BF2S Forums So Has It All Been Worth It?

Braddock wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Afghanistan had just about as much to do with 9/11 as Iraq did.

I'd argue with that. Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11 whereas the Taliban was a known sponsor and supporter of Al Qaeda. Bin Laden was also thought to be located somewhere in the Bora Bora region at the time and the Taliban were refusing to give him up.

Sponsor yes, but removing the Taliban from power did really do anything to prevent another 9/11. Revenge alone, on the Taliban or Osama, is not worth the price in lives or dollars we have spent.

Braddock wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

We have the Patriot Act, and yet increasing security in airports that led to any more time spent in security would be completely unacceptable. Acts like that were really only passed because the right took advantage of the present situation, and had some excellent spin.

I don't get your mentality, do you find it more acceptable to send thousands of Americans to die in the Middle East than to stand in line at a security check-point?

Braddock wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Again, the American people aren't going to put up with Israeli-level security. We aren't worried about an ICBM, we're worried about poisoned water supplies, dirty bombs snuck into the country, or running another plane into a building.

If you honestly don't want another 9/11 style attack to happen again you're going to have to deal with Israeli level security... welcome to the real world my friend. The US have had a cosy time of it up until 9/11, Timothy McVeigh was the closest thing you got to terrorism but now you get to see what life has been like in Israel, Northern Ireland and all the other trouble spots of the world.

It's not me, its the American people. We have been so complacent for the past thirty years or so that we just don't understand what kind of world we live in now. People talk about how terrible 9/11 is and how much better airport security should be, but when it comes to paying those extra taxes, or waiting in that security line, suddenly it loses a lot of importance.

Braddock wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Christianity gave up the Crusades eventually. The religion didn't particularly change, but sending a whole bunch of people to slaughter got old.

Maybe suicide bombing will got old eventually too!?

Suicide bombing isn't all that different than conventional fighting. People going into battle know that there is a significant chance they are not going to survive, but they do it anyways, people on both sides. They hold the ideals they are fighting for higher than their own life, and when you can do that, it isn't much further to knowingly giving your life for a cause. We've had some threads recently on soldiers diving on grenades to save their comrades, why would they do that? They value the life of their friends and the ideals they are fighting for more than their own life.

Am I directly equating blowing yourself up in a shopping mall with saving friends? No, but you have to put it all in perspective, not everyone values the same things that we do in our society. In their point of view the suicide bomber is just as heroic. Only when this kind of indoctrination stops, when recruitment by terror organization drops off, will we ever be able to stop a practice like suicide bombing.

Braddock wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Again, the American people aren't going to put up with Israeli-level security. We aren't worried about an ICBM, we're worried about poisoned water supplies, dirty bombs snuck into the country, or running another plane into a building.

If you honestly don't want another 9/11 style attack to happen again you're going to have to deal with Israeli level security... welcome to the real world my friend. The US have had a cosy time of it up until 9/11, Timothy McVeigh was the closest thing you got to terrorism but now you get to see what life has been like in Israel, Northern Ireland and all the other trouble spots of the world.

Braddock wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

We really can't do much about these type of attacks, except stop them at the source.

Laughable. 'Attack is the best form of defence' only holds true in sport. If you really want to stop it at the source you're going to have to wipe them out genocide style.

Where does sport end and the real world begin? It's a game being played with very high stakes.

They must be removed completely, yes. To completely end terrorism, you would have to stop all recruitment, and kill all the current members. Obviously neither one of those is ever going to happen.

Braddock wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Now that they know they can fuck with us, they have to understand that if they do fuck with us, there will be consequences.

This is not a Chuck Norris film. That nonsensical macho attitude will have the US going the same way as the Romans did. You have to fight smart, if you continue down the heavy-handed road you'll end up with no friends in the International community and the minute China take over top spot no one will put up with your shit anymore. There is no clean decisive win in the 'war on terror', you've declared war on a concept... all you can do is monitor and contain terrorist activity and that is not done by invading countries, it is done using intelligence agencies and stealth.

I didn't say we did it the right way. In fact I would say we definitely did it the wrong way.

