The Almighty Bob: Jesse? North Korea’s an NNPT signatory.
Well, it did withdraw from the treaty in 2003, although of course Iran could do the same. Again, I’m not personally advocating military intervention if Iran starts developing nuclear bombs, and I’m not even saying that other countries would definitely try to intervene, but my impression is that a number of countries would be more worried about Iran getting nuclear weapons then North Korea (doesn’t Iran have more ambitions for the region than insular North Korea? Do you disagree that Israel at least would probably try to do something to stop it? And what about Sarkozy?)
jeebus
Are you [slide2112] willing to have soldiers’ bodies coming home from Baghdad in 2038?
I think it’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t care how many soldiers die in this war.
He probably doesn’t even care that THIS YEAR was the deadliest year in Iraq for American soldiers… so far.
All he cares about is that we keep on killing brown people, regardless of reason.
Not that he has anything against brown people, per se, but that he shares the same disturbing ideologies as those who are currently in power.
He cares not for others, but only for himself. Leave him be.
The Almighty Bob
North Korea played some downright devious games withdrawing from the NNPT.
Iran has dreams of regional dominance, yes; North Korea, on the other hand, actually launched a war of aggression on South Korea. It’s a matter of which dodgy b*stard you think is more likely to go mad and take on the US, really.
With Mossad’s rumoured efficiency and Israel’s complete ruthlessness, I would assume something would be done alright. I don’t know about Sarkozy, I hadn’t heard anything about him waving the hatchet at them.
I think by this stage you and I are just attempting to out-Devil’s Advocate each other, Jesse. 🙂
jeebus: Ah, let’s give slide the benefit of the doubt. It’s always better when there’s someone that if you are violently disagreeing with them, you know you’re in the right. 🙂
Slide appear to have run away since discovering we know facts, but hopefully they’ll be back.
(The mangling of the language produced when you don’t know someone’s gender is horrible; those last two sentences have taken two rewrites and are still barely readable. Oh, for French’s complete ignoring of it, or a decent neuter pronoun)
slide2112
The prevailing logic here seems to be that the bad things are Bush’s fault. Russia and China are not to be held accountable and their aiding the likes of such innocents as North Korean and Iran are only in response to Bush. Islamic fascists are not really a threat coz they can only kill a few thousand at a time, at least for right now. All was peachy before 2000.
As for #37:
WWII ended in our favor because the Nazis, AND their local sympathizers (perhaps you did not know we had to fight through the French in North Africa to get to the Germans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Torch )
and the general population where brutally beaten into complete submission. The Nazis had sympathizers through out Europe. Examples can be found that active resistance began only after the locales experienced the brutality of the Nazis personally, as Iragi’s have turned against Al Qaeda types in Iraq.
As Almighty Bob has corrected himself, the U.S. maintained a military presence in Europe, Japan, Korea, but why? As a force to maintain stability against the foreign and domestic threat of another brutal state philosophy called communism. The U.S. only gained favor by proving to be the most benign conquerors the worlds has ever known. ( insert a string of all the bad and terrible things the U.S. has done, well documented and open, my statement still stands).
If the occupation of Germany is considered to have ended in 1946 then the occupation of Irag ended in Dec 2005 with the election of a national assembly.
Unfortunately a presence will be maintained for years to come, as a force against Islamic brutality and the general tendency of the region to degrade to despotism.
I don’t like any of this. I wish the world were different. The ad remindes us it is not.
The Almighty Bob
1949, slide.
Also, may I make a point? During World War 2, ‘Allies’ was not synonymous with ‘the USA,’ as you’ve been assuming I mean. Nine divisions were to land on D-Day; four US, four British, and one Canadian. Just a reminder.
What, the Vichy? Yup, happened to know about them, yes.
A far more apt comparison with the resistances would have been the original “Al Qaeda types” in Iraq: most resistances were active within months of the Nazi invasion of their country, and were supported from Britain by the Special Operations Executive with supplies and training. If you don’t believe me, look at Milorg in Norway (look up the Norwegians’ destruction of the Vemork heavy water plant: without that Resistance, the Nazis may have had a nuke by war’s end).
In Yugoslavia there were pro-Nazi sympathisers in nowadays-Croatia, but Royalist and Communist resistance in the rest of the country. This would be how Tito got his start (he founded the Communist Partisans the day the Soviet Union was invaded).
What about Lawrence of Arabia? The men he led didn’t feel the Nazis’ brutality; even if they did, they were perfectly capable of melting into the desert and never being seen again.
Many of the Resistances were help by the SOE, who got them to lie low until the Allies needed them – witness the Belgian Resistance, who were mobilised to help the liberation, but managed to do little through the sheer speed of the Allied advance.
If the US was invaded, would you fight from day one, or wait until a Canadian soldier didn’t help your mother cross the street, or otherwise brutalised you? Resistances tend to mobilise fast. They only last if they have external help or the occupiers let grudges fester and persist in mistreating the locals (thus, under both points, the longevity of Fatah and other Palestinian “resistances”).
“The general tendency of the region to degrade to despotism”, eh? Despots in th Middle East…
The House Of Saud? Yup. Saddam Hussein? Yup. The Shah of Iran? Yup.
Yemen? Republic.Oman? Universal suffrage in 2003, though I don’t know how much use it is – the Sultan still rules. UAE? The Sheiks seem to treat their own people well, if not the guest workers. Jordan? Constitutional monarchy. Iran? Democratic until something annoys Khomeini, so call it a despotism.
Difference? Previous list are or were either installed by the US or are supported by them. Some “general trend,” eh?
slide2112
…the point being the Vichy French are an example of ‘local boys’, Iraqi resistance to Saddam and support for the Coalition (you like to pretend the 21 nations who contributed military forces in Iraq don’t count) were also active on day one, and the support has grown.
