Was it worth it?

[Bro. Curtis]

…..

All of this, at least for Iraq, for a war based upon verifiably false information and admittedly strong blood lust by the then Commander in Chief.

……...

You had a great post until you made this revisionist statement, and rendered it a rant.

Why do democrats deny their role in the Iraq invasion ?

 

[poncho]

Yep George W. Bush was a tool of the elite, same as the guy before him and the guy before him and the guy before him and the guy before him . . . all the way back to JFK who was a tool of the elite but decided to make some changes in the way they did "business". Then "bang" he was no more and they got their war and kept their monopoly on the creation of money from thin air.

 

[preachinjesus]

You had a great post until you made this revisionist statement, and rendered it a rant.

Why do democrats deny their role in the Iraq invasion ?

Well, I'm not a democrat...nor a republican. I opposed the military action in Iraq and called my representatives about my position. Not serving in elected office my opposition was purely a choice of my own. All members of Congress who voted for military action are complicit in the destruction that has resulted. That has been my position ever since the war began.

 

[Bro. Curtis]

It sure seemed like you were blaming one guy, and leaving a 9 year build-up to the war out.

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

Those who tout the removal of Sadaam Hussein as being well worth the cost of trillions of US dollars and thousands of American lives forget that in the 1980s the CIA propped him up as a counterbalance to the Iranian threat ...

Fifteen-year-old straw man. Time to burn him at the stake. So what? Expediency in foreign policy often requires us to bed down with skunks in order to curb the encroachment of the hyenas. It worked. Iran was stopped from becoming what it wanted to be, the shining central star in a flag representing their desired "United States of Islam." Then Saddam decided to go off the reservation, kill his own people, engage in the training of terrorists, and build WMDs -- which, despite the shrill lies of the Left, he had and used against his own people before getting his trade partners in Russia, Germany and France to stall for him so he could dismantle his production centers and ship it all to Syria. He needed to be stopped, and he wouldn't step down, so someone had to take him down.

We did. Then, typical of our foreign and military policy of the last 45 years, we abandoned them instead of helping them build their nation. Why? Because fools like you don't understand the necessity of helping others.

Does anyone see the pattern, that our meddling in the MiddleEast begets blow back which begets more meddling in the Middle East? Or at least can see that the actual facts bely the simplistic narrative of the USA being the unequivocal force for good--and thus whomever we support (at the time) is also good--and whomever we oppose (at the time) is evil?

An illogical conclusion based on the oh-so-tired and cumbersome straw man you continually drag out of the closet to hang on his cross again. No, we don't see those we support as "good" necessarily. We see them as useful to the ends of putting the evil one back in his hole. Amazing the Left is so myopic they can't focus on this.

However, thankfully for the rest of us, war-weary Americans are no longer necessarily accepting the regime's propanda at face value and are not as eager to jump into another conflict of the Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.

Another shrill and loudly touted straw man. No one wants war. You, Poncho and G2C are very good at resurrecting this one, too, that aggressive foreign policy is war-mongering. I've been to war. I don't like war. I wanted it to end every single minute I was in one, but I also knew that it was necessary. It is a a shame you can't manage to grasp that fact, and choose instead to lie about the motivation behind necessary military action.

So you basically irritated trillions of electrons to no purpose in making this post. What are going to do with the rest of your day?

 

[poncho]

TND, you could have shortened your post and just said "facts and evidence" that run contrary to the thoroughly debunked neocon talking points (nice way of putting LIES) won't be allowed in your mind or the discussion.

 

[Doubting Thomas]

Fifteen-year-old straw man. Time to burn him at the stake. So what? Expediency in foreign policy often requires us to bed down with skunks in order to curb the encroachment of the hyenas. It worked. Iran was stopped from becoming what it wanted to be, the shining central star in a flag representing their desired "United States of Islam." Then Saddam decided to go off the reservation, kill his own people, engage in the training of terrorists, and build WMDs -- which, despite the shrill lies of the Left, he had and used against his own people before getting his trade partners in Russia, Germany and France to stall for him so he could dismantle his production centers and ship it all to Syria. He needed to be stopped, and he wouldn't step down, so someone had to take him down.

We did. Then, typical of our foreign and military policy of the last 45 years, we abandoned them instead of helping them build their nation. Why? Because fools like you don't understand the necessity of helping others.An illogical conclusion based on the oh-so-tired and cumbersome straw man you continually drag out of the closet to hang on his cross again. No, we don't see those we support as "good" necessarily. We see them as useful to the ends of putting the evil one back in his hole. Amazing the Left is so myopic they can't focus on this.Another shrill and loudly touted straw man. No one wants war. You, Poncho and G2C are very good at resurrecting this one, too, that aggressive foreign policy is war-mongering. I've been to war. I don't like war. I wanted it to end every single minute I was in one, but I also knew that it was necessary. It is a a shame you can't manage to grasp that fact, and choose instead to lie about the motivation behind necessary military action.