I do not blame the Bush administration in particular for the pitfalls, just politics in general. I have no reason to believe anyone else that could have been elected would have done a better job. The fact is politics have royally screwed up our situation there, in its presentation to the American people, and by limiting the number of troops committed initially against recommendations by the Pentagon. If the experts had been listened to and the President had been a little more direct about why we were going into Afghanistan and especially Iraq, we would have actually been able to declare an obvious achievement of goals, not say mission accomplished on a boat after the easy part was over.

If you're going to do something, commit to it. Honestly, I don't really see why, logically, we needed to go into Iraq or Afghanistan. The fact however is the American people were bloodthirsty after 9/11 and something had to be done, so we went to war. Now if we're put in a war, even if it's one we don't want to or shouldn't be in, you have to commit. You half-ass it, and you get the kind of situation we are in presently or like we were in Vietnam. If you aren't willing to go the whole way with it, it probably wasn't a good enough reason to start a war for in the first place.

simple answer. No.

You are just not getting as much out of this conflict as you are putting in it. Loss of life on both sides is huge, 4000 dead US servicemen/women ( more than were killed on 09/11 ), tens of thousands of veterans that will need physical or psychotherapy for years to come, around 500 billion dollars of costs already.

For what gain ? Sure, Saddam is gone, but he wasn't a threat to US national security. Yeah, he was a brutal dictator, but that didn't stop the US from supporting him during the 70's and 80's either. Ironically, and this is only my personal opinion of course, Iraq was more stable and under control under Saddam than it is now, at least as far as ramifications for US national security are concerned.

The great war on terror ? Again, little progress ( if any ), compared to the costs ( with regard to loss of life and money ). Sure, you are killing a Taliban here and there in Afghanistan, and maybe an Al'Quaida guy from time to time in Iraq, but that will do little to fight the root of terrorism.
For every terrorist you kill, 2 more will be recruited.

Some have said the most important reason for the US invasion of iraq was to establish a strategic foothold in the ME, with regard to possible future conflicts with Iran, and to secure some access to ME oil fields. But even if that were true, was it worth 4000 dead US soldiers, countless more wounded, and 500 billion dollars ?
Iran is no threat to anyone. They have their own problems. And with the kind of military power the US has, it would have been easily possible to exercise control over any part of the ME without ever putting one boot on the ground ( this is actually one of the core questions for me ).

Finally, let's look at the money spent, and what could have been achieved with that kind of budget at home, to fix internal issues on US soil.
500 billion dollars, mind you. For education ( more schools and teachers ), the environment, research of alternative energy resources ( you know, to make yourself more independent from ME oil ), domestic security, border security, intelligence, social systems, health care, etc...

If the same amount of money would have been spent on the issues I mentioned above, instead of investing in a pointless war abroad, do you really think America would be less safe today ( apart from the fact that 4000 US citizens would probably be alive today, and tens of thousands more not wounded ) ?
To me, those domestic issues are way more likely to plague the US in the future, than any ME terrorist ever will. Sadly though, if the president had asked congress for the same budget to address the domestic issues I talked about, I doubt he would have gotten it.

Ironically, now that you are in it, it will be difficult to pull out, even if a democrat wins the white house in november. You are probably stuck there for another couple of years.

And the only way to have known that before the invasion was to have Saddam or Qusay Hussein as a spy on the inside.

Remember the inspectors?
The intel community gave them a list of what, the top 200 sites suspected of holding or producing WMD?
Nothing was found, nada, not so much as a single atom of WMD or the equipment to go with it.
At that point the 'intel' should have been reassessed, but no, GWB was on a timetable decided before he was elected so the inspectors got pulled out early.
There was no preponderance of evidence, intel on the one side, actual inspections pointing the other way on the other.

mountains of technical evidence that pointed to an active WMD program

More like a pile of runny poo. No matter how hard they tried to sweep it into a pile it still amounted to nothing concrete.

I'm referring to the hundreds of photos and hours of SIGINT...not all of which Powell showed at the UN.

It was reasonable to assume Powell pulled out the best stuff, the UN show and tell was laughable however you looked at it.

Then come up with something reasonable, supported by facts.