The ‘good war’ was not clean and clear, the outcome of the war was in doubt, the human cost for all was terrible, the aftermath lead to the Cold War, wasn’t that great…still it was the right thing to do…
Just as an example to your list in the context of history, given the choice between a Soviet Puppet state or the current Islamic regime, the rest of the world would be better off with the Shah, the people of Iran are still screwed.
the Almighty Bob
You do realise Madeleine Albright apologised for the USA’s intervention on the Shah’s behalf back in 2000, right?
And why would Iran have automatically become a Soviet puppet state? Who in the CIA had the crystal ball that predicted so many fledgling democracies during the Cold War would become Communist states if not overthrown immediately and a dictator installed? (If you don’t believe me, I can provide a list).
Of course the good war wasn’t good, it was a war! Read up on the firebombing of Dresden sometime. We get outraged about the Blitz, when the Allies committed the worst civilian bombing of the war (and then went on to compound the offence by dropping two nukes on civilians).
There were collaborationists and sympathisers in many countries, even Britain and (dare I say it) the US:
– GM apparently signed an agreement with the Nazi Consul General to defeat Roosevelt in the next election the agreement was discovered and printed in the Congressional Record by Rep. John Coffee, it seems (I can’t find anything other than secondary sources, so you’ll have to accept the weasel words, I’m afraid).
– Henry Ford donated money to the Nazi Party.
– According to Charles Higham in Trading With The Enemy, “on May 5, 1941, the U.S. Legation at Managua, Nicaragua, reproted that Standard Oil subsidaries were distributing Epoca, a publication filled with pro-Nazi propaganda. John J. Muccio, of the U.S. Consulate, made an investigation and found that Standard was distributing this inflammatory publication all over the world.” Standard also sold aircraft fuel to the Nazis, and actively discouraged American researchers from producing synthetic rubber (which only Germany could produce at the time, it seems).
The Coalition… yes. Thanks, slide. Here’s the Coalition in 2003, according to the White House. I’ll use extracts here, as the whole list is unwieldy.
Afghanistan – how many Afghani troops were part of the invasion force, slide? I can’t seem to find any numbers. Maybe they contributed from their vast wealth, instead?
Angola – in 2003 “80% of Angolans lacked access to basic medical care,” according to the UN.
Azerbaijan – Azerbaijin is between Iran and Russia. They need all the American favours they can get.
Colombia – can they really spare troops from the War On Drugs you’re paying them to wage?
Costa Rica – Costa Rica’s military was abolished in 1948, then declared unconstitutional. A valuable partner.
Dominican Republic – the Dominican Republic that has been invaded by the US in the last 50 years, and looks to Washington before taking a particularly deep breath?
El Salvador – an economy so dependant on the US, the US dollar is its official currency.
Eritrea – Eritrea. Number 156 out of 177 on the UN Human Development Index.
Ethiopia – aren’t they busy peacekeeping in Somalia these days?
Georgia – another country that needs favours from the US, in case Russia decides they’ve had enough and roll south.
Honduras – Honduras. The 2nd poorest country in Central America.
Kuwait – they owed you from last time?
Macedonia – Macedonia.
Marshall Islands -you’re kidding.
Micronesia – you’ve GOT to be kidding.
Mongolia – didn’t Bush stop off to say thanks for their 130 troops at some point?
Nicaragua – the 2nd poorest country in Latin America.
Palau – administered by the US until 1994. Another ex-client state.
Panama – another ex-client state.
Philippines – yet another ex-client state.
Rwanda – I know I heard about some trouble in Rwanda at some stage in recent history…
Solomon Islands – you’ve really got to be kidding.
South Korea – there have been US troops sitting between them and the fourth largest army in the world, which recently tested a nuclear bomb. Perhaps they thought they owed you.
Tonga – please tell me you’re kidding.
Uganda – may have been distracted, as they were fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency at the time.
Uzbekistan – another candidate for Russian re-annexation.
Would you like to know how people joined the Coalition? They got a phone call asking would they like to join. Those who said “okay” went on the list.
More telling is who isn’t on it. Germany, France? NATO countries, and ones who took part in Kosovo, so it’s not the lack of a UN resolution that stopped them. Canada?
And at the moment the UK is preparing to withdraw after handing Basra back to the Iraqis. It’s moderately stable; but then, the UK has had long experience of this kind of manouevre, and knew just how bogged down it’s possible to get.
the Almighty Bob
Oh, and here’s a link to a contemporary compilation of the approval for war in the populations of Coalition countries. It states only Romania had a majority of the population in favour of invasion – and this is in 2003, when approval was at its highest.
slide2112
“You do realise Madeleine Albright apologised for the USA’s intervention on the Shah’s behalf back in 2000, right?”
Yeah and she did a great job with North Korea too. But all credit goes to Jimmy Carter.
…and for your listing pleasure , you left off the 2003 list
Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Span, Denmark, Japan and Australia.
But they don’t count either coz they are just lap dogs like the British. If only we all had the high moral standards of the French and Germans.
the Almighty Bob
I know I left them off. I provided a link to the full list, and said I was leaving them off. It’s condensation, or even being polite; the bloody post was long enough as it was.
Norway? Not on the list I used, and that was the March 2003 list produced by the White House, who ought to know. They joined afterwards, but yes, they weren’t on my list. If you want to dispute my framing rather than my points, do so, but please be clear.
Withdrew their troops in 2005.
Spain elected an anti-war government at its next election and withdrew their troops in 2004.
The Netherlands?