So you basically irritated trillions of electrons to no purpose in making this post. What are going to do with the rest of your day?

Nope, I guess you can't (or won't) see the pattern of our meddling begetting more meddling (ad infinitum), but prefer to continue spouting off on how the end apparently justifies the means. Nevermind, the countless innocent civilians caught in the cross hairs of the Great Struggle for American hegemony---those thousands who've died because of sanctions, or tortured and killed by corrupt regimes we propped up ("better dead than red, you know!") or blown to smithereens by missiles from our unmanned drones ("better them foreigners than us, right?"). Or our own soldiers who come back from the Perpetual War broken and suicidal. It's all worth it to keep the world safe for democracy, right? Afterall, this is gonna be the New American Century!

Meanwhile on the home front, Christians, consitutionalists, and even VETS(!) are labelled as potential threats to the Order, the NSA is spying on us, innocent babies continue to be slaugtered, sodomy is blasphemously called marriage, and heaven forbid you stand up for your conscience and 1st Ammendment rights or, for example, the Homofascists will sue you and some unelected judge will fine you out of business....or, even worse, you can be potentially labeled an 'enemy combatant' and indefinitely detained (or executed) without a trial.

But all is well--let's by all means encourage our sons and daughter to fight for this regime's wars. We love Big Brother. God bless the U-S-A

(Of course, some will simply wave their hands and dismiss this as 'Marxist spin' despite the fact that those of us who oppose Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace oppose totalitarianism in ALL its guises--Marxist or Fascist. )

 

[kyredneck]

Excellent post DT. You speak my mind.

 

[Doubting Thomas]

Excellent post DT. You speak my mind.

Thanks. :thumbs:

 

[ShagNappy]

In the Bible we read how the people trumpeted Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem. The King had come. They would soon be free. This was the general theme through the Jewish world about the Messiah. The cry for war, for revenge, for blood to be shed. These were the same people who, when they realized Jesus came as a humble servant, full of humility, willing to be the lamb for the slaughter turned and called for His crucifixion. We are called to imitate Him. To live our lives like Him. Jesus the warrior has not come... so why do so many act like that when the humble servant is who we are to seek to be?

A great many blood thirsty Christians, who spend so very little time participating in the great commission, are so eager to assure countless thousands are doomed to hell for not much more than a political idealogy based on anything except what the God we believe in taught us.

We are to take HIS message to the world in love and servitude, not strapped to a bomb.

 

[kyredneck]

AMEN SN!

Rand Paul: Some Evangelicals 'Too Eager for War'

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

Nope, I guess you can't (or won't) see the pattern of our meddling begetting more meddling (ad infinitum), but prefer to continue spouting off on how the end apparently justifies the means.

If that's what you got out of that post, your mind is closed and won't hear reason.

Nevermind, the countless innocent civilians caught in the cross hairs ...

And what about the innocent civilians who died at the hands of Saddam and his henchmen for the sole purpose of him retaining control of Iraq? Where are you tears for them, and their cries from the desert sands for justice? Your myopically shed crocodile tears bespeak a lack of compassion and a tendency toward self-flagellation for having the misfortune of being born in the United States.

... of the Great Struggle for American hegemony ...

The ignorance of such phrases relative to the United States is staggering not so much in that they are made by willfully blind leftists who refuse to see the nation has never engaged in a single, solitary effort to "empire build" as is the fact the ones making these statements obviously haven't a clue what a hegemony is, preferring instead to appear intellectual and "learned" in using such large, threateningly ominous words to describe something they utterly fail to understand.

Brief refutation for your education, should you choose to open your mind long enough to absorb it: Great powers in an economic and/or philosophical system of multiple states are fundamentally different from universal empires whose boundaries are those of a civilization. Militaristic continental land powers also need to be distinguished from countries such as the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States that achieve financial, commercial, and maritime supremacy without militarily dominating other great powers. The United States today has the world's primary reserve currency and what some political scientists have called military "command of the global commons" of sea, air, and space. However, we lack the power to dictate policies to France, Germany, or Japan, much less China, Russia, India, and especially the Islamic world. Your utter failure to grasp that and instead describe these advantages made possible by U.S. economic and democratic superiority is indicative of a inner hatred of that superiority despite your being a native of the very nation that holds those advantages, thus also making them your advantages. You are blind to the inescapable fact that these power are not used for domination, but conciliation, the extent other nations allow it to be exercised.

... ---those thousands who've died because of sanctions, or tortured and killed by corrupt regimes we propped up ("better dead than red, you know!") or blown to smithereens by missiles from our unmanned drones ("better them foreigners than us, right?").