Hows this:-
Some facts
The Neocons (PNAC letter) were agitating for Saddams removal well before Bush was even elected.
Bush started investigating making moves on Iraq well before 9/11
Within hours of 9/11 Bush started issuing instructions to the effect 'lets pin this on Saddam'
Despite no SOLID evidence of Saddam possessing WMD, having links to AQ or ANYTHING to do with 9/11 Bush forgets about Bin Laden and uses the bulk of US military resources - far more than used in Afghanistan - to attack Iraq.
The US admin knew full well about  the likely total breakdown of the fabric of Iraq, but nevertheless declined to commit enough troops to hold it together - despite the best military advice at the time. Furthermore they took some incredibly dumb decisions - disbanding the Iraqi army, 'de-Baathifying' the civil service etc which were certain to make the situation drastically worse.

I conclude:-
Bush had an agenda to attack Iraq and was just waiting for an excuse, probably no more complex than his Daddy told him to.
The US admin has some objectives besides WMD and AQ in Iraq - we still don't know what they were.
Some guesses
- Oil for the US oil companies to profit out of
- Contracts for Halliburton etc
- Destabilising of the middle east
- Warning to other ME nations to keep pumping the oil, keep buying US arms, not change to the Euro, just toe the US line.

Interesting how you know the "real objectives". Would be even more interesting if it wasn't so tinfoil-hat laughable. Or had some facts to back it up.

I like my tin foil hat, it stops major league baseball reading my thoughts, keeps the rain off and makes reassuring crunching noises while I'm asleep.
What makes you think you, a mid-ranking Pentagon Pointy-Head, get told the objectives beyond 'Invade Iraq'?

I'm not going to do this again. Your "factoids" have been addressed, ad nauseum, multiple times. You just don't seem to have any kind of long (or short) term memory.

For the record, I'm at the Pentagon now. I wasn't there six years ago...we do move around a bit in the US military. But since you know everything about military planning, intelligence, objectives, and the innerworkings of high-level US government people's minds...I thought you knew that already. But the objectives we were given (when I wasn't a "mid-ranking Pentagon Pointy-Head") were far more detailed than "Invade Iraq". But since you know exactly what the objectives were, you should have known that, too.

Questioning why is fine. Ignoring the answers for why when they don't fit your preconceptions is folly. You've asked why, as have many others (including me, believe it or not). You've gotten answers. You just didn't like them because they didn't cleanly point to a grand neocon cabal's conspiracy. Far more reasonable explanations have been given for just about every aspect, but you don't like them. You prefer to go for the unreasonable, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. And like a typical conspiracy theorist, any explanations that don't fit your conspiracy or that run counter to it, are dismissed out of hand, regardless of their validity. And any explanations that do fit your theory are accepted without discussion or contemplation, regardless of their validity. And anyone offering up conflicting views, whether they are documented or from personal experience, is labeled part of the conspiracy and denigrated as such.

Hence, there's simply no point in discussing this issue with you any more.

I could really care less if there is or isn't a conspiracy.

You keep asking for people to put forward facts and arguments.
When we do you either dismiss them out of hand 'you weren't there' 'I'm in the Pentagon' 'what do you know' etc or you don't address them at all (as above)  because apparently its all beneath you.

Your theories have been shown to have been based on faulty or plain dishonest initial assumptions and are therefore flawed.

The facts as I've put them forward point to something, I'd like to know what.
If Cheney is looking for Josephs Technicolour Dreamcoat in the sands of Iraq then fine - who cares, it would be nice if he would just say.

The question is: how many deaths would there have been if the US had not intervened? Let's say for arguments sake that 20000 civvies would of died. That means that, when broken down, each American soldier who fought and died for the life of freedom, arguably saved 5 Iraqi lives. Is an American soldier worth the life of 5 Iraqis?

Slightly off topic: is it possible that countries in the Middle East would stop delivering oil, goods etc if the US had 'sat back and done nothing' - if it had the potential to damage trade links then it is a whole different story..

kylef wrote:

The question is: how many deaths would there have been if the US had not intervened? Let's say for arguments sake that 20000 civvies would of died. That means that, when broken down, each American soldier who fought and died for the life of freedom, arguably saved 5 Iraqi lives. Is an American soldier worth the life of 5 Iraqis?

Slightly off topic: is it possible that countries in the Middle East would stop delivering oil, goods etc if the US had 'sat back and done nothing' - if it had the potential to damage trade links then it is a whole different story..

