First post: 1. the numbers that cheered were rather small and that was commented on by the media.
Second post: No implication was made that only this reporter had an axe to grind. We were discussion [sic] an article by this reporter not some other one.
Yet you specifically mentioned "the media", not this reporter. The implication was right there in your statement.
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Not a big weenie here, but I was talking about this reporter possibly making a bigger deal out of the cheering than warranted, having an axe to grind, because the media I was listening to on the statue episode specifically drew attention to the relative smallness of the crowd and the looting on other streets.
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The article was based on older data, no, on the statue episode of several hundred?
Exactly -- the article failed to account for the demonstrations occurring in other cities at exactly the same time (and in other parts of Baghdad for that matter). We had already been welcomed in Basra, An Najaf, and Nasiriyah to an extent. Ignoring those people amounts to an attempt to make the statue "episode" look like an isolated case, which it most certainly was not.
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My point was that the reporter was making a big deal about the cheering crowds from a small sample and therefore was axe grinding or engaging in wishful thinking, politically seeking justification for the war as a liberation on little contemporaneously extant data. I was not trying, myself, to make the case that the numbers were or would be small. I fully anticipate they will be large. My point has always been that men seek freedom because it is their inalienable right. The spirit longs for it and loves it when it comes. I don't think the perps of the war had that in mind. Otherwise we would be at war all over the place.
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But of course. there may also still be many who feel they will be killed by their own if they don't fight.
"Just following orders"? Didn't work at Nuremberg.
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Wasn't trying to justify it, just expanding on the reasons there was still fighting.
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Unfortunately my altered state is in your mind. I have always favored the removal of Saddam and fully expected joy at the event. I differ only with method and with my interpretation of our real motivation which had freeing the people of Iraq as a late and ultimately popular lie as to our purpose. I, unlike you, can't speak for millions of French and don't pretend to myself that I can. Doubtless there are many deluded by the reality in Iraq. Who and in what numbers is much more difficult to say. I oppose arms sales to dictators, by the way.
I apologize for the altered state comment.
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Thank you, not that I wouldn't deny a certain alteredness about my state.
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The problem is that this was the only method. No amount of diplomacy would have ever dislodged Saddam from his totalitarian state any more than boxes of chocolate would have convinced Hitler to leave Germany. Even now, with Saddam probably dead and Coalition troops roaming around the entire country, people are still in fear of speaking out against Saddam and the regime. And you would expect sanctions, time and diplomacy to do what military might is still struggling to do? Or, is there some other grand plan?
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No, no other grand plan, just an attitudinal difference. I wanted a UN sanctioned war for one thing and blame Bush in some good measure for screwing that up. I take exception to you assertion that 'this was the only way'. I find all too often that there is only a hammer in everybody's tool box. I see thousands of examples of box thinking, self limited unexamined assumptions that lead people, in their imaginations only, in only one direction. At the same time this was a very difficult case, a tough nut to crack, and one about which the admin. was proceeding down for entirely other reasons than the misery of the Iraqi people, at least in my opinion, such that killing to free never really appeared as much of a problem to them. So no, I didn't expect sanctions or diplomacy to work and I have always felt that the worst kinds of weapons can't be allowed to be fester in the hands of the worst kinds of people. All in all I can't really say for sure there was a better solution than the one we got as far as the people of Iraq are concerned. Would it have been better is he had fallen from within, yes. Better maybe to have ignored him, allowed him to crawl out of his holes and popped him, maybe. There were perhaps many creative possibilities. There are still, unfortunately still many pitfalls. We will see, if we live.
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If the war has proved anything so far it is that Saddam wasn't even a threat as far as WMD even when we directly attacked him much less if we had left him alone. The war has never been about WMD, freeing the people of Iraq or any of the other tired excuses the Bush league trotted out and failed to ignite. The war has always been about a vision of a new American century.
Oh, please. The new dynamic was created on September 11th. The specter of terrorism has been lurking in the background for decades now but has now finally become an instrument of mass casualties. The presence of WMD in suspect nations with ties to terrorist organizations makes that even more frightful. It is impossible to say that the war about this or that because there was a convergence of multiple aims, primary among them WMD and terrorism. Yes, we are now touting the freedom of the Iraqi people, but it is obvious that without the WMD and the presence of state support of terror, we would not have invaded. However, had the Iraqi regime been very open and friendly with its people, then the calculus for the war would have changed.
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The US has more WMD and does more research on how to kill than any nation on earth. Your logic would lead to the need to exterminate us first as the greatest world threat based on just how you want to define terrorism. Nothing new was created on 9/11 but a rational for the bloodthirsty and the frightened to proclaim their time and stake their claim in the resulting terror. The 'dark side' always beckons. We haven't even begun to open the door on potential terror. We saw something mild on 9/11 relatively speaking, but something profoundly more significant with the anthrax episode. Enough spores were released to kill the entire nation and it was done by a single person, no doubt, and one of our own. Remember this much suppressed event. Where's the mass search for this terrorist? In the not too distant future, with nanotechnology, a good brain and a few home grown devices, a really bright sociopath will be able to create a self replicating molecular disassembler that can turn the surface of the planet to powder. The sooner we realize that the enemy is our own mass psychosis, our own insanity and self hate, the sooner we will begin to do what it takes to save ourselves. The military arms will be of little avail to the terrorism that will be created out of hate.
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