“Then missiles started raining down on Baghdad, and the mood suddenly changed. Instead of the expected shock and horror in Dutch public opinion, there seemed to be a short period of uncertainty, only to then sweep into a mood of compliance with US policies. The most heard argument for this case, was that “We were not for this war, but now that it has started, we cannot afford to refrain from supporting the American strategy.” ”
Not lapdogs at all.
Troops withdrawn in 2005.
Portugal?
José Manuel Durão Barroso and his cohort were true conservatives, who looked to Portugal’s Renaissance glory, and criticised the ‘premature’ granting of indepeandence to Portugal’s colonies. He is quoted as saying that the experience gained during the GNR mission would be “useful in similar future operations.” Which is a rather onimous statement, despite the aforementioned GNR mission being just 128 soldiers.
The troops were withdrawn in 2005.
Japan sent 600 soldiers (in their first overseas deployment since they decided to take a stroll through China) on a non-combat and humanitarian mission, Japanese troops being banned from doing anything but defend themselves by the constitution. They were withdrawn in 2006.
Denmark appears to have fallen for the WMD FUD, but there were also statements like “the Danish Government believes that it was right to show solidarity with the United States in its fight against a repressive tyrant.” (Frank Laybourn, a Foreign and Security Policy Adviser to the then-Government)
There is faint hint of doggy-breath about that statement, isn’t there?
Troops withdrawn August 2007.
Italy: “But the minister, speaking at a ceremony in Grosseto to mark the F2000 Typhoon jet fighter’s 1000th hour in flight, went on to stress that his country were on America’s side and not Saddam Hussein’s when given the chance to take sides.” (From here)
They also din’t take part in the invasion, merely allowed the US to use Italian airspace and transport infrastructure.
Sounds like they took Bush’s “you’re either with us or you’re against us” at face value.
Troops withdrawn in 2006.
Australia: “There seems to be a compliant acceptance that if America goes to war we will go to war, but should we?” from a 2002 article in The Age.
Australia has fought alongside the US in World War 1 and 2, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. That’s even better than the British you call lapdogs.
Troops to be withdrawn by mid-2008.
To make myself clear, I am not calling these countries American lapdogs, if for no other reason than I hope I’d never use such a hackneyed old cliche when there’s plenty of more informative (and less pejorative) ways of saying they were more influenced by who asked than by what the question was.
Slide introduced the term; if he thinks of the UK as a lapdog, maybe he’s willing to accept other pets…
slide2112
..and then there is this little gem about the government of France at the time
“Reports out of France indicate the Chirac government is behind the anti-American demonstrations there, and that references to the coalition troops as “Anglo-American” forces and “Anglo-American liberalism” are terms borrowed from Vichy propaganda during the Hitler occupation.”
I had nearly forgotten Chirac was part of the Vichy govenrment.
The Almighty Bob
That would have been an accomplishment indeed, considering he was 13 when the war ended. And even if he was a truly precocious politician, it’s irrelevant anyway.
Come on slide, you can do better than this. You’re not even trying! Obfuscating the argument is bad arguing, but an okay tactic if it works. You’ve tried it subtly a few times, and I’ve tended to follow a bit; both to correct what I saw as mistakes, and for my own amusement. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you get away with heaping manure into the discussion.
And for future reference, the key in making up facts in arguments is their believability. When the person you’re discussing with has Google at their fingertips, believability goes way down; it’s generally better not to try.
slide2112
I stand corrected, it was Mitterrand I was thinking of.
The point remains, holding up the likes of the governments of France and Germany at the time, while ignoring the other NATO contries that did go to Iraq, is disshonest. And yes you were being dishonest in your ommission. It is also disshonest for Demoracts to try to retrace there steps and claim Bush tricked them into voting for the war.
Any human indevor is flawed from the start. WWII is no exception and your point of saying ‘local boys’ cannot be defeated does not stand up. There is no obuscation in my argument. Your cutting and pasting has no point, that is obfuscation.
The Bush Administrations has made Iraq a battelfield for the war on terror. Now that it is, it should be supported as one. Rudy’s ad reminds us why
The Almighty Bob
Ah. Apologies for the ad hominem, so.
The point I ws trying to make is that many of the smaller NATO countries went because it was the US asking, and the US had produced intelligence saying Iraq had WMD, and (I’m assuming; intelligence services tend not to advertise their existence, operations, or anything else) these smaller countries wouldn’t have the intelligence assets to independently check the intelligence. Germany, on the other hand, had BND agents in Baghdad before and during the invasion (as evidenced by the fact that a German agent in Qatar was assigned to pass information to the invasion force, which included troop disposition – and in some cases positions – in what was apparently a quid pro quo arrangement with US intelligence), so perhaps they knew that the dossier that was the stated reason for the war was, to quote Ford, bunk.
The French had the best intelligence on the ground according to a British agent (in fact, they extracted the German agents); remember how vociferous France was in attempting to prevent the war?
Okay, if my point about local guerilla resistance being enormously difficult to defeat doesn’t stand up, knock it down. Explicitly, please, as I can think of three examples (that lasted 30 years, at least) without trying.
The Bush Administrations has made Iraq a battelfield for the war on terror.
Oh boy, haven’t they.
I linked to the full list at the time of the invasion, said I was using that list, and said I hadn’t included all the members. In fact, here’s precisely what I said:
Here’s the Coalition in 2003, according to the White House. I’ll use extracts here, as the whole list is unwieldy.
Now, if you think I should have cut and pasted the whole list for no good reason, I’m sorry. I find encountering a post in a blog’s comments that is as long as the blog itself a very bad sign, and try not to write such.
