll see. If not, what then? We'll see. |
What needs to happen to ultimately break the cycle of violence in that region won't ever happen, because such an event is not possible within the framework of the Islamic faith (that is, a Reformation-type event). Any solution other than that will be, at best, a patch, a band-aid.
But does that mean that the patch shouldn't be applied?
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| You're right, the plan to keep all of those Iraqi born terrorists at bay worked. When do we move on to the rest of them? |
Not just Iraqi-born terrorists. Goodness me, the majority of the insurgents in Iraq are not Iraqi by birth at all...they are imported from the Sudan, from Iran, and from other places in the region.
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| Seriously, I wouldn't argue for a second that Iraq isn't a reason why we may not have had more attempted attacks on US soil...Iraq isn't solving the al Qaeda problem, it's making it worse. |
The alternatives, however, will make things even worse.
I'm not struggling under any delusions here: I know that a continued military commitment in Iraq is, at best, a case of a least worst solution. But as bad as it is, it's still better than not committing troops to the region until such time as the Iraqi government can handle its opponents on its own.
You're right...terrorists will find other targets in the absence of this honeypot...but in the meantime, that honeypot is serving quite well to bring a large number of them out of the woodwork, where they can be dealt with by a superior force. Better that aspiring jihadis spend their lives in battle with hardened troops than spend their time torching Citroens in a Paris ghetto, n'est ce pas?
Can I propose a better solution? I wish I could, but a huge part of this problem began over thirteen hundred years ago, and there's very little anyone can do about that now.
WtFD
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| Thread: Anyone at all paying attention to... |
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I know but I wanted to turn it into one. 
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Eh, fair enough. It has at least picked up the tempo at which posts are being made to this thread.
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| If anything that was one item on a long list of reasons...and is regarded as the basis for the formation of al Qaeda and bin Laden's hostility towards the US. |
Well, that and the fall of al-Andalus back in the...what was it?...13th century? The other thing, though, that the Balkans mishap managed to achieve was to radicalize a sizeable chunk of a generation of Muslims world-wide; the sufferings of people in one part of the ummah become the casus belli of the rest of it.
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| I was speaking of a Bush/Clinton comparison alone. |
I wasn't.
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| His establishment of the largest scale whiskey distillery at the time quelled any protest of his moves towards unpopular independence. He totally snookered the people into not caring long enough to make his takeover. |
I was speaking more to the current trend of anti-Americanism and America-bashing that seems to infect...well...a lot of different governments and media outlets, including many in my own home nation of Canada. It would have been better, to hear them pour out vitriol on our neighbours south of the border, had the U.S. never been founded, or won its independence.
And that damnable George Washington is to blame!
/facetious
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| That's not the basis of my belief...The question is how to make the best of it given the conditions and the cost it takes to make it better. |
That doesn't change the fact that at present, if the U.S. were to withdraw, the bloodshed that would ensue would make the current violence seem far more palatable, even temperate.
The calculus of maintaining the "break it, fix it" mentality is complicated, primarily because it is predicated not merely on the metric of how many American soldiers are being killed, but on how their sacrifice holds other, more devastating and terrible things at bay. I have no particular desire to hear, in a headline, that another American soldier has been killed...but at the same time, I have even less desire to read about a city full of Sunni Muslims being slaughtered at the hands of Shia butchers.
In other words, I have no desire that soldiers die in Iraq...but I prefer that tragic reality to the possibility that the Sunni Triangle could become a second Darfur.
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| To continue the analogy, the ceramic mug is way beyond fixing...increasing effort will result in diminishing returns. |
That may be true, but if you will permit me to complete the analogy then...withdrawing prematurely from Iraq would be the equivalent of saying "it'll never get fixed right anyhow" and dropping the mug on the floor again, letting it break and damn the consequences.
And that is the worst possible solution. Which is why I refuse to advocate for it, and why I question why any sane person could advocate for it.
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| You included assumptions in your questions that aren't valid. But I'll answer anyway. |
What assumptions might those be?
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| I guess we'll see. It's not the first time I've been told that. |
It's easy to dismiss anything as just one more instance of somebody 'crying wolf'. And that works well...until it's true.
