houstonsceptic's Blog

I have a counterthought. Let's say the Soviet Union was still intact and they invaded America. We get pockets of resistance. To us, we would be considered patriots fighting to get our country back. To the Soviet Union, we would be considered terrorists.

I know China is "us" in your analogy and no, we do not have the right to impose our values on another nation by force when we can't even get democracy right at home first of all. Our president is chipping away at the very thing democracy is all about. As Rep Ron Paul (Republican candidate) says, "We need to lead by example, not by force). I agree with him.

Cookie: I think your observations before about it being about the oil is more accurate than a desire to help the people. But for me oil is a product that will cease to exist probably at the end of my lifespan. I wish we considered ourselves more creators and tended to our own business at home, and invested what we spent in the war there on getting alternate energy sources to power everything. Brazil has done it, Japan has done it yet we don't seem to be able to do it. The military going after Osama was the correct move; but detracting from that goal spread by going into Iraq spread our military too thin. The president surely put them in harm's way without the proper armor (Kevlar) or IED-proof vehicles like the Cougar and then brings them home to hospitals like Walter Reed and the VA Hospital in Houston among many others. They are trying to fight "terrorists" like they did the "enemy" in the two World Wars and it's not the same. So Britain had these terrorists living in their country who planned those attacks? Does that mean we have to invade Britain now (Bush said we would go after countries that harbor terrorists). What about the terrorists here planning an attack on Fort Dix and another cell at JFK airport? Does that mean we're harboring terrorists and how to we invade ourselves? It's short-sighted.

A "very" good point, 4givn!
THAT made Cookie think!
Cookie wonders how the citizens feel?
I would think that the "terrorists" consider that a "casulty of war"--?
Let me say--I am NOT ïn support of terrorism--but If we wouldn't BE THERE--a LOT of people now dead--would be ALIVE--??
We should NOT be there--but we are--so now what--???

Well, we're in the middle of their civil war as well. Can you imagine the casualties and the different tactics that would be used in a North versus South Civil War like the one we had, but now with the arsenal at our disposal? I would imagine it would look very much like what is happening in Iraq, people of the same country killing each other because of differences (in our case it was about slavery and in the Iraq it is going back a long time.) There was a really great Time magazine article that explains where the hatred comes from:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,159284
9,00.html

It's free (no charge) to read it.
Right now, the figures are over 650,000 civilian casualties since the start of the invasion and over 4 million Iraq refugees (and guess who has taken in the most--not us who caused this mess, but Sweden of all places).

There is no easy way for us to get out of this either. There is bad and worse. The US is not used to choices like that. This is not something we can win and how long do we stay--are we prepared to stay their the next 40 years? I doubt it. You guys should go see the YouTube clip I posted about Dick Cheney about this. If you go to my blog you can get a link to them. One is a part of a PBS documentary and the other is a Canadian documentary, both legitimate sources.

4givn: There is actually two dynamics going on there. The Sunni/Shite civil war in which they are blowing each other up, and al-Qaeda now being in Iraq when they previously weren't before our invasion. The people of Iraq actually hate the members of al-Qaeda. We are actually using that common thread of hate to arm Sunni insurgents, making them promise by verbal agreement only that they won't use our weapons on our guys. (This is exactly what we did with bin Laden. We armed his group during his fight against the Soviets. The CIA trained his men. And now they are using those tactics against us.) Are we going to trust that once the insurgents drive al-Qaeda from their country with us as their allies that they aren't going to use our weapons against our troops? I wrote a blog about it with the references of the story about this.

You were missing the point of what I was saying. I'm not talking about what actually happened in our civil war. I'm talking about the possibilities of what that civil war would look like in the 21st century. Timothy McVeigh didn't seem to have a problem blowing up a building that had children in it. The two boys at Columbine didn't have a problem killing their classmates. The VA Tech guy didn't have a problem either. I imagine that we would have more maniacs like that, people who have no honor, if our civil war were to have taken place in this day and age. I'm just suggesting it is within the possibilities. I'm not romancing anything people do in the name of violence.