And if you have to use statements like “any human endeavour is flawed from the start” to excuse the idiocy, graft, and mayhem that has been the Iraq “war”…
Anyway: I’ve let you set the pace, and drag us backwards and forwards across the actual argument, and I have yet to see you make one substantive point.
Here are mine, the main thrust of what I’ve been trying to say.
The Iraq invasion has made the USA – and the world – a less secure, more dangerous place. Fact.
The War On Terror is a war on an amorphous, chameleonic Hydra that will never be defeated by sending in the Marines. You fight terrorism like you fight a forest fire; you deprive it of fuel, and try to put out sparks. Deprive Islamic terrorism of fuel? Remove the reasons young Islamic men feel they have nothing to live for, are full of hate, and are vulnerable to being indoctinated that dying will bring them to Paradise? It’d probably involve such things as education and jobs. Other than that, it’s beyond me; but that’s okay, I’m just an idiot at a computer.
Put out sparks? Abu Ghraib was a spark. Blackwater and its ilk are sparks. Guantanamo is a spark. The rape and murder of that 14-year-old Iraqi girl is a spark. The internment of large numbers of Iraqis for no stated reason is a spark.
You get the picture?
The Almighty Bob
Whew! That’s at least six inches of text on my screen. I don’t have the time to spare to keep this up much longer. Slide, you may win this in a walkover. 🙂
slide2112
oh blaa blaa blaa. You make a statement that NATO countires were not part of the war effort then publish a list that puropsly excludes them, for lack of space you say, and then you write the above? There is no logic here, it is just intellectually dishonest.
I think we probably are done here. If the Coalitions attempts to create a democracy in Iraq fails, then the world is worse off. If the democracy succeeds, the world is better for it. Should it have been attempted in the first place? Well lets not start that again.
Count Iblis
It seems to me that if you only consider terrorism, the world would be “better of” with a Saddam Hussein like Stalinist dictator in charge of iraq. In a democracy you don’t have a secret police so it is easier to plan terror attacks. Note that the 9/11 attacks were prepared for a significant part in the US and Germany.
The Almighty Bob
The main problem with post-invasion Iraq (never mind the presence or absence of secret police) is its radicalising effect. Think the Alamo.
The Iraq invasion was also a godsend for Bin Laden. It gave him a respite from being chased all over Afghanistan by SEALs, distracted political and military attention from the patch he was operating in, provided reams of propaganda and mujahideen hand over fist. Before the Iraqi invasion, one “Al Qaeda” existed, which tended to be more terrorism finance than bombmakers. Now there’s “Al Qaeda In Iraq”, Al Qaeda sympathisers in Palestine, UNIFIL have been attacked several times by Al Qaeda sympathisers in Lebanon…
It also allowed the Taleban to rest and resupply while materiel and personnel needed in Afghanistan was drawn off to Iraq. There’s been a resurgence, and the last two years have been the deadliest for Coalition troops since the invasion.
Slide, I left some NATO countries off – I put up the ones I had something to write about. Though after checking the NATO membership, I find I did actually leave them all off… hmm. I suppose I must have thought they were semi-credible allies at the time of posting.
You make a statement that NATO countires were not part of the war effort
No, I didn’t. I said “Germany and, France, which are NATO countries“. I was trying to establish why their absence would be considered strange.
Please try to attack what I write, not what you thought I wrote.
I can’t spend the time to thoroughly refute you anymore, slide. It’s a pity, I was enjoying myself. If you promise to play nice and restrict the arguments to things I can respond to in 20 lines or less, I might be able to continue. Ad hominen attacks should do fine, if you can’t come up with anything else. 🙂
If you want a good sense of how many combat troops have actually been contributed by other members of the “coalition of the willing”, you might take a look at this pie chart showing the number of deaths in Iraq by country. For the actual troop numbers (not just deaths) go here. Basically, although there are plenty of countries in the “coalition”, very few have made more than a token contribution in terms of actual troops.
slide2112
Let me help ya’ll out with this whole support thing.
The major reason for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam’s willingness and perceived ability to use WMD in terror attacks posed an immediate threat to the rest of us. Because it was a perceived threat, support for the war was not as strong as in the first Gulf War.
This ‘ability’ to use, and therefore the immediacy of the threat, has been shown to be wrong. Support for the war as fallen faster then it otherwise would have because of this.
This is the problem with preemptive strikes.
slide2112
Count Iblis, there is truth in the statement you make in #67! But, careful with that axe Eugene, there is a sharp edge here.
I am guessing you meant this as a dig to the Bush administration, but it does actually support such things as the Patriot Act in preventing the subject of Rudy’s ad from killing a few thousand more people.
It also points out what Bush/Cheney et.al are not. Installing a Dictator would be easier, and more effective at quelling dissent of the Iraqi population. It would also make possible the conspiracies the Left has dreamed up about Halliburton and Cheney’s net worth, and the Leftist harangue about American Imperialism.
But that is not what is being done. Instead they are actually trying to bring about a free Iraq, with all the risks of what people might actually do with their freedom.
The Almighty Bob
If they were trying to bring about a free Iraq, why have the US built the biggest embassy in the world in Baghdad, and a base meant to stay there for 50 years at least? Why is passing legislation allowing American oil companies… generous… access to Iraqi oil one of the “benchmarks” imposed on the Iraqi Parliament to get reconstruction funds?
No, slide: the reason Iraq was invaded is because your government (and the British, yes) lied and stated that Saddam Hussein had or was attempting to acquire or build nuclear (Niger yellowcake), chemical (sold to him by US companies, with approval from State Department in the 80s, and any stocks left (unlikely) were almost certainly denatured by 2000), and biological (US pharmaceuticals sold him anthrax and botulism) weapons. All this forgot or ignored the fact that U.N. weapons inspectors had been poking their noses into every awkward corner they could find, making it quite difficult to make new produiction facilities, and had completely decommissioned the aforementioned pre-Gulf War WMD capability.