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If they left right now, it would be a disaster. If they left 30 years from now, things would be better. Am I ok with either? No.
Troops won't leave after stability has been restored in Iraq because it won't while a large troop presence is there. Their presence is too tempting a target for extremists to pass up. Their presence is also the fuel that keeps the extremists reinforced with a practically limitless supply of manpower. |
Well, that and Iran.
But remember...the animosity that the insurgents are directing toward the American soldiers is simply an animosity that is being displaced from being directed at the insurgents' fellow Muslims in the same region. Sunni/Shia strife is rampant in the region, and was only held in check by Saddam's strongman approach (and even then, he tended to exacerbate things, given that he put the minority Sunni into a position of power which was then abundantly abused). Factor in the hatred of both sides for the Kurdish people, and you have all the recipe you need for an explosive situation.
A strong central government in Iraq, backed up by an effective police force and an efficient military, can hold those forces in check, if such a government can be built. And if that takes 30 years for the Americans to achieve, then it takes 30 years. As hard as it might be, it is still preferable to the strong possibility of a Sunni/Shia/Kurd orgy of mutual slaughter.
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| I'm not speaking for others, but I don't feel my attitude is defeatist. |
Haven't you been saying there's "no way" that the U.S. mission in Iraq can succeed? Is that not, by definition, 'defeatist'?
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| Everyone's biased. Don't tell me you really believe a former soldier with no journalistic training, who was embedded with other soldiers, has absolutely no bias. |
I think he has far less bias than, say, an reporter who is ideologically opposed to anything involving Republicans, the U.S. military, or George W. Bush personally (of which there are several). Put another way, I'll trust Michael Yon way more readily than I'll trust Dan Rather.
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| I believe he's motivated to write about the positive things that are coming about due to the troops' efforts in Iraq. And that's great to see positive things that are happening at a local level. I just feel the forecast for the big picture is glum. |
But you're not a defeatist.
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| Who else do you follow? |
Teh Pope.
Also, sorry...I've abridged my quotations of your post, because I kept hitting the character limit for a single posting. People can always scroll up if they wanna read the full text.
WtFD
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| Thread: Anyone at all paying attention to... |
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| Originally posted by KultanThat's not an argument. That's {Insert most recent Democratic president I don't like here} |
It wasn't my intent to make an argument, although I could have easily said Nixon or ol' Lyndon Baker...one goes with the first name that pops into one's head. I find a little facetiousness always takes the edge off of an outbreak of BDS.
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| What was the pivotal event during which Clinton failed miserably, alienated the rest of the globe, threw the nation into a war it didn't want by lying to it, exasperated several fold the problem he ineptly tried to solve, destroyed any faith the majority of Americans had in him, and on and on? |
The way he messed up handling the Balkans, for one. And the illegal bombing of that...was it a fertilizer plant?...in the Sudan for another.
I'll concede the point that Bush has done a lot that hasn't enamoured the West to the Arabic world, but equally so, it must be noted that the terrorists who struck on 9/11 were probably not acting in response to the Bush presidency's actions, but were in fact -- given the length of time now known to have been involved in planning the attacks on the WTC -- taking revenge on America for the slaughter of Muslims in the Balkans.
In fact, this has been said more than a few times in statements by al-Qaeda.
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| Anyone can come up with a hundred reasons to dislike either Clinton or Bush. My opinion is that if you weighted them by severity, Bush would come out on top by a long stretch. |
I don't know about that so much; I think Nixon would take the cake, although I think LB Johnson could be on the list as well.
Of course, if we get down to the root of it, most people would probably agree that George Washington was the worst president the U.S. ever had...after all, he helped establish the country as an entity independent of Britain.
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| That may be easy for a non-US citizen to say. I don't see any losses as negligible for a war that should never have happened. I see each one as a tragedy. I would think you would agree given that you admittedly could never support the war due to your religious convictions. |
I agree that deaths are a tragedy; did I say they were not? But let us face reality for a moment: our world is not perfect, and tragedy is sometimes a fact of life. Of course it's sad that soldiers are killed, but mere sorrow is not a sufficient grounds upon which to base a belief that the U.S. should immediately, or prematurely, divest itself of its commitment to the Iraqi people.