Socialist/Marxist pap, suitable only for regurgitation at party rallies and the stiff-necked pseudo-revelry you and others like yourself can manage to muster in imitation of real, live people having fun and being sociable, being normal. Save it for the punchbowl, which I'm sure is only allowed to have red liquid of one sort or another in it.

Or our own soldiers who come back from the Perpetual War broken and suicidal.

This would be touching if it were honestly how you felt, but the truth is, deep down inside, you have as much hatred for the uniformed military in the U.S. as you do for the nation itself.

It's all worth it to keep the world safe for democracy, right? Afterall, this is gonna be the New American Century!

Wild-eyed assumption of what you think you know about the motivations and musings of those who support the idea of a militarily strong, diplomatically aggressive, politically conservative, and economically agile United States. You impose a persona on those of us who hold to such a view of the nation, and then you project what you hate onto that persona. Then you proceed to verbally punch and pummel that false persona with false accusations of them holding to ideologies you falsely claim are properly theirs.

Meanwhile on the home front, Christians, consitutionalists, and even VETS(!) are labelled as potential threats to the Order, the NSA is spying on us, innocent babies continue to be slaugtered, sodomy is blasphemously called marriage, and heaven forbid you stand up for your conscience and 1st Ammendment rights or, for example, the Homofascists will sue you and some unelected judge will fine you out of business....or, even worse, you can be potentially labeled an 'enemy combatant' and indefinitely detained (or executed) without a trial.

Smoke-screen designed to make your anti-U.S. rant more acceptable to the Christian audience on this board.

But all is well--let's by all means encourage our sons and daughter to fight for this regime's wars. We love Big Brother. God bless the U-S-A

And a return to your true and unrelenting theme of hatred for this nation under the false pretense of wanting to "correct her errors."

(Of course, some will simply wave their hands and dismiss this as 'Marxist spin' ...

Of course. Because it is.

... despite the fact that those of us who oppose Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace oppose totalitarianism in ALL its guises--Marxist or Fascist. )

Or you actually are a Marxist, as is Poncho, hoping no one will notice because you have so "cleverly" disguised yourself as a "concerned American." One would think that, in 97 years. Leninist/Marxist activists could come up with a more original and believable diatribe.

 

[kyredneck]

d-CON is poisonous. Incredible the hate you just spewed in that post.

 

[go2church]

It seems to me that though 13 years seems like a long time, it is hardly enough time to truly weigh the value of our involvement in Iraq. Doesn't mean we can't assess where are at now or at other points along the way, but the full measure of our involvement will take longer to fully comprehend.

Right now it seems like too high a price in treasure and lives, but then I see the pictures of women standing in line to vote and proudly displaying their inked thumbs afterwards and I can't help but pause and think about what their lives would have been like without our involvement.

 

[poncho]

If that's what you got out of that post, your mind is closed and won't hear reason.And what about the innocent civilians who died at the hands of Saddam and his henchmen for the sole purpose of him retaining control of Iraq? Where are you tears for them, and their cries from the desert sands for justice? Your myopically shed crocodile tears bespeak a lack of compassion and a tendency toward self-flagellation for having the misfortune of being born in the United States.The ignorance of such phrases relative to the United States is staggering not so much in that they are made by willfully blind leftists who refuse to see the nation has never engaged in a single, solitary effort to "empire build" as is the fact the ones making these statements obviously haven't a clue what a hegemony is, preferring instead to appear intellectual and "learned" in using such large, threateningly ominous words to describe something they utterly fail to understand.

Brief refutation for your education, should you choose to open your mind long enough to absorb it: Great powers in an economic and/or philosophical system of multiple states are fundamentally different from universal empires whose boundaries are those of a civilization. Militaristic continental land powers also need to be distinguished from countries such as the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States that achieve financial, commercial, and maritime supremacy without militarily dominating other great powers. The United States today has the world's primary reserve currency and what some political scientists have called military "command of the global commons" of sea, air, and space. However, we lack the power to dictate policies to France, Germany, or Japan, much less China, Russia, India, and especially the Islamic world. Your utter failure to grasp that and instead describe these advantages made possible by U.S. economic and democratic superiority is indicative of a inner hatred of that superiority despite your being a native of the very nation that holds those advantages, thus also making them your advantages. You are blind to the inescapable fact that these power are not used for domination, but conciliation, the extent other nations allow it to be exercised.Socialist/Marxist pap, suitable only for regurgitation at party rallies and the stiff-necked pseudo-revelry you and others like yourself can manage to muster in imitation of real, live people having fun and being sociable, being normal. Save it for the punchbowl, which I'm sure is only allowed to have red liquid of one sort or another in it.This would be touching if it were honestly how you felt, but the truth is, deep down inside, you have as much hatred for the uniformed military in the U.S. as you do for the nation itself.Wild-eyed assumption of what you think you know about the motivations and musings of those who support the idea of a militarily strong, diplomatically aggressive, politically conservative, and economically agile United States. You impose a persona on those of us who hold to such a view of the nation, and then you project what you hate onto that persona. Then you proceed to verbally punch and pummel that false persona with false accusations of them holding to ideologies you falsely claim are properly theirs.Smoke-screen designed to make your anti-U.S. rant more acceptable to the Christian audience on this board.And a return to your true and unrelenting theme of hatred for this nation under the false pretense of wanting to "correct her errors."Of course. Because it is.Or you actually are a Marxist, as is Poncho, hoping no one will notice because you have so "cleverly" disguised yourself as a "concerned American." One would think that, in 97 years. Leninist/Marxist activists could come up with a more original and believable diatribe.