There was no “perceived ability,” your government just lied through its teeth!
The Almighty Bob:
Jesse? North Korea’s an NNPT signatory.
Well, it did withdraw from the treaty in 2003, although of course Iran could do the same. Again, I’m not personally advocating military intervention if Iran starts developing nuclear bombs, and I’m not even saying that other countries would definitely try to intervene, but my impression is that a number of countries would be more worried about Iran getting nuclear weapons then North Korea (doesn’t Iran have more ambitions for the region than insular North Korea? Do you disagree that Israel at least would probably try to do something to stop it? And what about Sarkozy?)
Are you [slide2112] willing to have soldiers’ bodies coming home from Baghdad in 2038?
I think it’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t care how many soldiers die in this war.
He probably doesn’t even care that THIS YEAR was the deadliest year in Iraq for American soldiers… so far.
All he cares about is that we keep on killing brown people, regardless of reason.
Not that he has anything against brown people, per se, but that he shares the same disturbing ideologies as those who are currently in power.
He cares not for others, but only for himself. Leave him be.
North Korea played some downright devious games withdrawing from the NNPT.
Iran has dreams of regional dominance, yes; North Korea, on the other hand, actually launched a war of aggression on South Korea. It’s a matter of which dodgy b*stard you think is more likely to go mad and take on the US, really.
With Mossad’s rumoured efficiency and Israel’s complete ruthlessness, I would assume something would be done alright. I don’t know about Sarkozy, I hadn’t heard anything about him waving the hatchet at them.
I think by this stage you and I are just attempting to out-Devil’s Advocate each other, Jesse. 🙂
jeebus: Ah, let’s give slide the benefit of the doubt. It’s always better when there’s someone that if you are violently disagreeing with them, you know you’re in the right. 🙂
Slide appear to have run away since discovering we know facts, but hopefully they’ll be back.
(The mangling of the language produced when you don’t know someone’s gender is horrible; those last two sentences have taken two rewrites and are still barely readable. Oh, for French’s complete ignoring of it, or a decent neuter pronoun)
The prevailing logic here seems to be that the bad things are Bush’s fault. Russia and China are not to be held accountable and their aiding the likes of such innocents as North Korean and Iran are only in response to Bush. Islamic fascists are not really a threat coz they can only kill a few thousand at a time, at least for right now. All was peachy before 2000.
As for #37:
WWII ended in our favor because the Nazis, AND their local sympathizers (perhaps you did not know we had to fight through the French in North Africa to get to the Germans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Torch )
and the general population where brutally beaten into complete submission. The Nazis had sympathizers through out Europe. Examples can be found that active resistance began only after the locales experienced the brutality of the Nazis personally, as Iragi’s have turned against Al Qaeda types in Iraq.
As Almighty Bob has corrected himself, the U.S. maintained a military presence in Europe, Japan, Korea, but why? As a force to maintain stability against the foreign and domestic threat of another brutal state philosophy called communism. The U.S. only gained favor by proving to be the most benign conquerors the worlds has ever known. ( insert a string of all the bad and terrible things the U.S. has done, well documented and open, my statement still stands).
If the occupation of Germany is considered to have ended in 1946 then the occupation of Irag ended in Dec 2005 with the election of a national assembly.
Unfortunately a presence will be maintained for years to come, as a force against Islamic brutality and the general tendency of the region to degrade to despotism.
I don’t like any of this. I wish the world were different. The ad remindes us it is not.
1949, slide.
Also, may I make a point? During World War 2, ‘Allies’ was not synonymous with ‘the USA,’ as you’ve been assuming I mean. Nine divisions were to land on D-Day; four US, four British, and one Canadian. Just a reminder.
What, the Vichy? Yup, happened to know about them, yes.
A far more apt comparison with the resistances would have been the original “Al Qaeda types” in Iraq: most resistances were active within months of the Nazi invasion of their country, and were supported from Britain by the Special Operations Executive with supplies and training. If you don’t believe me, look at Milorg in Norway (look up the Norwegians’ destruction of the Vemork heavy water plant: without that Resistance, the Nazis may have had a nuke by war’s end).
In Yugoslavia there were pro-Nazi sympathisers in nowadays-Croatia, but Royalist and Communist resistance in the rest of the country. This would be how Tito got his start (he founded the Communist Partisans the day the Soviet Union was invaded).
What about Lawrence of Arabia? The men he led didn’t feel the Nazis’ brutality; even if they did, they were perfectly capable of melting into the desert and never being seen again.
Many of the Resistances were help by the SOE, who got them to lie low until the Allies needed them – witness the Belgian Resistance, who were mobilised to help the liberation, but managed to do little through the sheer speed of the Allied advance.
If the US was invaded, would you fight from day one, or wait until a Canadian soldier didn’t help your mother cross the street, or otherwise brutalised you? Resistances tend to mobilise fast. They only last if they have external help or the occupiers let grudges fester and persist in mistreating the locals (thus, under both points, the longevity of Fatah and other Palestinian “resistances”).
“The general tendency of the region to degrade to despotism”, eh? Despots in th Middle East…
The House Of Saud? Yup. Saddam Hussein? Yup. The Shah of Iran? Yup.
Yemen? Republic.Oman? Universal suffrage in 2003, though I don’t know how much use it is – the Sultan still rules. UAE? The Sheiks seem to treat their own people well, if not the guest workers. Jordan? Constitutional monarchy. Iran? Democratic until something annoys Khomeini, so call it a despotism.
