We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development. Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. Ronald Reagan
Let the Iraq people taste freedom, give it time. When they taste it, they will not let it go - they are human beings and will ultimately act accordingly. Let them taste it...
This thing is not going to just happen over-night. Weird though....I do agree with Ted on some issues. Most...I just laugh at
JSracing, That sound you hear is my point flying right over your head. I don't agree with Red on everything but I do about this point. And I am far from being a liberal (them's fightin' words where I come from :grin: ). I voted for Bush, but just because I was against the war in Iraq doesn't mean I think we should sit idly by and do nothing. The whole war was supposed to be on terrorism, right? Well, before we invaded them, there were no 9/11 terrorists in Iraq. Did Iraq have terrorist camps? Sure. But so do Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan etc. etc. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, so there's no point in invading them. I just believe there were other countries more dangerous to us at the time then Iraq. Wouldn't it have been better to do the things in Afghanistan that your doing in Iraq? Fix their infrastructure and their schools. I know we're already doing that there, but not with the same focus and the same budget as with what's going on in Iraq. Once you have a stable democracy (stable being the key word) there, then pursue the rest of your agenda without spreading your military too thin. Like Red said - and I have no idea why some of you can't understand this - I am not anti-war. I am anti-stupid war. It would have been better had we focused our troop build up and built a STABLE democracy in Afghanistan. It would've served the exact same purpose of what's being attempted in Iraq and would've put us on the front line of where Al-qaeda's main leadership was hiding. That said, there's no way we can leave Iraq now until what we've started is finished. I just don't think it should have ever been started there to begin with. I've had this debate with Sourdoughman in the past and we ended up saying that we agreed with the overall goal in the war, we just disagreed on how to get there. I think the same probably holds true with you and I as well. :911: :usaflagwa :911:
I didn't respond because your "evidence" is weak and contradictory and it was obviously so. But if you insist... You keep posting these same old links like they were some kind of holy grail. Look, Sourdough, there is a difference between camps run by the insurgents fighting our troops in Iraq and terrorist camps that existed in Iraq before the war. That nixes two of the links. The insurgents didn't exist before we went there. And the links concerning terrorist camps that did exist before the war are best countered by excepts from one of your own links from the Council on Foreign Relations (did you read more than the title "Iraqi Ties to Terrorism"?). Saddam supported Palestinians against the Israelis and Kurdish rebels against Turkey. He did not host Al Qaida in the fight against Americans. Iraq wasn't even among the top terrorist supporters. Read this one again, Sourdough. Americans supported going to war because we were told that Saddam had nuclear/biological weapons and poison gas and that he was going to arm al-qaida with them. This country would not have supported the war just because Saddam was an enemy of Turkey, Iran, and Israel. He had been so for decades and nothing had changed. It has never in our interests to be the world's policeman. Israel and Turkey receive large amounts of US military aid so that they can deal with their own problems and they actually prefer to. Iran is an implacable American enemy that is more dangerous than Iraq and we actually encouraged Saddam to wage war against them. I can only laugh at your link that says Putin warned the US about Saddam. So what? The guy was trying to get Bush to flip on his previous condemnation of the Russian war on Chechnya by supporting Bush's war with Iraq. And it worked, too. Bush never criticised the Chechnya War again. You rant about America not needing the UN's counsel but cite the President of freakin' Russia to support your argument. Amazing.
Whats Amazing to me is that you said before that their were no terrorists camps in Iraq, none! Now you flip flop and say there was. Thats fine because i'm glad this argument is over. I think its stupid for you guys to keep insisting we shouldn't be there because guess what, whether you or I like it or not we are there. I'm not too crazy about us being there to tell you the truth but I will support the war in Iraq and the troops. Like I said earlier in my post, I wish I could bring back Truman but I can't. George W Bush is the best we can do for now and I will support him, its not like the Democrats have anyone thats any better. You want to know the real reason terrorism has happened. We DID NOTHING and let it grow from the 70's on. We even paraded Yasser Arafat and made him a hero in America and at the UN with a pistol on his side. America did nothing, republican and democrats alike thinking the oceans would keep us far away from any terrorist attacks. I still say we are paying for the 90's for only lobbing a few missiles but we should have stopped terrorism before it really got started. Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush 41, Clinton did NOTHING
Flip flopper? C'mon man. I admit that at first I didn't believe there were camps in Iraq, but you convinced me that there was. I'm not a flip flopper. I LEARNED something. That's not flip flopping is it? What I'm still not convinced of is that these camps posed so much of a threat that we had to invade the whole country. I like Red's point that there is a difference between camps run by the insurgents fighting our troops in Iraq and terrorist camps that existed in Iraq before the war. The insurgents didn't exist before we went there. He's right. Regardless, what's done is done and it's a tired argument. Nothing I say will make you change your mind and vice versa. Couldn't agree more with your assessment that of us doing nothing from the 70's on could prevent the situation we're in now. However, at the time, the threat from the Soviet Union, their nukes, and communism was much bigger priority and rightly so.
fanatic, that was directed at Red, it had nothing to do with you! I don't know how much of a threat the camps were either but the point is we are there now and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Someone said our military would be spread to then if I were in charge. How would you know how and when I would take care of things? A bunch of mind readers around here including Red, he can read Putins mind! fanatic, Red had said the terrorist camps never existed on another thread.
Well, now you're making more sense. We surely didn't do enough when the terrorists were only attacking overseas. But the previous administrations didn't do NOTHING, by a long shot. Each of them gradually stepped up response as the terrorists became bolder. Only 9/11 gave us the national determination to go after them in Afghanistan where their bases were. Nixon and Ford applied sanctions to Palestinians after the Munich Olympic massacre. Carter tried to remove the terrorists support by making allies of Jordan and Egypt and to remove their reasons for violence by making the Camp David accords happen between Israel and Palestine. Reagan sent the Marines in to Lebanon to counter Hezbollah terrorists. He also sent Navy fighters to intercept the Achille Lauro hijackers and force them to land in Italy where they were captured. Bush 41 was preoccupied with the Gulf War and during his tenure the terrorist actions against US interests were commited by "Red Army" factions in Italy and the Phillipines, not Islamic radicals. After the first WTC bombings, Clinton got serious about Islamic terrorists. He stepped up covert intelligence activities, established a terrorist task force and a special "bin Ladin" unit in the CIA, put a bounty on bin ladens head, and tried to kill him twice with missile strikes (hundreds, not "a few"). He kept military pressure on Saddam his entire tenure including sanctions and bomb/missile strikes which successfully eliminated his WMDs. Most importantly Clinton stopped the Millenium Bombing plot which was on a 9//11 scale of international terror. He also warned the incoming Bush 43 that osama bin ladin was the worst threat facing America. Unfortunately, according to the offical 9/11 report, no action was taken by Bush 43 to address the bin ladin situation until a meeting was held on September 9, 2001 -- two days before the 9/11 atrocities spurred everybody to action. We could have done more for damn sure. But actions were taken and have steadily increased in intensity. Now, we have to get serious about Pakistan, because that is where the enemy hides.