Well given that more than 20,000 civies died as a consequence of the invasion and resultant insurgency each American soldier is actually worth a number of dead Iraqis. The true number will never be known however.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

If you're going to do something, commit to it. Honestly, I don't really see why, logically, we needed to go into Iraq or Afghanistan. The fact however is the American people were bloodthirsty after 9/11 and something had to be done, so we went to war. Now if we're put in a war, even if it's one we don't want to or shouldn't be in, you have to commit. You half-ass it, and you get the kind of situation we are in presently or like we were in Vietnam. If you aren't willing to go the whole way with it, it probably wasn't a good enough reason to start a war for in the first place.

The Russians aren't known for following the rulebook in war and they ended up leaving the Middle East with their tale between their legs, I just think parts of the Middle East can't be won over with just a tough mentality and heavy handedness. They are a tough and determined people; whatever about Iraq the Afghani's have never really been successfully conquered and they've had all manner of invaders over the years.

On the other issues I don't actually think our two points of view are that far away from each other, though your take on things is a little different from mine. I may be wrong but you seem somewhat content with the fact that your Government has embarked on tactics that you have yourself admitted were unrealistic i.e. the total destruction of extremist preaching and terrorist recruiting via conventional warfare on a sovereign state with little or no link to the terrorist groups in question?

On a sidenote I watched a funny film called 'Deterrence' last night made in the mid 90's about an Uday Hussein ruled Iraq launching another war on Kuwait and threatening the US, Europe and Israel with nuclear and chemical attacks! Lol

B.Schuss wrote:

FEOS wrote:

You can't say that money could have been better spent elsewhere. If it weren't for the war, that money wouldn't have been spent at all, and our deficit would be MUCH smaller.

why wouldn't I be able to say that? I mean, wouldn't you agree that there are domestic issues in the US that are much more bound to bite you in the ass as a nation on the long run if not addressed, than a bunch of sheep-hugging terrorists ever could ? Things like education, health care, the environment, alternative energy resources, etc ?

Terrorists are not a treat to the national security of the US. Having no one to teach your kids, no air to breathe, and nothing to power your economy when the oil runs out will be.

You are right, if it hadn't been for the war, that money would not have been spent. And you know what ? That's the real tragedy here.

You have the resources, and yet you chose to put them into the war machine, instead of investing them into the future of America.

I fully agree that there are domestic issues that could use that kind of funding.

What I'm saying about your assumption is that it is a non sequitir. The money spent in Iraq is not money that would have been spent elsewhere...all of it is over and above the existing budget. It's been fairly well documented and criticized (rightfully so) that no spending was cut elsewhere to help fund Iraq ops. Thus, the money spent on Iraq would not have been spent elsewhere.

Yes, it's a tragedy that the US has had to spend national treasure on Iraq. But it's not a tragedy that ~$500bn wouldn't have been spent--still greatly increasing our deficit--on social programs. We DON'T have the resources to spend like that. If we did, our deficit wouldn't have ballooned as it has.

CameronPoe wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Yes, it's a tragedy that the US has had to spend national treasure on Iraq. But it's not a tragedy that ~$500bn wouldn't have been spent--still greatly increasing our deficit--on social programs. We DON'T have the resources to spend like that. If we did, our deficit wouldn't have ballooned as it has.

Come on now FEOS, that doesn't make any sense. In the context of the national budget, the US essentially borrowed $500bn to commit to Iraq when it could easily have decided not to and instead borrow $500bn to spend on more pointful things like healthcare, education, energy, technology, infrastructure, etc.

Yes it does make sense. The US wouldn't have borrowed $500bn to spend if it hadn't had to fund Iraq. Period.

Yes it does make sense. The US wouldn't have borrowed $500bn to spend if it hadn't had to fund Iraq. Period.

Then its kind of doubly dumb, to be borrowing money to fight a war which has no justification or benefit to anyone.
Like borrowing money to buy a house, which you then burn down because you know a firefighter who needs some overtime.
(Halliburton being the firefighter - not sure if you got that)

CameronPoe wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Yes it does make sense. The US wouldn't have borrowed $500bn to spend if it hadn't had to fund Iraq. Period.

The tragedy lies in the fact that $500bn of American debt comes at the hands of this debacle. If your government had been prepared to borrow for better reasons it may not necessarily be a tragedy.

Would you think it justified for YOUR country to borrow that amount...for anything?

Yes, the expenditure of resources is a tragedy, but there are far larger tragedies at play here.

Qed