Difference? Previous list are or were either installed by the US or are supported by them. Some “general trend,” eh?
…the point being the Vichy French are an example of ‘local boys’, Iraqi resistance to Saddam and support for the Coalition (you like to pretend the 21 nations who contributed military forces in Iraq don’t count) were also active on day one, and the support has grown.
The ‘good war’ was not clean and clear, the outcome of the war was in doubt, the human cost for all was terrible, the aftermath lead to the Cold War, wasn’t that great…still it was the right thing to do…
Just as an example to your list in the context of history, given the choice between a Soviet Puppet state or the current Islamic regime, the rest of the world would be better off with the Shah, the people of Iran are still screwed.
You do realise Madeleine Albright apologised for the USA’s intervention on the Shah’s behalf back in 2000, right?
And why would Iran have automatically become a Soviet puppet state? Who in the CIA had the crystal ball that predicted so many fledgling democracies during the Cold War would become Communist states if not overthrown immediately and a dictator installed? (If you don’t believe me, I can provide a list).
Of course the good war wasn’t good, it was a war! Read up on the firebombing of Dresden sometime. We get outraged about the Blitz, when the Allies committed the worst civilian bombing of the war (and then went on to compound the offence by dropping two nukes on civilians).
There were collaborationists and sympathisers in many countries, even Britain and (dare I say it) the US:
– GM apparently signed an agreement with the Nazi Consul General to defeat Roosevelt in the next election the agreement was discovered and printed in the Congressional Record by Rep. John Coffee, it seems (I can’t find anything other than secondary sources, so you’ll have to accept the weasel words, I’m afraid).
– Henry Ford donated money to the Nazi Party.
– According to Charles Higham in Trading With The Enemy, “on May 5, 1941, the U.S. Legation at Managua, Nicaragua, reproted that Standard Oil subsidaries were distributing Epoca, a publication filled with pro-Nazi propaganda. John J. Muccio, of the U.S. Consulate, made an investigation and found that Standard was distributing this inflammatory publication all over the world.” Standard also sold aircraft fuel to the Nazis, and actively discouraged American researchers from producing synthetic rubber (which only Germany could produce at the time, it seems).
The Coalition… yes. Thanks, slide. Here’s the Coalition in 2003, according to the White House. I’ll use extracts here, as the whole list is unwieldy.
Afghanistan – how many Afghani troops were part of the invasion force, slide? I can’t seem to find any numbers. Maybe they contributed from their vast wealth, instead?
Angola – in 2003 “80% of Angolans lacked access to basic medical care,” according to the UN.
Azerbaijan – Azerbaijin is between Iran and Russia. They need all the American favours they can get.
Colombia – can they really spare troops from the War On Drugs you’re paying them to wage?
Costa Rica – Costa Rica’s military was abolished in 1948, then declared unconstitutional. A valuable partner.
Dominican Republic – the Dominican Republic that has been invaded by the US in the last 50 years, and looks to Washington before taking a particularly deep breath?
El Salvador – an economy so dependant on the US, the US dollar is its official currency.
Eritrea – Eritrea. Number 156 out of 177 on the UN Human Development Index.
Ethiopia – aren’t they busy peacekeeping in Somalia these days?
Georgia – another country that needs favours from the US, in case Russia decides they’ve had enough and roll south.
Honduras – Honduras. The 2nd poorest country in Central America.
Kuwait – they owed you from last time?
Macedonia – Macedonia.
Marshall Islands -you’re kidding.
Micronesia – you’ve GOT to be kidding.
Mongolia – didn’t Bush stop off to say thanks for their 130 troops at some point?
Nicaragua – the 2nd poorest country in Latin America.
Palau – administered by the US until 1994. Another ex-client state.
Panama – another ex-client state.
Philippines – yet another ex-client state.
Rwanda – I know I heard about some trouble in Rwanda at some stage in recent history…
Solomon Islands – you’ve really got to be kidding.
South Korea – there have been US troops sitting between them and the fourth largest army in the world, which recently tested a nuclear bomb. Perhaps they thought they owed you.
Tonga – please tell me you’re kidding.
Uganda – may have been distracted, as they were fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency at the time.
Uzbekistan – another candidate for Russian re-annexation.
Would you like to know how people joined the Coalition? They got a phone call asking would they like to join. Those who said “okay” went on the list.
More telling is who isn’t on it. Germany, France? NATO countries, and ones who took part in Kosovo, so it’s not the lack of a UN resolution that stopped them. Canada?
And at the moment the UK is preparing to withdraw after handing Basra back to the Iraqis. It’s moderately stable; but then, the UK has had long experience of this kind of manouevre, and knew just how bogged down it’s possible to get.
Oh, and here’s a link to a contemporary compilation of the approval for war in the populations of Coalition countries. It states only Romania had a majority of the population in favour of invasion – and this is in 2003, when approval was at its highest.
“You do realise Madeleine Albright apologised for the USA’s intervention on the Shah’s behalf back in 2000, right?”
Yeah and she did a great job with North Korea too. But all credit goes to Jimmy Carter.
…and for your listing pleasure , you left off the 2003 list
Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Span, Denmark, Japan and Australia.
But they don’t count either coz they are just lap dogs like the British. If only we all had the high moral standards of the French and Germans.
I know I left them off. I provided a link to the full list, and said I was leaving them off. It’s condensation, or even being polite; the bloody post was long enough as it was.
Norway? Not on the list I used, and that was the March 2003 list produced by the White House, who ought to know. They joined afterwards, but yes, they weren’t on my list. If you want to dispute my framing rather than my points, do so, but please be clear.
Withdrew their troops in 2005.
