Originally posted by ionia23
I wrote about the slagging in another thread, which was retarded from the get-go ('Freedom Fries', indeed). Funny that the 'arab' world being referred to here can get inflamed at us for attempting to topple Hussein, but at the same time none of them liked him either. I recall astonishment that the Republican Guard was crushed so quickly (now we're in the real war).
I believe that the Arab world doesn't like the idea of any of its members being invaded by a foreign country, for one thing.
The other aspect is they would be well aware that this action would result in instability across the region.
Originally posted by ionia23
No one held a gun to Bin Laden's head and said "start some ****". He did that on his own. I wonder sometimes if that was his true goal. Either way, he didn't do his own religion, or their followers, any favors. Our foreign policy is ****ed up. I'd rather go isolationist. Put it up to a vote and I'm in.
Unless you try and understand why he does what he does and - more importantly - why people follow him, then any war on terror is doomed to failure. Al-quedas' strength is not Osama Bin Ladin, it';s the supply of recruits who believe the West is the enemy. Find their reasons for that, and take it away as much as possible, and you hurt the organisation more than dropping bombs and creating martyrs in the process.
Originally posted by ionia23
This is a loaded question. I'd hardly call our troop deployments 'reckless' from a military standpoint. Politically? Absoltuely. So to 'really' answer your question:
Definately reckless. the military forces sent into Iraq were massively understrength, and more importantly it's weakened the forces in Afghanistan hunting what should have been the primary objective - the spiritual and organisational heads of Al-Queda (not to mention the folly of more or less abandoing the Afghan people to warlords... Karzai has pleaded for extra troops at least once that I can recall)
It's also served to strengthen the terrorists hand.
Originally posted by ionia23
The terrorist is far worse, for the terrorist doesn't care who they kill.
Okay, this is where I get bent out of shape. I'm sorry, but wars are no longer fought on a big isolated battlefield where Winner Takes All. You don't see the allied troops using Iraqi civilians as human shields, do you? These people we fight will hide snipers in a mosque because they know we won't hit it. We determine victory by whether or not our objectives were accomplished and how few non-combatants got killed in the process. The terrorist doesn't give a damn who gets killed as long as the message gets out.
Which is a war is so totally ineffective at combatting terrorism. Either the life of the soldier is critically important - in which case civillians are going to die - or the civillians are most improtant, in which case you see the US army being rendered completely impotent against an irregular militia.
I'm not sure what the Us objectives for Iraq were, but insofar as I can tell, the major one - stopping terrorists from getting Iraqi WMD has been an abject failure. Not only do we not know if there was any WMD (likely not), there's porobably more terrorists in Iraq than otherwise.
In the context of the 'War on Terror', Iraq has been a disaster.