What a load of manure.

It's fascist authoritarians like you that have taken this country that was once a model of freedom to the rest of the world and turned into one of the most feared and hated nations on earth with the biggest prison population on the whole planet. Talk about paranoid you won't "feel safe" until you've killed everyone or locked them away in prison! The only reason Washington has any friends left at all is because it buys them.

You are undoubtedly the person George Orwell had in mind when he wrote 1984. Two Orwell quotes jump out at me whenever I read one of your hateful paranoid fear mongering name calling rants.

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Try as you might to twist history by layering lies on top of lies it isn't working.

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

This is what should be your signature line!!!

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

Could someone help me see the connection between being non-interventionist iin places like Iraq and being a Marxist/Leninist?

 

[poncho]

Could someone help me see the connection between being non-interventionist iin places like Iraq and being a Marxist/Leninist?

Count me out. It would take a trip deep inside TND, John McCain and John Kerry's heads to find that connection and I plan to stay as far away from those dark hateful paranoid caverns as possible!

But . . .

From what I can gather from their words they have their own dictionary and in it individual liberty is defined as anarchy. Being anti fascist is defined as Marxism. Isolationism is defined as preferring diplomacy and trade over building walls around other nations with "sanctions" for the soul purpose of starving them into submission. And adherence to the US constitution (they all took a solemn oath to protect and defend from all enemies foreign and domestic) is defined as "conditional upon proper application of fear mongering and color of law" and can be "legally" ignored and forsaken whenever they want to fund and arm a bunch of violent radical extremists to overthrow another government or start another war for the benefit of their corporate masters.

Let's just call a pig a pig here, neocons are war crazed fascists that'll make up any lie or think up any excuse and wrap them all up in a pretty red white and blue package in order to kill people in other countries and grab control of their resources while they try to transfer all their fear and paranoia onto the rest of us. And when we don't fall for it anymore they throw a fit and promise the "end of the world" if we don't heed their battle cries.

Well . . . :tongue3: Nobody is buying it anymore. They cried wolf one to many times and to many people have suffered because of all their military misadventures that have all proven to be "epic failures".

 

[Doubting Thomas]

d-CON is poisonous. Incredible the hate you just spewed in that post.

Yes, I can certainly feel the TWO MINUTE HATE flow through that post.

Calling me 'Marxist' or a 'Leftist' is laughable, and anyone who knows me would guffaw if they read his diatribe. Of course it's more convenient for neoconservative syncophants to demonize the critics of the Amerikan Empire (er..excuse me "BENIGN GLOBAL HEGEMONY") as 'Marxists' than to acknowledge that there are true constitutional conservatives that are alarmed by the mutation of our once great constitutional republic into a bloated warfare-welfare surveillance state that is growing further and further into debt in its quest to gain ever more control over our lives and the peoples of the planet.

And his presuming that he knows how I must truly hate America if I dare to critique her foreign (or domestic) policies, or that I must somehow really 'loathe' our servicemen despite the fact that I hate to see their lives wasted in this Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (where are borders are not actually being threatened), is the height of Orwellian arrogance. The Thought Police must be proud of this one.

Remeber folks: Totalitarianism is totalitariansim whether it's Marxist or Fascist, and those who don't think we're well on our way along the road to totalitarianism have their hands in the sand (or are just being disingenuous).

Now let the TWO MINUTE HATE continue..

 

[Doubting Thomas]

What a load of manure.

It's fascist authoritarians like you that have taken this country that was once a model of freedom to the rest of the world and turned into one of the most feared and hated nations on earth with the biggest prison population on the whole planet. Talk about paranoid you won't "feel safe" until you've killed everyone or locked them away in prison! The only reason Washington has any friends left at all is because it buys them.

You are undoubtedly the person George Orwell had in mind when he wrote 1984.

Indeed :applause:

 

[Doubting Thomas]

Could someone help me see the connection between being non-interventionist iin places like Iraq and being a Marxist/Leninist?

Well according to the most current tenets of the Amerikan version of Ingsoc, if a person doesn't think we should intervene in these nations (like Iraq) that don't directly threaten us, then by definition he (or she) is a 'Marxist/Leninist'.