Spain elected an anti-war government at its next election and withdrew their troops in 2004.
The Netherlands?
“Then missiles started raining down on Baghdad, and the mood suddenly changed. Instead of the expected shock and horror in Dutch public opinion, there seemed to be a short period of uncertainty, only to then sweep into a mood of compliance with US policies. The most heard argument for this case, was that “We were not for this war, but now that it has started, we cannot afford to refrain from supporting the American strategy.” ”
Not lapdogs at all.
Troops withdrawn in 2005.
Portugal?
José Manuel Durão Barroso and his cohort were true conservatives, who looked to Portugal’s Renaissance glory, and criticised the ‘premature’ granting of indepeandence to Portugal’s colonies. He is quoted as saying that the experience gained during the GNR mission would be “useful in similar future operations.” Which is a rather onimous statement, despite the aforementioned GNR mission being just 128 soldiers.
The troops were withdrawn in 2005.
Japan sent 600 soldiers (in their first overseas deployment since they decided to take a stroll through China) on a non-combat and humanitarian mission, Japanese troops being banned from doing anything but defend themselves by the constitution. They were withdrawn in 2006.
Denmark appears to have fallen for the WMD FUD, but there were also statements like “the Danish Government believes that it was right to show solidarity with the United States in its fight against a repressive tyrant.” (Frank Laybourn, a Foreign and Security Policy Adviser to the then-Government)
There is faint hint of doggy-breath about that statement, isn’t there?
Troops withdrawn August 2007.
Italy: “But the minister, speaking at a ceremony in Grosseto to mark the F2000 Typhoon jet fighter’s 1000th hour in flight, went on to stress that his country were on America’s side and not Saddam Hussein’s when given the chance to take sides.” (From here)
They also din’t take part in the invasion, merely allowed the US to use Italian airspace and transport infrastructure.
Sounds like they took Bush’s “you’re either with us or you’re against us” at face value.
Troops withdrawn in 2006.
Australia: “There seems to be a compliant acceptance that if America goes to war we will go to war, but should we?” from a 2002 article in The Age.
Australia has fought alongside the US in World War 1 and 2, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. That’s even better than the British you call lapdogs.
Troops to be withdrawn by mid-2008.
To make myself clear, I am not calling these countries American lapdogs, if for no other reason than I hope I’d never use such a hackneyed old cliche when there’s plenty of more informative (and less pejorative) ways of saying they were more influenced by who asked than by what the question was.
Slide introduced the term; if he thinks of the UK as a lapdog, maybe he’s willing to accept other pets…
..and then there is this little gem about the government of France at the time
“Reports out of France indicate the Chirac government is behind the anti-American demonstrations there, and that references to the coalition troops as “Anglo-American” forces and “Anglo-American liberalism” are terms borrowed from Vichy propaganda during the Hitler occupation.”
I had nearly forgotten Chirac was part of the Vichy govenrment.
That would have been an accomplishment indeed, considering he was 13 when the war ended. And even if he was a truly precocious politician, it’s irrelevant anyway.
Come on slide, you can do better than this. You’re not even trying! Obfuscating the argument is bad arguing, but an okay tactic if it works. You’ve tried it subtly a few times, and I’ve tended to follow a bit; both to correct what I saw as mistakes, and for my own amusement. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you get away with heaping manure into the discussion.
And for future reference, the key in making up facts in arguments is their believability. When the person you’re discussing with has Google at their fingertips, believability goes way down; it’s generally better not to try.
I stand corrected, it was Mitterrand I was thinking of.
The point remains, holding up the likes of the governments of France and Germany at the time, while ignoring the other NATO contries that did go to Iraq, is disshonest. And yes you were being dishonest in your ommission. It is also disshonest for Demoracts to try to retrace there steps and claim Bush tricked them into voting for the war.
Any human indevor is flawed from the start. WWII is no exception and your point of saying ‘local boys’ cannot be defeated does not stand up. There is no obuscation in my argument. Your cutting and pasting has no point, that is obfuscation.
The Bush Administrations has made Iraq a battelfield for the war on terror. Now that it is, it should be supported as one. Rudy’s ad reminds us why
Ah. Apologies for the ad hominem, so.
The point I ws trying to make is that many of the smaller NATO countries went because it was the US asking, and the US had produced intelligence saying Iraq had WMD, and (I’m assuming; intelligence services tend not to advertise their existence, operations, or anything else) these smaller countries wouldn’t have the intelligence assets to independently check the intelligence. Germany, on the other hand, had BND agents in Baghdad before and during the invasion (as evidenced by the fact that a German agent in Qatar was assigned to pass information to the invasion force, which included troop disposition – and in some cases positions – in what was apparently a quid pro quo arrangement with US intelligence), so perhaps they knew that the dossier that was the stated reason for the war was, to quote Ford, bunk.
The French had the best intelligence on the ground according to a British agent (in fact, they extracted the German agents); remember how vociferous France was in attempting to prevent the war?
Okay, if my point about local guerilla resistance being enormously difficult to defeat doesn’t stand up, knock it down. Explicitly, please, as I can think of three examples (that lasted 30 years, at least) without trying.
Oh boy, haven’t they.
I linked to the full list at the time of the invasion, said I was using that list, and said I hadn’t included all the members. In fact, here’s precisely what I said:
Now, if you think I should have cut and pasted the whole list for no good reason, I’m sorry. I find encountering a post in a blog’s comments that is as long as the blog itself a very bad sign, and try not to write such.
And if you have to use statements like “any human endeavour is flawed from the start” to excuse the idiocy, graft, and mayhem that has been the Iraq “war”…
Anyway: I’ve let you set the pace, and drag us backwards and forwards across the actual argument, and I have yet to see you make one substantive point.