Or, to put it another way...leave the emotionalism out of it. Find other reasons to oppose the war (for example, moral grounds, or perhaps 'just war' doctrine). But remember...it's easy enough to oppose the initial Iraqi invasion, back in 2003, on those grounds...opposing the continued U.S. mission in Iraq on the same grounds gets somewhat more difficult. "You break it, you bought it" isn't just a pottery-shop cashier slogan; it's also a moral obligation that the U.S. now has to the nation it has destabilized.
And that's why I ask the two questions which you dodged (shame).
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| It's becoming harder to compare the current Iraq "war" with other American conflicts. This is basically just a case of troops patrolling around and either getting shot or blown up instead of engaging hostiles and gaining ground. The military can't even come up with a measure of progress as there is so little intelligence on the status of the opposition. |
I suggest you read more reports from embeds and less from the MSM. Just a thought, but it might change your viewpoint a bit on that. Seriously...look up Michael Yon.
It is true that a lot of what the U.S. is doing could be termed as policing, but a lot more of what they are doing can also be described as soldiering. What is more, given that I'm willing to trust the words of journalists embedded with units in Iraq somewhat more than I'm willing to trust the words of reporters back in the U.S., this latest 'troop surge' seems to be having some tangible results in several hot zones within Iraq. The insurgency is beginning to peter out in some regions.
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1) What will happen if the U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq prior to stability being restored in the region?
2) Are you okay with that?
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You're assuming stability can be restored while US troops are there. I'm starting to see the two as being mutually exclusive more and more. |
Was that what I asked? No, it was not.
I really don't see where people get this defeatist attitude from...well, besides the MSM, but I refuse to count them. I prefer to get my news from slightly...er...'closer to the front' sources, such as the various embedded journalists and bloggers who are currently in Iraq, attached to Marine units, following them around and reporting on life in Iraq directly. Michael Yon, whom I have mentioned repeatedly, is probably the foremost example of such an embed, though not the only one.
And the beauty of the current crop of embeds is that most of them don't labour under any particular political agenda...they're just there to tell it like it is, relate events as and how they happen. And that's important...and what's more important is that the reality they describe utterly fails to conform to the doom-and-gloom one sees on the front pages of newspapers over here.
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| If this is the case I would love to see the administration's optimism based on it. Bush's recent statement that violence and bloodshed are going to escalate in coming months does not mean the insurgents are losing ground to me. His thoughts on what the ongoing troop surge will accomplish basically amounts to, "either we'll win or we won't." Again, that doesn't signal to me that he's confident that troops staying ultimately leads to a stable Iraq. |
That may be...but the troops leaving will ensure a three-way Sunni/Shia/Kurd bloodbath.
To be fair, I think the president may be right that the violence will escalate in the short term...he sent his reinforcements in, and Iran will recruit and fund more insurgents as well. But the longer-term prospects, assuming Pelosi et. al. are unable to extract American troops from Iraq prematurely, are better.
Let's face it...no standing force in the world can hope to beat the U.S. Army on the battlefield. The U.S. knows this...and so do the insurgents. The way you beat the U.S. Army, now as surely as in Vietnam, is to cripple support for the mission at home.
And the insurgents know this, because the Iranians know this. They know that if they fill the Western newspapers and television screens with scenes of horror, the people of the West will recoil and demand that the U.S. withdraw from the region. But that's precisely the opposite reaction we in the West should be taking.
A bit less than a century ago, a certain battle was fought at Vimy Ridge. In the span of a day or two, 10,500 soldiers were either killed or wounded...and the war was far from over at that point. But did the Canadians and the British withdraw from the conflict in Europe because of those devastating losses? Not that I seem to recall. And the parallel is a decent one, really, because the First World War was a war that was started over the stupidest of reasons.
But as stupid as the basis may be, once one has committed one's self to war, one should commit one's self to seeing it through to the end. This is especially true against groups like the insurgency, like Iran, and like al-Qaeda, because any withdrawal will be seen as a sign of weakness, as assuredly as the American unwillingness to invest ground troops in the Balkan intervention was seen as weakness.
And the Arabs have a saying to describe the attutide that the above-mentioned groups will take toward the U.S. if it demonstrates what in their eyes is weakness: "a falling camel attracts many knives."
