humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Apr 4, 9:43 pm, Agent Cooper wrote:
> On Apr 3, 6:14 pm, Charles Bell wrote:
>
> > On Apr 3, 8:16 pm, Agent Cooper wrote:
>
> > > >    The hawks can later give it whatever narrative they wish but my
> > > > best guess is most of the terrorism in Iraq today is sectarian
> > > > violence and guerrillas trying to get foreign troops off their
> > > > soil.... not Al Qaeda.
>
> > Crap.  Same crap that was said three years ago (proven wrong), two
> > years ago (proven wrong), and one year ago (proven wrong). Crap is
> > still crap.
>
> Great, but I'll thank you to note that I didn't write that--Potroast,
> who think's I'm something of a Nazi, did.
>

You responded to "Acar" quoted by "Potroast" :

> > Hint: our war is now and has
> > always been with AlQaeda, and we are not going to defeat AlQaeda in
> > Iraq, we must go and fight it where it lives.

"Amen brother" which I assume to be an agreement.


>
>
> > > My impression is that for a time there was cooperation between Sunni
> > > communities and Al Qaeda types, but that we have had considerable
> > > success getting the Sunni to change sides, and that Al Qaeda in Iraq
> > > is floundering. The pity of it is that it was all avoidable, either by
> > > not going there in the first place, or by not disbanding the army and
> > > doing de-Baathification to deeply.
>
> > Double crap.
>
> [That I did write]. Well, I will give deep consideration to this
> subtle analysis when I have time.



> It's certainly possible that the
> problems would've been as bad or worse if they *hadn't* thrown most of
> the Sunni population into desperate unemployment, but we'll never know
> whether Sunni lack the "liking money" gene or not, now will we? They
> are surprisingly acting quite sensibly ever since we started buying
> them off [a.k.a. "The Surge"], so it's possible that I'm right.
>
>
>
> > > > the majority of the attacks have anything to do Al Qaeda (or Iran)
>
> > Triple crap.
>
> Potroast again.

Sure, but the error was in your lack of separating your thoughts from
his and Acar's, particularly in light of the "Amen brother" and the
context above.


Your contribution was: "There are no good options at all now, but at
least we've killed a lot of people and spent a lot of money on
nothing."

What does the "at least" mean here any way?


> What, are we now joined at the hip? He'll be very
> disappointed to hear that.
>
> > Without Iran or al-Qaeda (and allied whackos) the War would be over,
> > and that is the whole point of the war. The crap you are throwing up
> > against the wall isn't sticking.
>
> Well, it's hard to know how to respond when you've merged the two of
> us together--Potroast and I disagree on all sorts of things, and I
> don't want to speak for him. First point, though "this war would be
> over if there wasn't, like, an *enemy* to fight" is true, I suspect,
> in all wars, but I'm not sure how interesting a proposition that is.

It would be interesting to those like Acar and Potroast, and Barrak
Obama, who believe the only bad guys on the scene are the Americans if
they were to ever stand down from their political position that Anglo
White Guys are the source of all evil in the world. It certainly does
not help when intellectual Anglo White Guys claim that nothing has
been done in Iraq except kill people and spend a lot of money.



> Second point, I think we should separate the questions of whether it
> was reasonable to go, whether we should've gone with the wisdom of
> hindsight, and third, what we should do now. My position was always
> that (1) it was reasonable to go but nonetheless a mistake, not
> because of the WMD issue, but because I thought Saddam rational,


That you should think Saddam was "rational" when the fact of the
matter, if he had simply abided by requirements (and seeing how he did
not have WMD in any case) he could have kept his country bespeaks to
the folly of your hindsight. Contrary to the propaganda, the Bush
Doctrine does not say that we can invade another country "just
because" but that because Saddam's Iraq was an aggressor nation not
holding to its agreements and a known harborer of terrorists, one of
whom had established a camp in Iraq after being chased out of
Afghanistan.


> (2) the
> question of whether it was handled well is another matter. I think
> that it is very hard to argue that it wouldn't have gone better (a)
> with higher troop levels from the getgo, and (b) an orderly process of
> Iraqi military reform and de-Baathification, instead of just a Bremer
> announcement that henceforth all Sunni Arabs were out of jobs (OK, he
> didn't say that, but that's only because he was so clueless that he
> didn't realize that that was the *effect* of what he did say).

If this were 2005 or 2006, I myself would be bringing this up, but it
isn't. Whatever mistakes were made can be rectified and we move on.
You speak as though: if any war unneccessarily costs lives and money
by making any mistakes, that war should never be fought -- a
ridiculous proposition to say the least.

> I sympathize with your frustration at the one-sidedness of the press
> coverage. I've felt that myself. I felt that once we were in and
> nothing to be done, we might as well make a go of it, and I deeply
> resented Democrats scoring political points at the expense of the US
> troops

I think that is not the worst of it. It is Wm F Buckley, among other
conservatives, being for the war before being against it, for
example. It is liberal-leftists like Obama who, by any rational
standard, is simply too immature (not so much by age but by everything
else that goes into being President) getting as far as he has pretty
much on hot air about "feelings" and "hope" and "change" spewed about
a war and an economy that does not exist in a fanciful utopia of
perfection. We are in a war that is not short, sweet and perfectly
executed and we are in the downside of the business cycle, so let's
throw up the white flag on the war and have government take even more
of the private sector.

> and the Iraqi people by undermining morale. But we've been
> there five years now, and as an engaged citizen, I think it's fair to
> assess performance.


Not really a "fair" assessment at all. You jump on the failure at
Basra as the green light to surrender. I agree that in analogy to
Nixon's "vietnamization" of Viet Nam War, if, after several years,
the regular Iraqi army fails as spectacularly as the S. Viet Nam army
did, perhaps then we can see failure. It is also entirely wrong to
assess the situation as without Iranian or other outside
interference. It *is* fair to apply the Bush Doctrine to Iran, but it
is precisely the irrational reaction of Bush's opponents that
prevented any military action against Iran, and, I might add, the
withering support of Britain in that option.