Here are mine, the main thrust of what I’ve been trying to say.
The Iraq invasion has made the USA – and the world – a less secure, more dangerous place. Fact.
The War On Terror is a war on an amorphous, chameleonic Hydra that will never be defeated by sending in the Marines. You fight terrorism like you fight a forest fire; you deprive it of fuel, and try to put out sparks. Deprive Islamic terrorism of fuel? Remove the reasons young Islamic men feel they have nothing to live for, are full of hate, and are vulnerable to being indoctinated that dying will bring them to Paradise? It’d probably involve such things as education and jobs. Other than that, it’s beyond me; but that’s okay, I’m just an idiot at a computer.
Put out sparks? Abu Ghraib was a spark. Blackwater and its ilk are sparks. Guantanamo is a spark. The rape and murder of that 14-year-old Iraqi girl is a spark. The internment of large numbers of Iraqis for no stated reason is a spark.
You get the picture?
Whew! That’s at least six inches of text on my screen. I don’t have the time to spare to keep this up much longer. Slide, you may win this in a walkover. 🙂
oh blaa blaa blaa. You make a statement that NATO countires were not part of the war effort then publish a list that puropsly excludes them, for lack of space you say, and then you write the above? There is no logic here, it is just intellectually dishonest.
I think we probably are done here. If the Coalitions attempts to create a democracy in Iraq fails, then the world is worse off. If the democracy succeeds, the world is better for it. Should it have been attempted in the first place? Well lets not start that again.
It seems to me that if you only consider terrorism, the world would be “better of” with a Saddam Hussein like Stalinist dictator in charge of iraq. In a democracy you don’t have a secret police so it is easier to plan terror attacks. Note that the 9/11 attacks were prepared for a significant part in the US and Germany.
The main problem with post-invasion Iraq (never mind the presence or absence of secret police) is its radicalising effect. Think the Alamo.
The Iraq invasion was also a godsend for Bin Laden. It gave him a respite from being chased all over Afghanistan by SEALs, distracted political and military attention from the patch he was operating in, provided reams of propaganda and mujahideen hand over fist. Before the Iraqi invasion, one “Al Qaeda” existed, which tended to be more terrorism finance than bombmakers. Now there’s “Al Qaeda In Iraq”, Al Qaeda sympathisers in Palestine, UNIFIL have been attacked several times by Al Qaeda sympathisers in Lebanon…
It also allowed the Taleban to rest and resupply while materiel and personnel needed in Afghanistan was drawn off to Iraq. There’s been a resurgence, and the last two years have been the deadliest for Coalition troops since the invasion.
Slide, I left some NATO countries off – I put up the ones I had something to write about. Though after checking the NATO membership, I find I did actually leave them all off… hmm. I suppose I must have thought they were semi-credible allies at the time of posting.
No, I didn’t. I said “Germany and, France, which are NATO countries“. I was trying to establish why their absence would be considered strange.
Please try to attack what I write, not what you thought I wrote.
I can’t spend the time to thoroughly refute you anymore, slide. It’s a pity, I was enjoying myself. If you promise to play nice and restrict the arguments to things I can respond to in 20 lines or less, I might be able to continue. Ad hominen attacks should do fine, if you can’t come up with anything else. 🙂
If you want a good sense of how many combat troops have actually been contributed by other members of the “coalition of the willing”, you might take a look at this pie chart showing the number of deaths in Iraq by country. For the actual troop numbers (not just deaths) go here. Basically, although there are plenty of countries in the “coalition”, very few have made more than a token contribution in terms of actual troops.
Let me help ya’ll out with this whole support thing.
The major reason for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam’s willingness and perceived ability to use WMD in terror attacks posed an immediate threat to the rest of us. Because it was a perceived threat, support for the war was not as strong as in the first Gulf War.
This ‘ability’ to use, and therefore the immediacy of the threat, has been shown to be wrong. Support for the war as fallen faster then it otherwise would have because of this.
This is the problem with preemptive strikes.
Count Iblis, there is truth in the statement you make in #67! But, careful with that axe Eugene, there is a sharp edge here.
I am guessing you meant this as a dig to the Bush administration, but it does actually support such things as the Patriot Act in preventing the subject of Rudy’s ad from killing a few thousand more people.
It also points out what Bush/Cheney et.al are not. Installing a Dictator would be easier, and more effective at quelling dissent of the Iraqi population. It would also make possible the conspiracies the Left has dreamed up about Halliburton and Cheney’s net worth, and the Leftist harangue about American Imperialism.
But that is not what is being done. Instead they are actually trying to bring about a free Iraq, with all the risks of what people might actually do with their freedom.
If they were trying to bring about a free Iraq, why have the US built the biggest embassy in the world in Baghdad, and a base meant to stay there for 50 years at least? Why is passing legislation allowing American oil companies… generous… access to Iraqi oil one of the “benchmarks” imposed on the Iraqi Parliament to get reconstruction funds?
No, slide: the reason Iraq was invaded is because your government (and the British, yes) lied and stated that Saddam Hussein had or was attempting to acquire or build nuclear (Niger yellowcake), chemical (sold to him by US companies, with approval from State Department in the 80s, and any stocks left (unlikely) were almost certainly denatured by 2000), and biological (US pharmaceuticals sold him anthrax and botulism) weapons. All this forgot or ignored the fact that U.N. weapons inspectors had been poking their noses into every awkward corner they could find, making it quite difficult to make new produiction facilities, and had completely decommissioned the aforementioned pre-Gulf War WMD capability.
There was no “perceived ability,” your government just lied through its teeth!