One cannot help but notice that since the onset of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, no terrorist incidents have been perpetrated on American soil, despite the repeated promises of such actions by major terrorist groups. One wonders how that reality might shift were the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq?
WtFD
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| Thread: Anyone at all paying attention to... |
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Originally posted by aubergine
No offense? Calling Bush a retard is offensive to retarded people. |
This must be what they call 'rational discourse'.
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| I don't think America has had a worse President at a more crucial time in history. |
Bill Clinton.
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| It's interesting that you talk about pulling out/staying the course in Afghanistan instead of Iraq (wtf indeed) but what seems to be the current trend in "conservative" seems to be using a bit of bullshit to send people to their own pointless deaths. Through the Iraq war, Bush has succeeded in killing more Americans than 9/11. |
It's a war...what did you expect?
I don't concern myself with Iraq as much as I do with Afghanistan because I'm not an American, and we Canucks don't have any real military commitment in Iraq at present. We do in Afghanistan, though. So forgive me if I don't really comment on Iraq, but in plain point of fact it doesn't concern me nearly as directly as Afghanistan does.
Although while we're on the subject of Iraq, it should be noted that although there have been casualties, those casualties have been exceptionally low. Compared to any other conflict of similar duration and intensity, the losses that the Americans have sustained in Iraq have been negligible.
And also, please use actual arguments instead of specious ones: yes, more Americans have died in Iraq than in 9/11...but there's a difference. The people who died in Iraq volunteered to serve their country (America doesn't have a draft anymore, remember?), and died in the line of duty. The people murdered on 9/11 didn't volunteer to be in the path of an oncoming airliner.
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| The only smart thing I've ever heard him say was his recent speech regarding why he vetoed the bill for a phased withdrawal. The question is not about pulling out or staying the course, it's still and forever will be about going in in the first place. There is no solution to what they have done. Either a whole lot more people will die, or a whole lot more people will die. It's nice that they killed Saddam, just a shame that they had to destablise an entire region, bring about a civil war, reveal the character of America's political leaders, stain the reputation of their armed forces though the absolute shambles of Abu Grahib and ensure a fresh and unquenchable spring of people excited about fighting the US to the death. |
Two questions:
1) What will happen if the U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq prior to stability being restored in the region?
2) Are you okay with that?
The U.S. military is exceptionally good at waging an offensive war, and nobody can stand up to them on a modern battlefield. Unfortunately, the U.S. military is not particularly well-suited to policing operations, which they are now embroiled in.
Still, they seem to be getting things done. Do you read many embedded journalists? You ought to...folks like Michael Yon, for example. Despite what the mainstream media tends to portray the conflict as, progress is being made in Iraq, and the insurgents are losing men and losing ground. The Iraqi government is getting stronger, its military growing more capable. They're not at the stage yet where the U.S. could withdraw and not plunge the country back into chaos...but that day is getting closer.
Yes, some American soldiers did some terrible things...and most of them have now been punished for it, because neither the American military nor the American government sanctioned the brutality and humiliation that were inflicted on the prisoners and people that were victimized. Every army has members that will do horrible things; that's an unavoidable fact of life, as sure as it is in civilian society. But the character of the army is not defined by the aberrant actions of a few unhinged members of it.
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| That anyone can examine the US's policy in recent years and label it something as polite as "conservative" beggars reason. Their policy has been radical - radically stupid. |
I didn't agree with the invasion of Iraq, admittedly...as a Catholic, and from within the framework of Catholic teaching, there was no way I could support it. Equally, though, within that same framework, there is now no way I can support a premature withdrawal from Iraq. The U.S. broke it, and they're morally obligated to fix it before they just pull out.
Seriously consider and answer the two questions I posited above, because they are key. If the U.S. withdraws from Iraq too prematurely, that nation will degenerate into civil war. And if you thought the bodycount was bad now, it would be even worse if that were to happen.
WtFD
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| Thread: Anyone at all paying attention to... |
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Originally posted by -Direhaggis-
Well I meant no offense. As I understand it, sentiment toward the standing American president reaches down somewhere to mole people status in most of the industrialized world. So I was mostly being serious in asking people not to laugh, considering. |
His current approval rate seems to be hovering between 30% and 35%, which is not great, but it hardly abysmal either.
For the record, I don't particularly count myself satisfied with the guy (to the extent that my saying so means anything; I'm not a citizen of the U.S.). Stacking Bush against the slate of candidates currently tossing their names in for the presidency, though, I'm not sure I could point to someone I would prefer be in the Oval Office.
Again, for all the $0.02 that my saying so is worth.
WtFD
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| Thread: Anyone at all paying attention to... |
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| quote: |
Originally posted by -Direhaggis-
Thankfully, American presidents are only allowed to serve a maximum of two 4 year terms. So Bush can never run again as president. Not that he would have a snowball's chance in hell of winning, but still. |
Technically, a president could wind up serving almost 12 years in office, provided that he ascended to office from the Vice Presidency shortly after another President a) was elected and b) died. But that's a technicality.
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| I've found it continually bizarre how moderate to liberal all the candidates are, Democrat and Republican, when it comes to social issues they have or (up until recently) had. There's usually an overwhelming push to have some far right conservative be the Republican frontrunner in recent years. I suppose that Bush has twisted around what "conservative" means and a lot of American voters seem turned off to candidates that are intelletually or politically like him. |
There are two major theories of political dynamics, I guess you might be able to call it, that seem to predominate in Western elections (especially in North America, but in other places as well to a certain degree). Essentially, they are mirror images of each other, but I'll approach it from the conservative angle because a) I am one and b) it works as well as the opposite approach.
A conservative candidate, when forming his/her campaign, has essentially two options when dealing with responses to the policies of his/her liberal opponent. S/he can either a) present a more conservative policy, and attempt to draw his/her opponent's policy further rightware, or b) allow his/her policy to be drawn further leftward by said opponent's own policy stance.
Historically, conservatives have done well when they opt for choice ( a ), and one can cite various examples, including Dame Maggie and Ronald Reagan, Bush to a lesser degree, and Canada's Stephen Harper to an even lesser degree than that.
(I just realized that's a loaded list of names, but I trust that everyone here is mature enough not to flame or make casual and inaccurate generalizations)
And while it's true that the slate of candidates on both sides of the current American presidential race tend towards the moderate view in general, on specific issues that doesn't hold up. Hillary Clinton is a decent example of trend ( b ) from above -- despite running on the Democrat ticket, she's been (at best) ambivalent on the issue of the Iraq War. Mitt Romney is also a decent example of ( b ) -- despite running on the Republican ticket, he has come down strongly against missile defense.
To be fair, though, there are some candidates that more classically fit the mold one would expect from their choice of party; Barack Obama doesn't have anything particularly right-wing in his campaign, and by most accounts is running on the usual pantheon of left-wing issues (nothing wrong with that). Conversely, Fred Thompson hasn't -- I don't think -- thrown his name in the hat for the presidency just yet, but if he does he can be expected to run a fairly solidly right-wing platform (again, nothing wrong with that). From the amount he's been in the news lately, I'd expect Thompson to be announcing his candidacy fairly soon, but for now it's a waiting game.
I am a little disappointed with the general atmosphere of moderation on display in most of the candidates, though, because really it comes down to a choice between a right-of-left-of-right-of-left set of platforms and a left-of-right-of-left-of-right set of platforms...and is that really a healthy, thriving political debate? Doesn't seem like it to me.
I've never understood the modern disdain for right-wing politicians who garner popular support from time to time; I'd rather see a well-defined left/right battle at the poll than a battle between two candidates of, say, left and lefter persuasion. I'd rather see a election that pits for example, the "we should pull out of Afghanistan" viewpoint against the "we should stay the course" viewpoint rather than an election that pits the "we should pull out of Afghanistan in 12 months time" viewpoint against the "same but 18 months" viewpoint.
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| (Yes, I said intellectually. Don't laugh too hard) |
I didn't laugh at all, except slightly at the flippancy of this remark.
WttFD
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| Thread: Anyone at all paying attention to... |
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| quote: |
Originally posted by -Direhaggis-
...The 2008 presidential election contenders for the United States?
It's a given nowadays that there are perpetual news stories about upcoming elections--I think this one especially given how divisive the current administration has been for segments of the states.
Actually that brings to mind a question for those outside of the U.S. : how close to an election does the country have to get for continual coverage of the candidates to occur? Is it usually after they've decided to run? Months before they officially decide but are looking as if they might? |
I think it depends on a number of factors, actually. Some candidates seem to get a lot of coverage, from the moment there is even a hint of speculation that they might be considering an electoral run (i.e. Hillary Clinton, Fred Thompson, Barack Obama...). Other candidates merit hardly any coverage even after they have spend months campaigning (Mitt Romney).
I'm following it with mild interest, and have my opinions not about which candidate would be good in the office -- because currently, I am unimpressed with pretty much the entire slate of individuals, Republican or Democrat -- although I have a short list of people I'd prefer NOT to win.
But then, there's only so much I can legitimately say about such things, because I am not a citizen of the U.S., and I do not live there. As such, I will not be voting for the next president.
WtFD
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| Thread: U4 Avatarship - questions? |
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Originally posted by Sir Iceblade
Hey, I can't find the third key in Destard. I can't get into the stairway that leads to the leve 3 or the stairway that leads to the excluded area on level 2.
PS is there somewhere that these kinds of questions have been asked before? |
AFAIK, there's no walkthrough for Zonker's remake of U4. That said, Avatarship is a Neverwinter Nights module, and unless you're playing it on Mac you should have access to the Aurora Toolkit (if you are on Mac, Google for "neveredit", but be sure to make a backup of the Avatarship mod before you try to use that app).
A quick glance through the level maps for Destard might turn you in the right direction. That's just a guess, but it might work...
WtFD
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| Thread: UO Emulators |
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Originally posted by Kultan
Do any of you play on a UO emulator shard? I played on Shadowcove for a while last year. It's a nice, friendly shard, but just not Ultima related. I'm wondering if there are any good ones out there run by Ultima fans where the Ultima canon is used. |
There's Ultima Legacy, which...well, it's not "canonical" in the sense that you're playing online versions of previous Ultima titles (although those do exist for some Ultima games), but it's run by fans and they try to keep the storyline of the game faithful to Ultima's traditions.
WtFD
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| Thread: The existence of all things explained at last. |
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| If you consider that the account of Creation in Genesis is actually rather remarkable, and it hasn't really been so long that science has shown the theory to be incorrect. Logic could have disproven it much sooner, but I expect that before the protective distance of the Internet most anti-creationist speakers probably had short lifespans. |
Doubtful. There's not a lengthy historical record that I can recall regarding the persecution of anti-Creationists...and I've studied much of the history and theology behind this particular debate.
Of course, the whole "science vs. religion" debate isn't really a debate at all as much as it is two sides (both of which are wrong in some way) talking past each other whilst a third group with a better handle on the truth sits unnoticed in the middle.
If you need an example of this, read some of the encyclicals of Pope John Paul II that deal with the nature of the relationship between science and religion.
You are right that Genesis is rather remarkable, and equally right that it is incorrect...at least when taken literally. This is especially true since the creation accounts in Genesis were never meant to be taken literally -- they're a poetic accommodation by the Spirit to the uneducated audience to which the teachings were first addressed. Modern, learned folk ought not to read the passages as being a literal history of creation, but as a teaching tool that uses imagery and metaphor to communicate a deeper truth behind the rote text.
Francis Bacon, two books, and all that*.
I don't have much else to add to this otherwise stimulating discussion, but I wanted to make a commentary about the last page and the discourse that briefly touched on the existence of God.
It's always precarious to attempt to apply human understandings of existence to God, for the simple reason that human understanding of existence is necessarily limited by our own experience of existence; it is finite.
Existence, as we understand it, is simply a rather large container category. Everything that does exist, according to whichever criteria we happen to acknowledge as being valid proof(s) of the existence of something, is placed into this category, and from there is sub-categorized accordingly based on whichever other criteria we happen to prefer (living/non-living, solid/liquid/gas/plasma, etc.).
A first question we might ask, when considering whether God "exists", is whether our notional understanding of "existence" is sufficient to describe the subject being considered. I would submit, here and now, that it is not.
Existence, as we have seen in this discussion, can be regarded subjectively even when it is essentially an objective thing. Five oranges in a line are still five oranges, but someone who insists on adopting a depthless perspective on the oranges in profile will indeed only regard one orange. To that person, then, only one orange seems to exist, even though five oranges do in fact exist.
I'm reminded of the Book of Exodus when discussions like this arise concerning, even indirectly, the "existence" of God, because the question is indirectly dealt with in Moses' first conversation with God. Specifically, Moses at one point asks God's name, so that he might have a name to give to the people of Israel as he attempts to free them from slavery. God's reply translates in English to "I am", and this rather cumbersome and yet succinct statement reveals quite well the inadequacy of describing God's being as a state of "existence".
Moses is essentially attempting, in the relevant passage, to classify God according to a category that he himself can use in understanding that God "exists" -- he wants a name. Names are powerful things, as I am sure we all know, and classically it is held that to know a name of a thing is to have power over that thing, or at least a stake in its state of being.
God doesn't refuse to answer the question, but neither does He choose to answer it in the way Moses is hoping and expecting. God instead makes a self-referential statement -- I am -- that both answers Moses' spoken question and refutes his unspoken desire. God is not going to be shoehorned into Moses' categorical definition of "existent", but is not going to leave him empty-handed either.
The statement "I am" is significant in that God explicitly defines His state in relation to the rest of Creation, the rest of things that "exist": other things exist...God is. That which exists -- existence itself -- is a subset of God's transcendent reality, and engaging in discussion of whether or not God "exists" according to human categories is essentially pointless, because those categories are insufficient -- being of human origin -- to describe the subject being discussed.
Picture how hard it would be to use a single 8-bit register to reference the highest byte of memory in 4 GB of RAM. That's a fraction of how difficult it would be to describe God's state of being using any empirical or philosophical category of "existence".
The closest we come to understanding God to "exist" is when we look at the Gospels and the life of Christ. Christ being God (sorry, Thepal), He presented unto humanity the clearest picture of God's being. But even there we do not see the whole picture -- St. Paul notes rather poignantly in his letter to the Philipians that we understand this mystery only in part, and see only in part, as through a mirror, darkly. This again is because of our finiteness, our human limits, limits which necessarily must apply to our ability to understand God's state of being through the categories of "existence" that we possess to use. As an 8-bit register lacks the necessary scale with which to describe 4 GB worth of byte-length memory locations, so too do we lack in our finite human capacity for understanding the necessary scale to describe those things which transcend and fully encompass as a mere subset all that we can in fact perceive to "exist".
We can understand, for example, that Christ existed -- this is reasonably well-attested, more so than some historical figures. We can perhaps accept, even if we are not necessarily Christian, that the person who was Christ may have done some, most, or all of the things attributed to him. We can perhaps even accept, even if we are not Christian, that whoever this Christ person was, he met his end in the not atypical manner of many a prisoner of the Romans in that day and age -- crucifixion. But we cannot fully comprehend, using categories of "existence", the possibility of a man fully human and yet fully God, like us in all things but sin. And we will never be able to fully comprehend that, because it is a thing beyond the human ability to comprehend using our finite categories and empiricism.
There are other reasons as well, but for this reason especially there will always be non-Christians in the world, because not everyone can accept something which all human categorizations and measurements cannot even strive to describe in part.
That's not to knock any of those categories, or to say that empiricism is worthless, mind you. Indeed, our ability to measure and classify is invaluable as we attempt to gain further understanding of our world, our Universe, and how it is that we exist. But we will never have all the answers regarding even our own existence, so how do we suppose that any of our methods even approach being adequate in describing any aspect of God's being?
A shoe "exists". This planet "exists". The Universe *exists*. God is.
When we envision God, it is pointless -- bordering on foolish -- to do so in a manner that frames His being in the limited categories by which humanity defines what "exists", because God's being is not one of mere existence. Eternity and existence are, in a certain sense, mutually exclusive concepts, for while things that exist have a finite duration and some manner of origin, things that are eternal never were not. They simply were, are, and will continue to be, even as the rest of this fragile moment in time in which we exist originates, propagates, and terminates.
WtFD
* if you don't know what I mean by "two books", ask and I shall attempt to explain.
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